Anecdotes, 1858, p. 131). In ‘Cyder,’ as in nearly everything he wrote, Philips celebrated ‘Nature's choice gift,’ tobacco, a fashion for which had been set at Oxford by Aldrich's example. In a coarse attack, ‘Milton's sublimity asserted … by Philo-Milton’ (1709), ‘Cyder’ is spoken of as an ‘idolised piece.’
Of Philips's minor productions, a clever Latin ‘Ode ad Henricum S. John,’ written in acknowledgment of a present of wine and tobacco, was translated by Thomas Newcomb [q. v.] Philips also contemplated a poem on the ‘Last Day,’ but his health grew worse, and, after a visit to Bath, he died at his mother's house, at Hereford, of consumption and asthma, on 15 Feb. 1708–9 (Underhill, Poems of John Gay, 1893, i. 275).
Philips's mother placed a stone over his grave in the north transept of Hereford Cathedral, with an inscription said to be by Anthony Alsop of Christ Church (Hearne, Collections, ed. Doble, iii. 370). When the present pavement was laid down, a small brass plate in the floor was provided by subscription, a bunch of apples being engraved on it. Philips's mother died on 11 Oct. 1715, and her son Stephen erected a marble slab to her memory (Havergal, Monumental Inscriptions in Hereford Cathedral, pp. xx, xxii, 54). In February 1710 Edmund Smith printed a ‘Poem to the Memory of Mr. John Philips,’ which was reprinted in Lintot's ‘Miscellaneous Poems and Translations’ (1712). Leonard Welsted, too, published in 1710 ‘A Poem to the Memory of the Incomparable Mr. Philips,’ with a dedication to St. John. Tickell, in his ‘Oxford’ (1707), had already compared Philips with Milton, saying he ‘equals the poet, and excels the man.’ Thomson praised him with more discretion. A monument in Philips's memory, with the motto ‘Honos erit huic quoque pomo,’ from the title-page of ‘Cyder,’ was erected in Westminster Abbey in 1710, between the monuments to Chaucer and Drayton, by Simon Harcourt (first viscount Harcourt) [q. v.] The long epitaph was commonly attributed to Robert Freind [q. v.], though Johnson, on hearsay evidence, credited Atterbury with the authorship. Crull said the lines were by Smalridge, and there is a well-known story that the words ‘Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus’ were obliterated by order of Sprat, who was then dean, but were restored four years later by Atterbury, who did not feel the same horror at Milton's name appearing in the abbey (Stanley, Westminster Abbey, pp. 261–2). An examination of the monument, however, reveals no indication that the words were at any time interpolated.
Philips, according to the testimony of all who knew him, was amiable, patient in illness, and vivacious in the society of intimate friends. His poems, written in revolt against the heroic couplet, between the death of Dryden and the appearance of Pope, occupy an important position in the history of English literature. As author of ‘Cyder,’ Philips was a forerunner of Thomson in his love of nature and country life.
An edition of Philips's ‘Poems,’ with a ‘Life’ by George Sewell, was brought out by Curll in 1715; each part of the volume has a separate register and pagination. There was another edition in 1720, and a third in 1763. In some copies ‘Cyder’ is a reprint, while in others it is the 1708 edition bound up with the other pieces. ‘Il Sidro,’ translated into Tuscan by Count L. Magalotti, appeared in 1749; and an edition of ‘Cyder,’ with very full notes by Charles Dunster, illustrative of local allusions and of Philips's imitations of earlier writers, was published in 1791. Thomas Tyrwhitt translated the ‘Splendid Shilling’ into Latin.
A painting of Philips, by Riley, is in the library at Nuneham-Courtenay (Description of Nuneham-Courtenay, 1806, p. 16); and there are engravings, after Kneller, by M. Vandergucht in Philips's ‘Poems’ (1715), and by T. Cook in Bell's ‘Poets’ (1782). There is also a folio engraving, by Vandergucht, in an oval frame; and a portrait, from a painting in the possession of the Rev. Mr. Lilly, is given in Duncumb's ‘Hereford’ (vol. ii.).
[The first life of Philips was that by Sewell, published in 1715; it was short, and contained little positive information. Further details were added in the article in the Biographia Britannica, in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and in Cunningham's notes to that work. Besides the books cited, reference may be made to the following: Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xii. 327, 3rd ser. i. 452, 497, ii. 12, 4th ser. v. 582, vi. 37, 5th ser. ix. 258, 397, 8th ser. vii. 242; Gent. Mag. 1780, pp. 280, 365; Bromley's Portraits, p. 236; Noble's Cont. of Granger; Disraeli's Quarrels of Authors, p. 255; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. iv. 98, and Lit. Anecd. iii. 147, v. 102, viii. 164, ix. 593; Duncumb's Collections towards the History of the County of Hereford, i. 572–7, ii. 245–9; Le Neve's Mon. Angl. (1700–15), p. 156; Hackett's Epitaphs, i. 99–103; Spence's Anecdotes (1858), p. 261.]
PHILIPS, KATHERINE (1631–1664), verse-writer, daughter of John Fowler, a merchant of Bucklersbury, in the city of London, and Katherine, his wife, third daughter of Dr. John Oxenbridge was born in the
