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Herefordiæ 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 Amoniorum sitim,
Quam Wintoniæ Puer sentire cœperat,
Inter Edis Christi Alumnos jugiter explevit,
In illo Musarum Domicilio

Præclaris Emulorum studiis excitatus,
Optimia scribendi Magistris semper intentus,
Carmina sermone Patrio composuit
A Græcis Latinisque fontibus feliciter deducta,
Atticis Romanisque auribus omnino digna,
Versuum quippe Harmoniam
Rhythmo didicerat.

Antiquo illo, libero, multiformi

Ad res ipsas apto prorsus, et attemperato,
Non numeris in eundem ferè orbem redeuntibus,
Non Clausularum similiter cadentium sono
Metiri :

Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus,
Primoque pone par.

Res seu Tenues, seu Grandes, seu Mediocres
Ornandas sumserat,
Nusquam, non quod decuit,
Et videt, et assecutus est,
Egregius, quocunque Stylum verteret,
Faudi author, et Modorum artifex.
Fas sit Huic,

Auso licèt à tuâ Metrorum Lege discedere,
O Poesis Anglican Pater, atque Conditor, Chaucere,

Alterum tibi latus claudere,

Vatum certe Cineres, tuos undique stipantium
Non dedecebit Chorum.
Simon Harcourt, Miles,

Viri benè de se, de Litteris meriti
Quoad viveret Fautor,
Post Obitum piè memor,
Hoc illi Saxum poni voluit.

J. Philips, Stephani, S. T. P. Archidiaconi
Salop. Filius, natus est Bamptoniæ
In agro Oxon, Dec. 30, 1676.
Obiit Herefordiæ, Feb. 15, 1709.

cient 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.

"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 it 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 heroic 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 a distance the slaughter 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 obso lete, 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 adImitted a more pleasing modulation of numbers into his work; but Philips sits down with a resolution to make no more music 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."

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 There is a Latin ode written to his patron, probably not formed for a wide circle. His con- St. John, in return for a present of wine and versation is commended for its innocent gayety, tobacco, which cannot be passed without notice, which seems to have flowed only among his in-It is gay and elegant, and exhibits several artful timates; for I have been told that he was in accommodations of classic expressions to new company silent and barren, and employed only purposes. It seems better turned than the ode upon the pleasure of his pipe. His addiction to of Hannes.* 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.

His works are few. The "Splendid Shilling" has the uncommon merit of an original design, unless it may be thought precluded by the an

To the poem on "Cider," written in imitation of the "Georgics," may be given this peculiar praise, that it is grounded in truth; that the pre

This ode I am willing to mention, because there seems to be an error in all the printed copies, which is, 1 think, retained in the last. They all read:

Quam Gratiarum cura decentium
O! O! labellis eui Venus insidet.

The author probably wrote,

Quam Gratiarum cura decentium
Ornat; labellis cui Venus insidet.-Dr. J.
Hannes was professor of chemistry at Oxford, and wrote
one or two poems in the "Muse Anglicana.”—J. B.

cepts which it contains are exact and just; and | in this point; not a learned man nor a poet can 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 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.

What study could confer, Philips had obtained: but natural deficiency 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.

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.

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 Condés and Turennes; their Pellisons and Racines have their eulogies, 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.

"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 panegyrics, and perhaps set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.

"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.

"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 was scarcely 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.

"It is altogether as equitable some account should be given of those who have distinguished themselves by their writings, as of those who "One of them had made the greatest progress are renowned for great actions. It is but rea- in the study of the law of nature and nations sonable they, who contribute so much to the of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, immortality of others, should have some share and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and in it themselves; and since their genius only is the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could discovered by their works, it is just that their refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of virtues should be recorded by their friends. For greater name, and expose him with as much no modest men (as the person I write of was in wit as Echard. That noble study which reperfection) will write their own penegyrics; and quires the greatest reach of reason and nicety of it is very hard that they should go without repu- distinction, was not at all difficult to him. tation, only because they the more deserve it. 'Twas a national loss to be deprived of one who The end of writing lives is for the imitation of understood a science so necessary, and yet so the readers. It will be in the power of very unknown in England. I shall add only, he few to imitate the Duke of Marlborough; we had the same honesty and sincerity as the permust be content with admiring his great qualities son I write of, but more heat; the former was and actions, without hopes of following them. more inclined to argue, the latter to divert; one The private and social virtues are more easily employed his reason more, the other his ima transcribed. The life of Cowley is more instruc-gination: the former had been well qualified tive, 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 preten led, and all their integrity without any of their affec

tation.

"The French are very just to eminent men

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 written 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.

"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.

"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 descrip

tion.

"All that have any taste for 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.

"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.

"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 satirist says to Hannibal:

-I, curre per Alpes,

pueris placeas, et declamatio fias. "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 galli gaskins:

My galligaskins, which have long withstood The winter's fury and encroaching frosts, By time subdu'd (what will not time subdue!) This is admirably pathetical, and shows 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 pathetic 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 judgment ripe, and his humour complete.

"This poem was written for his own diversion, without any design of publication. It was com municated 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 publicly 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 mechanic 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 cobbler 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 encou ragement than those of his own Flecknoe or Blackmore! that Tillotson and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, should be set on an equal footing! This is the reason why this very paper has been so long delayed; and, while the most impudent and scandalous libels are publicly vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to steal abroad as if it were a libel.

"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 but I can fix upon the Mæcenas of the present age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effects 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 ho nour of being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable: but the event showed 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 public; 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 works might be burned, had not the same Augustus, that desired him to write them, preserved them from destruction. A scribbling 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.

