'Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know, The depths of heav'n above, or earth below; Teach me the various labours of the moon, And whence proceed the eclipses of the sun. Why slowing tides prevail upon the main, And in what dark recess they shrink again. What shakes the solid earth, what cause delays The summer-nights, and the short winter days.'
Mr. Philips was a passionate admirer of nature, and it is not improbable but he drew his own character in that description which he gives of a philosophical and retired life, at the latter end of the first Book of his Cyder.
--He to his labour hies, Gladsome intent on somewhat that may ease Unearthly mortals and with curious search Examine all the properties of herbs, Fossils, and minerals, that th' embowell'd earth Displays, if by his industry he can Benefit human race.
Though the reader will easily discover the unpoetical flatness of the above lines, yet they shew a great thirst after natural knowledge, and we have reason to believe, that much might have been attained, and many new discoveries made, by so diligent an enquirer, and so faithful a recorder of physical operations. However, though death prevented the hopes of the world in that respect, yet the passages of that kind, which we find in his Poem on Cyder, may convince us of the niceness of his observations in natural causes. Besides this, he was particularly skilled in antiquities, especially those of his own country; and part of this study too, he has with much art and beauty intermixed with his poetry.
While Mr. Philips continued at the university, he was honoured with the acquaintance of the best and politest men in it, and had a particular intimacy with Mr. Edmund Smith, author of Phædra and Hippolitus. The first poem which got him reputation, was his Splendid Shilling, which the author of the Tatler has stiled the best burlesque poem in the English Language; nor was it only, says Mr. Sewel, 'the finest of that kind in our tongue, but handled in a manner quite different from what had been made use of by any author of our own, or other nation, the sentiments, and stile being in this both new; whereas in those, the jest lies more in allusions to the thoughts and fables of the ancients, than in the pomp of expression. The same humour is continued thro' the whole, and not unnaturally diversified, as most poems of that nature had been before.