JOHN PHILIPS was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton in
Oxfordshire; of which place his father Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon
of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestick,
after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr. Sewel,
his biographer, he was soon distinguished by the superiority of his exercises;
and, what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared himself to his
schoolfellows by his civility and good-nature, that they without murmur
or ill-will saw him indulged by the master with particular immunities.
It is related that when he was at school he seldom mingled in play with
the other boys, but retired to his chamber, where his sovereign pleasure
was to sit hour after hour while his hair was combed by somebody, whose
service he found means to procure.
2 At school he became acquainted with the poets ancient
and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton.
3 In 1694 he entered himself at Christ-church, a college
at that time in the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's
scholars to the care, first of Fell, and afterwards of Aldrich. Here he
was distinguished as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship
particularly intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of Phaedra and Hippolytus.
The profession which he intended to follow was that of physick; and he
took much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite
part.
His reputation was confined to his friends and to the university; till
about 1703 he extended it to a wider circle by The Splendid Shilling,
which struck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected.
4 This performance raised him so high, that when Europe
resounded with the victory of Blenheim he was, probably with an occult
opposition to Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the Tories.
It is said that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his
friends urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house
of Mr. St. John.
5 Blenheim was published in 1705. The next year produced
his greatest work, the poem upon Cider, in two books; which was received
with loud praises, and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's
Georgick, which needed not shun the presence of the original.
6 He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities,
and began to meditate a poem on The Last Day, a subject on which no mind
can hope to equal expectation.
7 This work he did not live to finish; his diseases,
a slow consumption and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on Feb.
15, 1708, at the beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his
life. He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and Sir Simon Harcourt,
afterwards Lord Chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey.
The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr. Atterbury,
though commonly given to Dr. Freind.
His Epitaph at Hereford:
JOHANNES PHILIPS
Obiit 15 die Feb.
Anno Dom. 1708. Aetat. suae 32.
Cujus
Ossa si requiras, hanc Urnam inspice;
Si Ingenium nescias, ipsius Opera consule;
Si Tumulum desideras,
Templum adi Westmonasteriense:
Qualis quantusque Vir fuerit,
Dicat elegans illa et preclara,
Quae cenotaphium ibi decorat,
Inscriptio.
Quam interim erga Cognates pius et officiosus,
Testetur hoc saxum
A MARIA PHILIPS Matre ipsius pientissima
Dilecti Filii Memoriae non sine Lacrymis dicatum.
His Epitaph at Westminster:
Herefordiae conduntur Ossa,
Hoc in Delubro statuitur Imago,
Britanniam omnem pervagatur Fama
JOHANNIS PHILIPS:
Qui Viris bonis doctisque juxta charus,
Immortale suum Ingenium,
Eruditione multiplici excultum,
Miro animi candore,
Eximia morum simplicitate,
Honestavit.
Litterarum Amoeniorum sitim,
Quam Wintonae Puer sentire coeperat,
Inter Aedis Christi Alumnos jugiter explevit.
In illo Musarum Domicilio
Praeclaris Aemulorum studiis excitatus,
Optimis scribendi Magistris semper intentus,
Carmina sermone Patrio composuit
A Graecis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta,
Atticis Romanisque auribus omnino digna,
Versuum quippe Harmoniam
Rythmo didicerat,
Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi
Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato,
Non Numeris in eundem fere orbem redeuntibus,
Non Clausularum similiter cadentium sono
Metiri:
Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus,
Primoque poene Par.
Res seu Tenues, seu Grandes, seu Mediocres
Ornandas sumserat,
Nusquam non quod decuit,
Et vidit, et assecutus est,
Egregius, quocunque Stylum verteret,
Fandi author, et Modorum artifex. Fas sit Huic,
Auso licet a tua Metrorum Lege discedere
O Poesis Anglicanae Pater, atque Conditor, Chaucere,
Alterum tibi latus claudere,
Vatum certe Cineres, tuos undique stipantium
Non dedecebit Chorum.
SIMON HARCOURT Miles,
Viri bene de se, de Litteris meriti
Quoad viveret Fautor,
Post Obitum pie memor,
Hoc illi Saxum poni voluit.
J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. Archidiaconi
Salop. Filius, natus est Bamptoniae
in agro Oxon. Dec. 30, 1676.
Obiit Herefordiae, Feb. 15, 1708.
8 Philips has been always praised without contradiction
as a man modest, blameless, and pious; who bore narrowness of fortune
without discontent, and tedious and painful maladies without impatience;
beloved by those that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was
probably not formed for a wide circle. His conversation is commended for
its innocent gaiety, which seems to have flowed only among his intimates;
for I have been told that he was in company silent and barren, and employed
only upon the pleasures of his pipe. His addiction to tobacco is mentioned
by one of his biographers, who remarks that in all his writings, except
Blenheim, he has found an opportunity of celebrating the fragrant fume.