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"False critics have been the plague of all ages: Milton himself, in a very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheelbar row: he had been on the wrong side, and therefore could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.

"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 judgment of what is great and majes tic; 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 complete critic. 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 a fine one; and has more instances of the sublime out of 'Ovid de Tristibus,' than he has out of all Virgil.

"I shall allow, therefore, only those to be judges of Philips, who make the ancients, and particularly Virgil, their standard.

"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 heroic poetry; and next inquire how far he has come up to that style.

"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."

"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 critic, who could have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties * in ais own.

**

WALSH.

WILLIAM WALSH, the son of Joseph Walsh, | tleman of the horse to Queen Anne, under the Esq., of Abberley, in Worcestershire, was born Duke of Somerset. in 1663, as appears from the account of Wood, who relates that at the age of fifteen he became, in 1678, a gentleman commoner of Wadham College.

He left the University without a degree, and pursued his studies in London and at home; that he studied, in whatever place, is apparent from its effect, for he became in Mr. Dryden's opinion the best critic in the nation.

Some of his verses show him to have been a zealous friend to the Revolution; but his political ardour did not abate his reverence or kindness for Dryden, to whom he gave a dis sertation on Virgil's "Pastorals," in which, however studied, he discovers some ignorance of the laws of French versification.

In 1705, he began to correspond with Mr. Pope, in whom he discovered very early the power of poetry. Their letters are written upon the pastoral comedy of the Italians, and those pastorals which Pope was then preparing to publish.

He was not, however, merely a critic or a scholar, but a man of fashion; and, as Dennis remarks, ostentatiously splendid in his dress. He was likewise a member of parliament and a courtier, knight of the shire for his native county The kindnesses which are first experienced in several parliaments; in another the repre- are seldom forgotten. Pope always retained a sentative of Richmond in Yorkshire; and gen- | grateful memory of Walsh's notice, and men

tioned him in one of his latter pieces among [wrote "Eugenia, a Defence of Women;" which those that had encouraged his juvenile studies: Dryden honoured with a Preface.

Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.

In his "Essay on Criticism" he had given him more splendid praise; and, in the opinion of his more learned commentator, sacrificed a little of his judgment to his gratitude.

The time of his death I have not learned. It must have happened between 1707, when he wrote to Pope, and 1711, when Pope praised aim in his "Essay." The epitaph makes him forty-six years old; if Wood's account be right, he died in 1709.

He is known more by his familiarity with greater men, than by any thing done or written by himself.

His works are not numerous. In prose he

Esculapius, or the Hospital of Fools," published after his death.

"A Collection of Letters and Poems, amorous and gallant,” was published in the volumes called Dryden's Miscellany, and some other occasional pieces.

To his Poems and Letters is prefixed a very judicious Preface upon Epistolary Composition and Amorous Poetry.

In his "Golden Age restored," there was something of humour, while the facts were recent; but it now strikes no longer. In his imitation of Horace, the first stanzas are happily turned; and in all his writings there are pleasing passages. He has, however, more elegance than vigour, and seldom rises higher than to be pretty.

DRYDEN.*

Or the great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiosity which his reputation must excite will require a display more ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.

JOHN DRYDEN was born August 9, 1631,† at Aldwinkle, near Oundle, the son of Erasmus Dryden, of Titchmersh; who was the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places are in Northamptonshire; but the original stock of the family was in the county of Huntingdon.‡

He is reported by his last biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an estate of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was said, an anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is given.§ Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty which seems always to have oppressed him; or, if he had wasted it, to have made him ashamed of publishing his necessities. But though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life with a scrutiny sufficiently

The Life of Dryden, though in point of composition It is one of the most admirable of Johnson's productions, ls in many particulars incorrect. Mr. Malone, in the biography prefixed to his "Prose Works," has collected a much more ample and accurate account; and from that valuable work several dates and other particulars

have been here set right -J. B.

Mr. Malone has lately proved that there is no satisfactory evidence for this date. The inscription on Dry. den's monument says only natus 1632. See Malone's Life of Dryden, prefixed to his "Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works," p. 5, note.-C.

Of Cumberland. Ibid. p. 10.-C.

Mr. Malone has furnished us with a detailed account of our Poet's circumstances; from which it appears that although he was possessed of a sufficient income in the early part of his life, he was considerably embarrassed at its close. See Malone's Life, p. 440.-J. B.

malicious, I do not remember that he is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was, indeed, sometimes reproached for his first reli gion. I am therefore inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true, and partly erroneous.]]

From Westminster School, where he was instructed as one of the King's scholars by Dr. Busby, whom he long after continued to reve Westminster scholarships at Cambridge.¶ rence, he was, in 1650, elected to one of the

a

Of his school performances has appeared only poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the small-pox; and his poet has made of the pustules first rose-buds, and then gems: at last exalts them into stars; and says,

No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation. At the University he does not appear to have been eager of poetical distinction, or to have lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or public occasions. He probably considered, that he who proposed to be an author ought first to be a student. He obtained, whatever was the reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot now be known, and it is vain to guess: had he thought himself injured, he knew how to complain. In the Life of Plutarch he mentions his education

Mr. Derrick's Life of Dryden was prefixed to a very beautiful and correct edition of Dryden's Miscellanies, published by the Tonsons in 1760, 4 vols. 8vo. Derrick's part, however, was poorly executed, and the edition never became popular-C.

He went off to Trinity College, and was admitted to a bachelor's degree in Jan. 1653-4, and in 1657 was made master of arts.-C.

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