John Philips

John Philips (30 December 1676 – 15 February 1709) was an 18th-century English poet.

Philips was born at Bampton, Oxfordshire, the son of Rev. Stephen Philips, later archdeacon of Salop, and his wife Mary Wood. He was at first taught by his father and then went to Winchester College. He suffered from delicate health but became a proficient classical scholar. He was treated with special indulgence because of his personal popularity and delicate health. He had long hair, and when others were at play, he liked to stay in his room reading Milton while someone combed his locks. He was then at Christ Church, Oxford under Dean Aldred, where Edmund Smith was his greatest friend. He intended to become a physician, but devoted himself to literature instead.

Philips was loath to publish his verse but his Splendid Shilling was included, without his consent, in a Collection of Poems published by David Brown and Benjamin Tooke in 1701. When another false copy appeared early in 1705, he printed a correct folio edition in February of that year. The Splendid Shilling, a burlesque in Miltonic blank verse, was described by Joseph Addison as "the finest burlesque poem in the English language". It depicted the miseries of a debtor without a shilling in his purse with which to buy tobacco, wine, food and clothes. As a result of this work Philips was introduced to Robert Harley and employed to write Blenheim (1705) as a counterblast to Addison's celebration of the Battle of Blenheim in The Campaign. The piece imitates Milton's verse, and the warfare is similar to that of the Iliad or Aeniad. In 1706 Cerealia; an imitation of Milton was published by Thomas Bennet, the bookseller who issued Blenheim. This has been believed to be by Philips, but it was not included in the early editions of his works, and his authorship has been questioned. In January 1707-8 Fenton published in his Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany Poems, a short "Bacchanalian Song" by Philips.

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