Born, in Shropshire [?], 1675 [?]. Early education at Shrewsbury School. To St. John’s College, Cambridge, as Sizar, 15 June 1693; B.A., 1696; Fellow of St. John’s College, 28 March, 1699 to 24 March 1708; M.A., 1700. Visits to Continent, 1703 and 1710. J.P. for Westminster, 1714. Commissioner for Lottery, 1717. Founded and edited “The Freethinker,” 1718–19. To Ireland, as Sec. to Bishop of Armagh, 1724. M.P. for Co. Armagh in Irish Parliament, 1725. Sec. to Lord Chancellor, Dec. 1726. Judge of Prerogative Court, Aug. 1733. Returned to London, 1748. Died there, 18 June 1749. Works: “The Life of John Williams,” 1700; “Pastorals” (from Tonson’s “Miscellany”), 1710; “The Distrest Mother,” 1712; “An Epistle to Charles, Lord Halifax,” 1714; “Epistle to the Hon. James Craggs,” 1717; “Papers from ‘The Freethinker’” (3 vols.), 1718–19; “The Briton,” 1722; “Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,” 1723; “A Collection of Old Ballads,” 1723; “An Ode on the Death of William, Earl Cowper,” 1728; “The Tea-Pot” [1725?]; “To the Hon. Miss Carteret,” 1725; “To … Lord Carteret,” 1726; “Codrus,” 1728; “Pastorals, Epistles, Odes, etc.,” 1748. He translated: “The Odes of Sappho,” 1713; P. de La Croix’s “Persian Tales,” 1709.

Personal

  I have had a letter from Mr. Philips, the pastoral poet, to get him a certain employment from lord-treasurer. I have now had almost all the whig-poets my solicitors; and I have been useful to Congreve, Steele, and Harrison; but I will do nothing for Philips; I find he is more a puppy than ever; so don’t solicit for him.

	When simple Macer, now of high renown,
	First fought a poet’s fortune in the town:
	’Twas all th’ ambition his high soul could feel,
	To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele.
	Some ends of verse his betters might afford,
	And give the harmless fellow a good word.

  Ambrose Philips was a neat dresser, and very vain.—In a conversation between him, Congreve, Swift, and others, the discourse ran a good while on Julius Cæsar. After many things had been said to the purpose, Ambrose asked what sort of a person they supposed Julius Cæsar was? He was answered, that from medals, &c., it appeared that he was a small man, and thin-faced.—“Now, for my part,” said Ambrose, “I should take him to have been of a lean make, pale complexion, extremely neat in his dress; and five feet seven inches high:” an exact description of Philips himself. Swift, who understood good breeding perfectly well, and would not interrupt anybody while speaking, let him go on, and when he had quite done, said; “And I, Mr. Philips, should take him to have been a plump man, just five feet five inches high; not very neatly dressed, in a black gown with pudding-sleeves.”

  In 1729 he published by subscription, his poems much enlarged, with the addition of one entitled “Namby Pamby;” the occasion of it was as follows: Ambrose Phillips being in Ireland at the time when lord Carteret was lord lieutenant of Ireland, wrote a poem on his daughter, lady Georgina, now the dowager lady Cowper, then in the cradle; in such a kind of measure, and with such infantine sentiments, as were a fair subject for ridicule: Carey laid hold of this, and wrote a poem, in which all the songs of children at play are wittily introduced, and called it by a name by which children might be supposed to call the author, whose name was Ambrose, Namby Pamby.

  Of his personal character all that I have heard is, that he was eminent for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was solemn and pompous.

  Ambrose Phillips was a stately gentleman who had passed the best portion of his life in lisping dull songs about Chloris and Damon, Strephon and Delia, weak-minded shepherds and bread-and-butter shepherdesses, who made it their silly business to play dismal tunes on oaten reeds to listening flocks of sheep which they called their “fleecy care.” To see such a man made a fool of must delight every one. Pope made a fool of him by sending a paper to the “Guardian” brimful of good irony, in which while he appeared to praise Phillips as a superior poet to Pope, he left Pope so much the first that Phillips was literally nowhere. The artless and literally Irishman, Steele, was duped by the excellent irony; the astute Addison saw the joke. Phillips was Addison’s friend; Addison indeed professed quite an affection for Phillips. He had praised his Pastorals; he had praised his Tragedies. With great demureness, pretending not to see Pope’s irony, he had it printed. The ridicule of his friends greatly exasperated Phillips, who hung up a rod at Button’s, with which he threatened to beat Pope when he should come to the coffee-house. Pope, who was no coward, laughed contemptuously at Phillips’ menaces, called him a rascal, and charged him with robbing the Hanover Club. This double consequence—the discomfiture of Phillips and the quarrel of Pope—was much enjoyed by the virtuous Mr. Addison.