In common life he was probably one of those who please by not offending,
and whose person was loved because his writings were admired. He died
honoured and lamented, before any part of his reputation had withered,
and before his patron St. John had disgraced him.
9 His works are few. The Splendid Shilling has the uncommon
merit of an original design, unless it may be thought precluded by the
ancient Centos. To degrade the sounding words and stately construction
of Milton, by an application to the lowest and most trivial things, gratifies
the mind with a momentary triumph over that grandeur which hitherto held
its captives in admiration; the words and things are presented with a
new appearance, and novelty is always grateful where it gives no pain.
But the merit of such performances begins and ends with the first author.
He that should again adapt Milton's phrase to the gross incidents of common
life, and even adapt it with more art, which would not be difficult, must
yet expect but a small part of the praise which Philips has obtained;
he can only hope to be considered as the repeater of a jest.
10 "The parody on Milton," says Gildon, "is
the only tolerable production of its author." This is a censure too
dogmatical and violent. The poem of Blenheim was never denied to be tolerable,
even by those who do not allow its supreme excellence. It is indeed the
poem of a scholar, "all inexpert of war;" of a man who writes
books from books, and studies the world in a college. He seems to have
formed his ideas of the field of Blenheim from the battles of the heroick
ages or the tales of chivalry with very little comprehension of the qualities
necessary to the composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed
with so much propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at distance the slaughter
made by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his
way through ranks made headless by his sword.
11 He imitates Milton's numbers indeed, but imitates
them very injudiciously. Deformity is easily copied and whatever there
is in Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar,
or licentious is accumulated with great care by Philips. Milton's verse
was harmonious, in proportion to the general state of our metre in Milton's
age, and, if he had written after the improvements made by Dryden, it
is reasonable to believe that he would have admitted a more pleasing modulation
of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a resolution to make
no more musick than he found: to want all that his master wanted, though
he is very far from having what his master had. Those asperities therefore
that are venerable in the Paradise Lost are contemptible in the Blenheim.
12 There is a Latin ode written to his patron St. John,
in return for a present of wine and tobacco, which cannot be passed without
notice. It is gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful accommodations
of classick expressions to new purposes. It seems better turned than the
odes of Hannes.
13 To the poem on Cider, written in imitation of the
Georgicks, may be given this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth;
that the precepts which it contains are exact and just, and that it is
therefore at once a book of entertainment and of science. This I was told
by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose expression was, that
"there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which
do not contain so much truth as that poem."
14 In the disposition of his matter so as to intersperse
precepts relating to the culture of trees with sentiments more generally
alluring, and in easy and graceful transitions from one subject to another,
he has very diligently imitated his master; but he unhappily pleased himself
with blank verse, and supposed that the numbers of Milton, which impress
the mind with veneration, combined as they are with subjects of inconceivable
grandeur, could be sustained by images which at most can rise only to
elegance. Contending angels may shake the regions of heaven in blank verse;
but the flow of equal measures and the embellishment of rhyme must recommend
to our attention the art of engrafting, and decide the merit of the "redstreak"
and "pearmain."
15 What study could confer Philips had obtained; but
natural deficience cannot be supplied. He seems not born to greatness
and elevation. He is never lofty, nor does he often surprise with unexpected
excellence; but perhaps to his last poem may be applied what Tully said
of the work of Lucretius, that "it is written with much art, though
with few blazes of genius."
16 The following fragment, written by Edmund Smith,
upon the works of Philips, has been transcribed from the Bodleian manuscripts.
A prefatory Discourse to the Poem on Mr. Philips, with a character
of his writings.
17 "It is altogether as equitable some account
should be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their
writings, as of those who are renowned for great actions. It is but
reasonable they, who contribute so much to the immortality of others,
should have some share in it themselves and since their genius only
is discovered by their works, it is just that their virtues should be
recorded by their friends. For no modest men (as the person I write
of was in perfection) will write their own panegyricks; and it is very
hard that they should go without reputation, only because they the more
deserve it. The end of writing Lives is for the imitation of the readers.
It will be in the power of very few to imitate the duke of Marlborough;
we must be content with admiring his great qualities and actions, without
hopes of following them. The private and social virtues are more easily
transcribed. The Life of Cowley is more instructive, as well as more
fine, than any we have in our language. And it is to be wished, since
Mr. Philips had so many of the good qualities of that poet, that I had
some of the abilities of his historian.
