9 10 Auso licèt à tuâ Metrorum Lege discedere Vatum certe Cineres, tuos undique stipantium J. PHILIPS, STEPHANI, S. T. P. Archidiaconi 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 2. 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 3. His works are few. The Splendid Shilling has the uncommon ''Must he no more divert the tedious Nor sparkling thoughts in antique No more to harmless irony descend, SMITH, Eng. Poets, xxv. 114. 2 As the custom of smoking tobacco was highly in vogue when he first came to college from the example of the Dean (Aldrich), so he fell in with the general taste.' Biog. Brit. p. 3355 His Latin Ode Ad Henricum St. O qui recisae finibus Indicis 3 For Johnson's scorn of Pope's 'all-accomplished St. John' (Epil. Sat. ii. 139) see Boswell's Johnson, i. 268. In Smith's poem In Memory of 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 11 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 '. "The parody on Milton,' says Gildon, 'is the only tolerable 12 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 war3'; 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 Philips the following lines seem to show that the two poets shared 'the garret vile' described in The Splendid Shilling: 'What sounding lines his abject What shining words the pompous There, there my cell, immortal The frailer piles which o'er its ruins rise.' Eng. Poets, xxv. 110. By 'the frailer piles' is meant, I think, Peckwater Quadrangle, Christ Church, which, as Hearne tells us, was about half done.' Hearne's Remains, i. 211. Ante, BUTLER, 52, and post, SOMERVILE, 8. 'The Splendid Shilling has been 13 14 made by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way through ranks made headless by his sword'. 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 2. 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 work3; 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*. 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 5. In Gallic blood again Eng. Poets, xvii. 251. 2 Imitation is of two sorts; the first is, when we force to our own purposes the thoughts of others; the second consists in copying the imperfections or blemishes of celebrated authors. .. I have seen sundry poems in imitation of Milton, where, with the utmost exactness, and not so much as one exception, nevertheless was nathless, embroidered was broidered, hermits were eremites.... And in very deed there is no other way by which the true modern poet could read to any purpose the works of such men as Milton and Shakespeare.' SWIFT, Works, xiii. 53. In a note it is said:-'Swift alluded to Philips's Cyder, of which he often expressed a strong disappro bation, and particularly on account of these antiquated words.' Steele, in The Spectator, No. 140, also censures Philips :-'Thus the imitators of Milton seem to place all the excellency of that sort of writing either in the uncouth or antique words, or something else which was highly vicious, though pardonable in that great man.' 4 3 Post, DRYDEN, 343. Sings with that heat wherewith Like Milton's angels whilst his TICKELL, Eng. Poets, xxxix. 296. 'Philips's Splendid Shilling is the earliest and one of the best of our parodies: but Blenheim is as complete a burlesque upon Milton as The Splendid Shilling, though it was written and read with gravity.' CAMPBELL, Brit. Poets, p. 318. 5 [This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be an error To the poem on Cider, written in imitation of the Georgicks, 15 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 '.' In the disposition of his matter so as to intersperse precepts 16 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 in all the printed copies, which is, I find, retained in the last. They all read: 'Quam Gratiarum cura decentium Õ! O! labellis cui Venus insidet.' [Eng. Poets, xvii. 263.] The author probably wrote: Quam Gratiaruni cura decentium The error is retained in the edition (Eng. Poets) of 1790, to which my references are given. 'Dr. Hannes was a practising physician at Oxford. He was a contributor to the Musae Anglicanae, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxon., 1692-99.' Addison's Works, v. 319. See also ib. i. 248 for Addison's ode Ad D. D. Hannes, Insignissimum Medicum et Poetam For the trick by which Dr. Hannes pushed himself up into practice see the Life of Dr. Radcliffe, p. 42. See also post, SMITH, 14. ''It does not always follow,' said Johnson, 'that a man who has written a good poem on an art, has practised it. Philip Miller told me, that in Philips's Cyder, a poem, all the pre cepts were just, and indeed better than in books written for the purpose of instructing; yet Philips had never made cyder.' Boswell's Johnson,v. 78. 'The motto,' writes Dr. Warton (Pope's Works, i. 334), 'prefixed to Philips's Cyder was elegant. "Honos erit huic quoque pomo?" [VIRGIL, Ecl. ii. 53.] Atterbury suggested the interrogation point.' The same motto, with the interrogation point, is inscribed in a scroll over Philips's bust in Westminster Abbey. Crull's Antiquities of St. Peter's, ii. 35. An Italian translation was published at Florence in 1749; a second edition in 1752. Brit. Mus. Cata. 2 Thomson addresses him as :'Philips, Pomona's bard, the second thou Who nobly durst in rhyme-unfetter'd verse, With British freedom sing the The Seasons: Autumn, 1. 644. In the first edition of Autumn the first line runs (1. 639):-' Philips, facetious bard.' of engrafting, and decide the merit of the 'redstreak' and 'pearmain'.' 17 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 "." 18 19 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. '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 Cowley3 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. '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. |