PHILIPS, Fabian, the author of several books relating to ancient customs and privileges in England, was born at Prestbury in Gloucestershire, on the 28th of September 1601. When very young, he spent some time in one of the Inns of Chancery, and went from thence to the Middle Temple, where he became learned in the law. In the civil wars, he was a bold assertor of the king’s prerogative, and so strongly attached to Charles I. that, two days before that monarch was beheaded, he wrote a protestation against the intended murder, and caused it to be printed, and affixed to posts in all the public places. He likewise published, in 1649, a quarto pamphlet entitled Veritas Inconcussa, or King Charles I. no Man of Blood, but a Martyr for his People, which was reprinted in 1660, 8vo. In 1663, when the courts of justice at Westminster, especially the chancery, were dissolved by Cromwell’s parliament, he published Considerations against the dissolving and taking them away, for which he received the thanks of parliament. He was for some time filazer for London, Middlesex, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire; and spent much money in searching records, and writing in favour of the royal prerogative. The only advantage he received for this attachment to the royal cause was the place of commissioner for regulating the law, worth L.200 per annum, but which only lasted two years. After the restoration of Charles II. when the bill for taking away the tenures was depending in parliament, Philips wrote and published a book to show the necessity of preserving them, entitled Tenenda non Tollenda, or, the Necessity of preserving Tenures in capite, and by Knight’s Service, which, according to their first institution, were, and are yet, a great part of the salus populi, 1660, in 4to. In 1663 he published the Antiquity, Legality, Reason, Duty, and Necessity of Pre-emption and Purveyance for the King, in 4to; and afterwards many other pieces upon subjects of a similar kind. He assisted Dr Bates in his Elenchus Motuum, especially in searching the records and offices for that work, and died on the 17th of November ]690, in his eighty-ninth year. He was a man well acquainted with records and antiquities; but his manner of writing is neither close nor well digested. He published a political pamphlet in 1681, entitled Ursa Major et Minor, [7:17:350]a showing that there is no such fear, as is fictitiously pretended, of popery and arbitrary power.”

Philips, Ambrose, an English poet of some note, was descended from an ancient and considerable family of that name in Leicestershire. He received his education at St John’s College, Cambridge, and during his stay there wrote 1ιis pastorals, which at that time acquired him a high reputation. His next performance was the Life of Archbishop Williams, written, according to Mr Cibber, to make known his political principles, which in the course of it he had an opportunity of doing, as the archbishop, who is the hero of his work, was a strong opponent of the high-church party and their measures.

When he quitted the university and went to London, Philips became a constant attendant at, and one of the wits of, Button’s coffee-house, where he obtained the friendship and intimacy of many celebrated men of that age, particularly of Sir Richard Steele, who, in the first volume of his Tatler, has inserted a little poem of Philips’s, which he entitles a Winter Piece, dated from Copenhagen, and addressed to the Earl of Dorset, and on which he bestows the highest encomiums; and, indeed, so just are these commendations, that even Pope himself, who had a fixed aversion to the author, whilst he affected to despise his other works, used always to except this from his censure and contempt.