18 "The Grecian philosophers have had their Lives
written, their morals commended, and their sayings recorded. Mr. Philips
had all the virtues to which most of them only pretended, and all their
integrity without any of their affectation.
19 "The French are very just to eminent men in
this point; not a learned man nor a poet can die, but all Europe must
be acquainted with his accomplishments. They give praise and expect
it in their turns: they commend their Patrus and Molieres as well as
their Condes and Turennes; their Pellisons and Racines have their elogies
as well as the prince whom they celebrate; and their poems, their mercuries,
and orations, nay their very gazettes, are filled with the praises of
the learned.
20 "I am satisfied, had they a Philips among
them and known how to value him; had they one of his learning, his temper,
but above all of that particular turn of humour, that altogether new
genius, he had been an example to their poets and a subject of their
panegyricks, and perhaps set in competition with the ancients, to whom
only he ought to submit.
21 "I shall therefore endeavour to do justice
to his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. And indeed I can assign
no cause why so many of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more
able than myself to give an account of him) should forbear to celebrate
the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as
a work entirely belonging to me.
22 "I shall content myself with giving only a
character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the
transactions of his life, which was altogether private: I shall only
make this known observation of his family, that there were scarce so
many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five
of his brothers (of which three are still living), all men of fine parts,
yet all of a very unlike temper and genius. So that their fruitful mother,
like the mother of the gods, seems to have produced a numerous offspring,
all of different though uncommon faculties. Of the living, neither their
modesty nor the humour of the present age permits me to speak: of the
dead, I may say something.
23 "One of them had made the greatest progress
in the study of the law of nature and nations of any one I know. He
had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and
the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as
much solidity as some of greater name, and expose him with as much wit
as Echard. That noble study, which requires the greatest reach of reason
and nicety of distinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a
national loss to be deprived of one who understood a science so necessary,
and yet so unknown in England. I shall add only, he had the same honesty
and sincerity as the person I write of, but more heat. The former was
more inclined to argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reason
more; the other his imagination: the former had been well qualified
for those posts, which the modesty of the latter made him refuse. His
other dead brother would have been an ornament to the college of which
he was a member. He had a genius either for poetry or oratory; and,
though very young, composed several very agreeable pieces. In all probability
he would have wrote as finely, as his brother did nobly. He might have
been the Waller, as the other was the Milton of his time. The one might
celebrate Marlborough, the other his beautiful offspring. This had not
been so fit to describe the actions of heroes as the virtues of private
men. In a word, he had been fitter for my place and while his brother
was writing upon the greatest men that any age ever produced, in a style
equal to them, he might have served as a panegyrist on him.
24 "This is all I think necessary to say of his
family. I shall proceed to himself and his writings; which I shall first
treat of, because I know they are censured by some out of envy, and
more out of ignorance.
25 "The Splendid Shilling, which is far the least
considerable, has the more general reputation, and perhaps hinders the
character of the rest. The style agreed so well with the burlesque that
the ignorant thought it could become nothing else. Every body is pleased
with that work. But to judge rightly of the other requires a perfect
mastery of poetry and criticism, a just contempt of the little turns
and witticisms now in vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding
of poetical diction and description.
26 "All that have any taste of poetry will agree,
that the great burlesque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much
easier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great:
Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former; but Philips,
Garth, and Boileau only the latter.
27 "A picture in miniature is every painter's
talent but a piece: for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged,
yet proportioned to the eye, requires a master's hand.
28 "It must still be more acceptable than the
low burlesque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy,
and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding.
The style of Billingsgate would not make a very agreeable figure at
St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleasure in language,
which he would think it hard to be accosted in, or in reading words
which he could not pronounce without blushing. The lofty burlesque is
the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be master
of two of the most different talents in nature. A talent to find out
and expose what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is
to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and
Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent
comedies have often failed in the grave style, and the tragedian as
often in comedy. Admiration and laughter are of such opposite natures
that they are seldom created by the same person. The man of mirth is
always observing the follies and weaknesses, the serious writer the
virtues or crimes of mankind; one is pleased with contemplating a beau,
the other a hero. Even from the same object they would draw different
ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Thersites and
Alexander. The one would admire the courage and greatness of his soul
the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness of his temper. As the
satyrist says to Hannibal:
I curre per Alpes,
Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias.
29 "The contrariety of style to the subject pleases
the more strongly, because it is more surprising; the expectation of
the reader is pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from
the subject, or a great subject from the style. It pleases the more
universally, because it is agreeable to the taste both of the grave
and the merry: but more particularly so to those who have a relish of
the best writers, and the noblest sort of poetry. I shall produce only
one passage out of this poet, which is the misfortune of his Galligaskins:
My Galligaskins, which [that] have long withstood
The winter's fury and encroaching frosts,
By time subdued (what will not time subdue!).