Pastorals, 1710

  As to Mr. Phillips’s Pastorals, I take the first to be infinitely the best, and the second the worst; and the third is for the greatest part a translation from Virgil’s Daphnis, and I think a good one…. In the whole I agree with the “Tatler,” that we have no better eclogues in our language. This gentleman, if I am not much mistaken in his talent, is capable of writing very nobly, as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the “Tatler,” on the Danish Winter. It is a very lively piece of poetical painting, and I recommend it particularly to your perusal.

  In mock heroic poems the use of the heathen mythology is not only excusable, but graceful, because it is the design of such compositions to divert, by adapting the fabulous machines of the ancients to low subjects, and at the same time by ridiculing such kinds of machinery in modern writers. If any are of opinion that there is a necessity of admitting these classical legends into our serious compositions, in order to give them a more poetical turn, I would recommend to their consideration the pastorals of Mr. Philips. One would have thought it impossible for this kind of poetry to have subsisted without fawns and satyrs, wood-nymphs, and water-nymphs, with all the tribe of rural deities. But we see he has given a new life and a more natural beauty to this way of writing, by substituting in the place of these antiquated fables the superstitious mythology which prevails among the shepherds of our own country.

  Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, left his to his son Spenser; and Spenser, was succeeded by his eldest-born Philips.

  When I remarked it as a principal fault, to introduce fruits and flowers of a foreign growth, the descriptions with the scene lies in our country, I did not design that observation should extend also to animals, or the sensitive life; for Mr. Philips hath with great judgment described wolves in England, in his first Pastoral. Nor would I have a poet slavishly confine himself (as Mr. Pope hath done), to one particular season of the year, one certain time of the day, and one unbroken scene in each eclogue. ’Tis plain, Spenser neglected this pedantry, who, in his pastoral of November, mentions the mournful song of the nightingale.

Sad Philemel her song in tears doth steep.

And Mr. Philips, by a poetical creation, hath raised up finer beds of flowers than the most industrious gardener; his roses, endives, lilies, kingcups, and daffodils, blow all in the same season.

  Notwithstanding the ridicule which Mr. Philips has drawn upon himself, by his opposition to Pope, and the disadvantageous light his Pastorals appear in, when compared with his; yet, there is good reason to believe, that Mr. Philips was no mean Arcadian: By endeavouring to imitate too servilely the manners and sentiments of vulgar rustics, he has sometimes raised a laugh against him; yet there are in some of his Pastorals a natural simplicity, a true Doric dialect, and very graphical descriptions.

  Philips attempted to be more simple and natural than Pope; but he wanted genius to support his attempt, or to write agreeably. He, too, runs on the common and beaten topics; and endeavouring to be simple, he becomes flat and insipid.

  It is not uninstructive to see how tolerable Ambrose is, so long as he sticks manfully to what he really saw. The moment he undertakes to improve on Nature he sinks into the mere court poet, and we surrender him to the jealousy of Pope without a sigh.

General

	With Philips shall the peaceful valleys ring,
	And Britain hear a second Spenser sing.

	All ye poets of the age!
	All ye witlings of the stage,
	Learn your jingles to reform,
	Crop your numbers and conform:
	Let your little verses flow
	Gently, sweetly, row by row.
	Let the verse the subject fit,
	Little subject, little wit,
	Namby-Pamby is your guide,
	Albion’s joy, Hibernia’s pride.

	The bard whom pilfer’d Pastorals renown,
	Who turns a Persian tale for half a Crown,
	Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
	And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year.

  The opening of this poem [“An Epistle to the Earl of Dorset”], is incomparably fine. The latter part is tedious and trifling.

  Of his literary merit nothing great can be said. As a poet he seldom deviates from the path of mediocrity; and, unfortunately for his poetical fame, his quarrel with Pope exposed him to a depreciation in that department beyond what justice would require.

  A serious and dreary idyllic cockney.

  Although he published three tragedies, is as a dramatist remembered by one of these only, or rather perhaps on account of the celebrity acquired by the “Epilogue” bestowed upon it by the master-spirit of the little literary senate in which Philips had enrolled himself. The characteristically sentimental title of “The Distrest Mother” (acted in 1711) was not intended to conceal the fact that this tragedy was a version of the “Andromaque” of Racine; but the efforts of Steele and Addison to buoy up its theatrical success have succeeded in securing to it a place among the remembered productions of our dramatic literature.

  The “Pastorals” of Philips are certainly poor productions; but he was an elegant versifier, and Goldsmith has eulogised the opening of his “Epistle to the Earl of Dorset” as “incomparably fine.” A fragment of Sappho, translated by Philips, is a poetical gem so brilliant, that it is thought Addison must have assisted in its composition.