The first dislike Pope conceived against Philips proceeded from that jealousy of fame which was so conspicuous in his character; for Sir Richard Steele had taken so strong a liking to the pastorals of Philips, that he formed a design of instituting a critical comparison of them with those of Pope, in the conclusion of which the preference was to be given to Philips. This design, however, having come to the knowledge of Pope, the latter, who could not bear a rival near the throne, determined to ward off this stroke by a stratagem of the most artful kind; which was no other than taking the same task on himself. Accordingly, in a paper in the Guardian, he drew a similar comparison, and gave a like preference, but on principles of criticism so evidently fallacious, as to point out to all the absurdity of the decision. However, notwithstanding the ridicule which Philips drew upon himself by standing as it were in competition with so powerful an antagonist, it is allowed that in some parts of his pastorals there are certain touches of nature, and a degree of simplicity, which are much better suited to the purposes of pastoral than the more correctly-turned periods of Pope’s versification. Philips and Pope being of different political principles, proved another cause of enmity between them, which at length rose to so great a height, that the former, finding his antagonist too hard for him at the weapon of wit, had determined upon making use of a rougher kind of argument; and for this purpose he even went so far as to hang up a rod at Button’s for the chastisement of his adversary whenever he should come thither. Pope, however, declining to brave his antagonist, avoided the argumentum baculi-num, in which he would, no doubt, have found himself on the weaker side of the question. Our author also wrote several dramatic pieces, as the Briton, Distressed Mother, and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, all of which met with success, and one of them still continues to be a standard entertainment at the theatres, being generally repeated several times in every season. Philips’s circumstances were throughout his life not only easy, but rather affluent, in consequence of his being connected, by political principles, with persons of great rank and consequence. He was concerned with Dr Hugh Boulter, afterwards archbishop of Armagh, the Right Honourable Richard West, lord chancellor of Ireland, the Rev. Gilbert Burnet, and the Rev. Henry Stevens, in writing a series of papers under the title of the Freethinker, which were all published together by Philips, in three volumes 12mo.

In the latter part of Queen Anne’s reign, he was secretary to the Hanover Club, a set of noblemen and gentlemen who had formed an association in honour of that succession, and for the support of its interests, and who used particularly to distinguish in their toasts such of the fair sex as were most zealously attached to the illustrious house of Brunswick. Philips’ station in this club, together with the zeal shown in his writings, recommended him to the notice and favour of the new government. Soon after the accession of George I., he was put into the commission of die peace, and appointed one of the commissioners of the lottery; and, on his friend Dr Boulter being made primate of Ireland, he accompanied that prelate across St George’s Channel, where considerable preferments were bestowed on him, and he was elected a member of the Irish House of Commons, as representative for the county of Armagh. At length, having purchased an annuity for life of L.400 per annum, he returned to England some time in the year 1748; but being in a very bad state of health, and, moreover, at an advanced age, he died soon afterwards, at his lodgings near Vauxhall, in Surrey.

Philips, Catharine, an ingenious lady, the daughter of Mr John Fowler, merchant, was born at London in January 1631, and educated at a school near Hackney. She married James Philips of the priory of Cardigan; and went with the Viscountess of Dungannon into Ireland, where she translated into English Corneille’s tragedy of Pompey, which was several times acted there with great applause. She also translated the first four acts of the Horace, another tragedy of Corneille, the fifth being executed by Sir John Denham. This remarkable person died of the small-pox in London on the 22d of June 1664, much and justly regretted; “having,” according to Langbaine, “not left any of her sex her equal in poetry.” Dr Jeremy Taylor addressed to her his Measures and Offices of Friendship, the second edition of which appeared in the year 1657, in 12mo. Her assumed poetical name was Orinda. Philips, John, an English poet of considerable eminence, was born in 1676. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, where he became acquainted with Milton, whom he studied with great application, and traced in all Jiis successful translations from the ancients. The first poem by which he distinguished himself was his Splendid Shilling, which in the Tatler is styled the “finest burlesque poem in the English language.” His next was entitled Blenheim, which he wrote at the request of the Earl of Oxford, and Mr Henry St John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, on the victory obtained by the Duke of Marlborough in the year 1704. It was published in 1705; and the year after, he finished another poem upon cider, the first book of which had been written at Oxford. It is on the model of Virgil’s Georgies, and is thought a very excellent piece. We have no more of Philips’ except a Latin ode to Mr Henry St John, which is esteemed a masterpiece. He was contriving greater things, when he was seized with the illness of which he died, at Hereford, on the !5th of February 1708, before he had attained his thirty-third year.

It deserves to be remarked, that there were other two poets of the same name who flourished in his time. One of these was Milton’s nephew, who wrote several things, particularly some memoirs of his uncle, and part of Virgil Travestied. The other was the author of two political farces, which were both printed in 1716, viz. The Earl of Marr Married, with the Humours of Jockey the Highlander; and the Pretender’s Flight, or a Mock Coronation, with the Humours of the facetious Harry St John.