--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. Out of that variety of circumstances, which his fruitful invention must suggest to him, on such a subject, he has not chosen any but what are diverting to every reader, and some, that none but his inimitable dress could have made diverting to any: when we read it, we are betrayed into a pleasure which we could not expect, tho' at the same time the sublimity of the stile, and the gravity of the phrase, seem to chastise that laughter which they provoke.' Mr. Edmund Smith in his beautiful verses on our Author's Death, speaks thus concerning this poem; 'In her best light the comic muse appears, When she with borrowed pride the buskin wears.'