His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping children.'[33] Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery-- 'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling, All caressing, none beguiling; Bud of beauty, fairly blowing, Every charm to nature owing.' The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her future loveliness and maiden reign: 'Then the taper-moulded waist With a span of ribbon braced; And the swell of either breast, And the wide high-vaulted chest; And the neck so white and round, Little neck with brilliants bound; And the store of charms which shine Above, in lineaments divine, Crowded in a narrow space To complete the desperate face; These alluring powers, and more, Shall enamoured youths adore; These and more in courtly lays Many an aching heart shall praise.' The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her 'Gentleness of mind, Gentle from a gentle kind.' That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by Pope: 'The bard whom pilfered 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.' But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll: 'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very _picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you: 'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie, And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!' The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle, addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to Ambrose Philips: 'The vast leviathan wants room to play, And spout his waters in the face of day. The starving wolves along the main sea prowl, And to the moon in icy valleys howl.' [Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]