This is admirably pathetical, and shews very well the vicissitudes
of sublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a
man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible
complaint. Is it not surprising that the subject should be so mean,
and the verse so pompous? that the least things in his poetry, as in
a microscope, should grow great and formidable to the eye? especially
considering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his
style? that he should have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable?
that he should do all this before he was twenty? at an age, which is
usually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural
fustian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil,
were inconsiderable? So soon was his imagination at its full strength,
his judgement ripe, and his humour complete.
30 "This poem was written for his own diversion,
without any design of publication. It was communicated but to me; but
soon spread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely
mangled, by Ben Bragge; and impudently said to be corrected by the author.
This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right
to his own thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered
the Persian, who demanded his arms, 'We have nothing now left but our
arms and our valour; if we surrender the one, how shall we make use
of the other?' Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings;
and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't see what good the former
can do them. To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names
to the works they steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never
yet heard of but in England. It will sound oddly to posterity, that,
in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the
most wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge
in the world, the property of a mechanick should be better secured than
that of a scholar; that the poorest manual operations should be more
valued than the noblest products of the brain; that it should be felony
to rob a cobler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best
author of his whole subsistence; that nothing should make a man a sure
title to his own writings but the stupidity of them; that the works
of Dryden should meet with less encouragement than those of his own
Flecknoe, or Blackmore; that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and
Temple, should be set on an equal foot. This is the reason why this
very paper has been so long delayed; and while the most impudent and
scandalous libels are publickly vended by the pirates, this innocent
work is forced to steal abroad as if it were a libel.
31 "Our present writers are by these wretches
reduced to the same: condition Virgil was, when the centurion seized
on his estate. But I don't doubt that I can fix upon the Maecenas of
the present age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effect
this piracy may have upon us, it contributed very much to the advantage
of Mr. Philips; it helped him to a reputation, which he neither desired
nor expected, and to the honour of being put upon a work of which he
did not think himself capable; but the event shewed his modesty. And
it was reasonable to hope, that he, who could raise mean subjects so
high, should still be more elevated on greater themes; that he, that
could draw such noble ideas from a shilling, could not fail upon such
a subject as the duke of Marlborough, 'which is capable of heightening
even the most low and trifling genius.' And, indeed, most of the great
works which have been produced in the world have been owing less to
the poet than the patron. Men of the greatest genius are sometimes lazy,
and want a spur; often modest, and dare not venture in publick; they
certainly know their faults in the worst things; and even their best
things they are not fond of, because the idea of what they ought to
be is far above what they are. This induced me to believe that Virgil
desired his work might be burnt, had not the same Augustus that desired
him to write them, preserved them from destruction. A scribling beau
may imagine a Poet may be induced to write, by the very pleasure he
finds in writing; but that is seldom, when people are necessitated to
it. I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for diversion, which,
if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.
32 "But to return to Blenheim, that work so much
admired by some, and censured by others. I have often wished he had
wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty criticks,
who would have as little understood his meaning in that language as
they do his beauties in his own.
33 "False criticks have been the plague of all
ages; Milton himself; in a very polite court, has been compared to the
rumbling of a wheel-barrow: he had been on the wrong side, and therefore
could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.
34 "But I take generally the ignorance of his
readers to be the occasion of their dislike. People that have formed
their taste upon the French writers, can have no relish for Philips:
they admire points and turns, and consequently have no judgement of
what is great and majestick; he must look little in their eyes, when
he soars so high as to be almost out of their view. I cannot therefore
allow any admirer of the French to be a judge of Blenheim, nor any who
takes Bouhours for a compleat critick. He generally judges of the ancients
by the moderns, and not the moderns by the ancients; he takes those
passages of their own authors to be really sublime which come the nearest
to it; he often calls that a noble and a great thought which is only
a pretty and fine one, and has more instances of the sublime out of
Ovid de Tristibus, than he has out of all Virgil.
35 "I shall allow, therefore, only those to be
judges of Philips, who make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their
standard.
36 "But, before I enter on this subject, I shall
consider what is particular in the style of Philips, and examine what
ought to be the style of heroick poetry, and next inquire how far he
is come up to that style.
37 "His style is particular, because he lays
aside rhyme, and writes in blank verse, and uses old words, and frequently
postpones the adjective to the substantive, and the substantive to the
verb; and leaves out little particles, a and the; her and his; and uses
frequent appositions. Now let us examine, whether these alterations
of style be conformable to the true sublime...."
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