- 



PHIUPPUS. 



rmurs, JOHN. 



sen 



was really a Christian, but it Menu certain, a* stated by Eusobius and 

 I)iooyiu of Alexandria, that under hii reign the Christians enjoyed 

 full toleration and were allowed to preach publicly. Gregory of 

 Nyva Ut, that during that period all the inhabitants of Neocaware*. 

 in Pontua embraced Christianity, OTerthrew the idols, and raised 

 temple* to the God of the Christian*. It appears that Philippns 

 during his fire years' reign gOTerned with mildness and justice, and 

 was generally popular. 



Coin of PhiHppus. 

 British Mtueum. Actual dee. 



Coin of rhilippui the Younger. 

 British Museum. Actual size. 



PHILI'PPUS, the name of several ancient physicians enumerated 

 by Kabricius (' Biblioth. Gncca'). The most celebrated is Philippus of 

 Acarnania, the friend and physician of Alexander the Great, who was 

 the mean* of saving the king's life when he had been seized with a 

 vi .1 nt attack of fever, brought on by tho excessive coldness of the 

 waters of the river Cydnns, OL 111, 4 (B.C. 333). Parmenio sent to warn 

 Alexander that Philippus had been bribed by Darius to poison him ; 

 the king however did not doubt his fidelity, but, while he drank the 

 draught prepared for him, put into his physician's hands the letter he 

 had just received. His speedy recovery fully justified his confidence, 

 and proved at once the skill and honesty of Philippu*. 



I'll I LIPS, AMBROSE, was born about 1671, and ia said to have 

 been descended from an old Leicestershire family. He was educated 

 at St. John's College, Cambridge, and his first printed performance is 

 a copy of English verses in the collection published by that university 

 on the death of Queen Mary in 1695. From this date nothing is 

 known of him till the appearance of his six Pastorals, which, Johnson 

 observe*, he must have published before the year 1708, because they 

 are evidently prior to those of Pop.-, but they appear to have been 

 first publuhed along with Pope's, in Tonson's 'Miscellany/ which 

 appeared in 1709. Philips'* next performance was his ' Letter from 

 Copenhagen ' (in verse) to the Earl (afterwards Duke) of Dorset, dated 

 March 9, 1709, which was printed in the 12th No. of the 'Taller/ 

 (May 7, 1709), with an introductory eulogium by Steele, who styles it 

 ' a* fine a winter-piece a* we have ever had from any of the schools of 

 the most learned painter*.' He afterward* translated the 'Fenian 

 Tales ' from the French for Tonson, and brought out an abridgment of 

 Hackot'i 'Life of Archbishop Williams.' In February 1712, his 

 tragedy of the ' Distressed Mother/ waa played at Drury Lane, and 

 although little more than a translation of the ' Andromaque ' ol 

 ICacine, was received with great applause, and long continued to keep 

 pomeuion of the ttage. Pope, who a year or two before had bestowed 

 high praise upon the ' Letter from Copenhagen/ calling it the per- 

 formance of a man " who could write very nobly," but who had now 

 been divided from Philips partly by feeling* of poetical rivalry and 

 jealousy, partly by their opposite party politics, told hjs friend Spence 

 that the ' DUtres-cd Mother ' was in great part indebted for it* success 

 on the first night to a packed audience. The author's Whig friends 

 certainly did their best for the play. It was elaborately praised, 

 before iU appearance, in the 290th No. of the 'Spectator (for Fel> 

 rnarylst, 1712); and Addison, in the name of Budgell, wrote an 

 epilogue for it, which took so greatly that, according to Johnson, on 

 " the three fint night* it was recited twice ; and not only continued to 

 be demanded through the run, as it is termed, of the play, but, when 

 ever it U recalled to the stage, the epilogue i* still expected, and is 

 11 spoken." Other 'Spectators' were devoted (No. 335, for March 

 25th, 1712, by Addison) to an account of the strong impression made 

 by the tragedy on Sir Roger de Coverley; and (No*. 338, for March 

 8th, and 341, for April 1st) to an Animated controversy about tho 

 merit of the epilogue, inning of course in a triumphant vindication ol 



t A short time before, Philips'* translation of ' Sappho'* Hymn to 

 Tenu* ' had been printed, with otrong commendation from Addison, 

 both of that poem and of the author'* " admirable pastoral* and ii.t.-r- 

 licce," in the 'Spectator,' No. 223 (for November 15th, 1711); and 

 he pastorals are again highly praised in Nos. 400 (for June Uth, 1712) 

