[C] BAMPTON. Here are some slight remains of an ancient castle, supposed to have been erected in the reign of King John. The celebrated poet, John Philips, the son of Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was born in this town, on the 30th of December, 1676, and after the preliminary process of juvenile education, was sent to Winchester, where he was distinguished by the superiority of his exercises, and at school endeared himself to all his companions and superiors: it is related of him, that he seldom mingled in the play of other boys, but retired to his chamber, and indulged in the study of the poets and of the ancient and modern classics, particularly Milton. In 1694, he was removed to Christchurch, Oxford, where he finished all his University acquirements; but Milton--the immortal Milton--continued to be his uninterrupted day dream: and he might have exclaimed in the language of that poet, I will study the magnificence of thy etherial phantasy, "From morn till noon, from noon to dewey eve, When Urania visits my nightly Slumbers, or when morn purples the east." It is said that there was not an allusion in "Paradise Lost," drawn from any hint either in "Homer," or "Virgil," to which he could not immediately refer. While at Oxford he was honoured with the friendship of Mr. Edmund Smith, author of the Tragedy of "Phaedra and Hippolitus;" and also with that of the most polite and favoured of the gentlemen in the University. His first poem was published in 1703, entitled, "The Splendid Shilling," which has the merit of an original design. His next poem, entitled "Blenheim," which he wrote as a rival to Addison's poem on the same subject, was published in 1705, and procured him the patronage of Mr. Henry Saint John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke. Independent of poetry, Philips was an excellent botanist; in 1706 he produced his third poem on "Cyder," founded on the model of Virgil's Georgics, a book not only of entertainment but of science; and soon afterwards, a latin Ode, "to Henry Saint John, Esq.," said to have been the poet's masterpiece. "It is gay and elegant," says Dr. Johnson, "and exhibits several artful accommodations of classic expressions to new purposes." At the time of his illness, Philips was meditating a poem to be called "The Last Day;" death put an end to so solemn and majestic a finale of genius. He died at Hereford, of a lingering consumption, February 15, 1708, in the thirty-third year of his age, and was buried in the cathedral of that city. Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor, erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey, the epitaph upon which was written by Doctor Atterbury. Philips was a gentleman of a modest and amiable disposition, "and always praised without contradiction," (says Dr. Johnson) "as a man, modest, blameless, and pious, who bore a narrow fortune without discontent--and tedious and painful maladies without impatience; beloved by those who knew him, but