Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/790

754 P H I P H I destroyed by an eartlttjuake ; and in 1S4G it suffered from a severe conflagration. During the war of 1877-78 the city was occupied by the Russians. PHILIPPSBURG, a small town of the grand-duchy of Baden, situated on a sluggish arm of the Rhine, 1 5 miles to the north of Carlsruhe, was formerly an important fortress of the German empire, and played a somewhat conspicuous part in the wars of the 17th century. It originally belonged to the ecclesiastical principality of Spires, and was named Udenheim, but in 1618 it was forti fied and re-christened by Bishop Philip von Sotern. At the peace of Westphalia (1648) the French remained in military possession of Philippsburg, but in 1679 it was restored to Germany, and though again captured by the French in 1688 it was once more restored in 1697. In 1734 the dilapidated fortress fell an easy prey to the French under Marshal Berwick, who, however, lost his life beneath its walls, and in 1800 the works were razed. The town was assigned to Baden in 1803. The population in 1880 was 2549. PHILIPS, AMBROSE (1671-1749), English man of letters, was born of a good Leicester family in 1671. While at St John s College, Cambridge, he gave evidence of literary taste and skill, in verses forming part of a memorial tribute from the university on the death of Queen Mary. Going to London on the completion of his studies, Philips speedily became " one of the wits at Button s," and thereby a friend of Steele and Addison. He began to write for Tonson, working at such heterogeneous subjects as trans lated " Persian Tales " and a summary of Racket s Life of Archbishop Williams. The first product really character istic of the author, after his settlement in London, is the series of Pastorals which opened the sixth volume of Tonson s Miscellanies (1709). Pope s Pastorals, curiously enough, closed the same volume, and the emphatic pre ference expressed in the Guardian, in 1713, for Philips s pastoral style over all other successors to Spenser gave rise to Pope s trenchant ironical paper in No. 40 of the same periodical. The breach between these two wits speedily widened, and Philips was at length concerned in the great (parrel between Pope and Addison. He had come to be a man of some note both for literary work and political acti vity. The Spectator had loaded with praises the drama of The Distressed Mother, which Philips adapted from Racine s Andromague and brought upon the stage in 1712, and he was thus a recognized member of Addison s following. There is some doubt as to the particular part he played in the notorious contest of the two chiefs, but, whether he threatened to beat Pope or not (with the rod which he is said to have hung up at Button s for that purpose), there is ample evidence to show that both Pope and his friends had a bitter feeling towards him. Not only is he honoured with two separate lines in the Dunciad, but he figures for illustrative purposes in Martinus Scriblerus, and he receives considerable attention in the letters of both Pope and Swift. The latter found occasion for special allusion to Philips during Philips s stay in Ireland, whither he had gone as secretary to Archbishop Boulter. He had done good work in the Freethinker (1711) along with Boulter, whose services to the Government in that paper gained him preferment from his position as clergyman in South- wark, first to the bishopric of Bristol and then to the primacy of Ireland. Up to this time Philips had shown disinterested zeal in the Hanoverian cause, though he had received no greater reward than the positions of justice of peace and commissioner of the lottery (1717). He had also written some of his best epistles, while in 1722 he published two more dramatic works The Briton and Humphry, Duke of Gloucester neither of which has had the fortune, like their predecessor, to be immortalized by romantic criticism. It was, no doubt, a grateful change for Philips to go to Ireland under the patronage of Arch bishop Boulter, and to represent, through the same in fluence, the county of Armagh in the Irish Parliament, while his sense of his own political worth must have been flattered when he became secretary to the lord chancellor in 1726, and in 1733 judge of the prerogative court. After the archbishop s death he by and by returned to London, and dedicated a collected edition of his works to the duke of Newcastle. He died in 1749. While it can hardly be said that Philips s Pastorals show poetic quality of a high order, they must be commended and perhaps the third in particular for ease and fluency and rhetorical vigour. In these features they are not surpassed by the pastorals in TIw Shepherd s Week, which Gay wrote, at Pope s instigation, as a burlesque on Philips s work ; but the grasp of rustic simplicity and the exquisite play of fancy possessed by Gay are manifest advantages in his performance. The six epistles evince dexterous management of the heroic couplet, an energetic directness of pur pose, and (particularly the "winter piece " addressed to the earl of Dorset) a noticeable appreciation of natural beauty. Similar felicitous diction and sympathetic observation, together with a determined bias towards weakness of sentiment, are characteristic of the poet s odes, some of which addressed to children gave occasion for various shafts from both Swift and Pope, as well as for the nickname of " Namby - Pamby, " coined by Henry Carey as a descriptive epithet for Philips. The epigrams, and the translations from Pindar, Anacreon, and Sappho, need merely be named as completing the list of the author s works. See Johnson s Lives of the Poets; Spence s Anecdotes; the Spectator; the Works (especially the correspondence) of Pope and Swift ; Stephen s Pope and Courthope s Addison, in English Men of Letters. PHILIPS, JOHN (1676-1708), English man of letters, son of Dr Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was born at Bampton in Oxfordshire in 1676. After receiving private education at home, he went to Winchester School, and in due course became a student of Christ Church, Oxford. At school he showed special aptitude for exact scholarship, and at the university, under Dean Aldrich, he became one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was an ardent and successful student of the ancient classics, and took special pleasure in making himself thoroughly familiar with Virgil. At the same time he was diligent in his scientific pursuits preparatory to the medical profession he intended to follow, and, although the botany and other branches he made himself familiar with w r ere never actually turned to account in the business of life, his acquired knowledge gave him material for literary purposes. But, over and above these studies, Philips was a careful and critical reader of the English poets that fell in with his tastes, and devoted much time to Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton. When he began to write, the influence of the two former told to some extent on his diction, and he was so enamoured of the strenuous movement and the resonant harmonies of Milton s blank verse that he adapted the form of all his original English writings to that supreme model. Were it for nothing else, John Philips will be remembered as the first to have a genuine literary appreciation of Milton. He was well known in his college for scholarship, taste, and literary resource long before publishing any of his writings, but the appearance of The Splendid Shilling, about the year 1703, at once brought him under the favourable notice of critics and readers of poetry. The Tatler (No. 250) hailed the poet as the writer of " the best burlesque poem in the British language," nor will the modern reader care to detract much from this verdict, even granting that the model and the imitation, mutually constituting a great revelation to the literary dictators of the period, would cause them considerable surprise. Philips in this poem showed the dexterous ease that comes of long study and perfect familiarity, combined with fertility of resource and humorous ingenuity of application. One important result of the work was the interested notice of the earl of Oxford and Lord Bolingbroke. The poet went to London, and