 and 623 (for October 30th), by Addison; and likewise in the 

 Guardian/ No. 30 (for April 15th, 1718). But now Pope managed to 

 >lay off a singular trick upon the guileless or careless nature of Steele, 

 >v imposing upon him as a serious critique an ironical discourse on 

 Philips'* Pastoral* as compared with his own, in which, while the 

 superiority was in terms assigned to Philips, every quotation and the 

 whole treatment of the subject were artfully adapted to turn him into 

 ridicule. It is surprising that any degree of simplicity could be so 

 taken in ; but Steele at once printed the paper, which forms the 40th 

 So. of the 'Guardian' (for April 27th, 1713). Its appearance must 

 at first have perplexed and puzzled the public ; but Addison 'R quick 

 cyo detected at once tho mockery which had escaped his more 

 nattentive or more unsuspecting friend. This affair gave rise to an 

 open feud between Pope and Philips, which was never healed. For 

 many years Pope continued to make bis unfortunate contemporary 

 iis butt; in particular, Philips'* verses will be found to furnish, along 

 with those of Blackmore, Theobald, and Webttod, the choicest 

 specimens in the famous treatise of Mortinus Scriblerus on the ' Art 

 of Sinking in Poetry.' To all this persecution Philips had nothing to 

 oppose but threats of personal chastisement, which had however tho 

 effect of making the satirist keep out of his way. Meanwhile his 

 poetical reputation, which had previously been in a most flourishing 

 Bondition, was undoubtedly very seriously damaged even by Pope's 

 first insidious attack ; he continued indeed to rhyme, but nothing 

 which he produced after that paper in the 'Guardian' brought him 

 much reputation. Conceiving himself to have a turn for simplicity 

 and natural expression, he fell into a peculiar style of verse, in which 

 tho lines were very short, and the thoughts and phraseology approach- 

 ing to the infantine; and this the public were taught to call ' Namby- 

 pamby,' a name first bestowed, we believe, not, as has been stated, by 

 Pope, but by Henry Corey, the clever author of 'Sally in our Alley ' 

 and ' Chrononhotonthologos/ a volume of poems published by whom 

 in 1 737 contained one so entitled in the form of a burlesque on one 

 of I'hilips's productions. If the muses failed him however, Philips 

 was consoled by the favour of his party and by considerable success 

 as a politician. Soon after the accession of tho House of Hanover, 

 which fixed his Whig friends in power, he was made a commissioner 

 of the lottery and one of the justices of the peace for Westminster, 

 the latter, in those days, an appointment more lucrative than honour- 

 able. In 1721 he produced two more tragedies, 'The Briton/ and 

 'Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester/ both now forgotten. Ho n. U 

 engaged in a periodical paper called ' The Freethinker/ in which one 

 of his associates was Dr. Boulter, who was afterwards made Bishop of 

 Bristol and then Archbishop of Armagh, and who, when he went over 

 to Ireland, took Philips with him, and provided so well for him as to 

 enable him to represent tho county of Armagh in the Irish parlia- 

 ment. He at last rose to be judge of tho Prerogative Court in 

 Ireland ; but resigned that place in 1748, and returned to hia native 

 country, where ho died of a stroke of palsy, on the Sth of Juno 1740. 



PHILIPS, JOHN, was the sou of Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon 

 of Salop, and rector of Hampton in Oxfordshire, at which latter pi K-O 

 he was born in 1676. Having received his school education at Win- 

 chester, ho was entered at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1694. It is said 

 that he intended to follow the medical profession ; but it does not 

 appear that he pursued that object further than by engaging with 

 much seal in the study of botany and natural history. He first 

 became known beyond his college, or university, by his poem entitled 

 'The Splendid Shilling/ which appeared in 1703. The 'Splendid 

 Shilling ' is a composition of the mock heroic kind, the verso being 

 an imitation of that of Milton. Of course it is absurd to contend, as 

 has been done, that Philips here makes the little appear great, mul ii 

 therefore to be distinguished from and set far above such parodists ag 

 only make the great appear little, as, for example, Cotton and Scarron. 

 The truth is, that in both case* the great is made to appear little : 

 what of piquancy there is in Philips'* poem does not arise from any 

 exaltation of the shilling, but from the application of the versification 

 and expression of Milton to so mean a subject. In 1705 Philips pro- 

 duced his next poem, entitled 'Blenheim/ at the instigation, it is 

 understood, of the Tory party, who wanted a poetical effusion on that 

 victory to rival Addison's ; but, notwithstanding an imitation of 

 Milton of a more legitimate kind than in the 'Splendid Shilling/ 

 Philips's ' Blenheim ' found comparatively few admirers in that day, 

 and has been generally forgotten since. Philips's chief work, his 

 ' Cider/ a poem in two books, was published in 1706 : like everything 

 eUc that he wrote, it is in blank verse, and an echo of the numbers of 

 ' Paradise Lost ; ' but a* a poetical composition it belongs to the same 

 class a* Virgil'* 'Georgia;' and consequently it is, as well as the 

 ' Blenheim,' a serious, not a mock imitation of Milton. Johnson says 

 he was told by Miller, the eminent gardener and botanist, that there 

 were many books written on the same subject in prose which do not 

 contain so much truth as that poem. A complication of consumption 

 and asthma put a period to the life of this amiable man on the 15th of 

 February 1708, when ho had just completed his thirty-second year. 



