This criticism relates only to the pieces published by Pope. Of the large appendages which I find in this edition, I can only fay that I know not whence they came, nor have ever enquired whither they are going. They ftand upon the faith of the compilers.

PHILIP S..

F the birth or early part of the

life of AMBROSE PHILIPS I have not been able to find any account. His academical education he received at St. John's College in Cambridge, where he first folicited the notice of the world by fome English verfes, in the Collection published by the University on the death of queen Mary.

From this time how he was employed, or in what station he paffed his life, is not yet difcovered. He must have pub

lifhed his Paftorals before the year 1708,

because they are evidently prior to thofe of Pope.

He afterwards (1709) addreffed to the universal patron, the duke of Dorfet, a poetical Letter from Copenhagen, which was published in the Tatler, and is by Pope in one of his first Letters mentioned with high praife, as the production of a man who could write very nobly.

Philips was a zealous Whig, and there

fore eafily found accefs to Addison and Steele; but his ardour feems not to have procured him any thing more than kind words; fince he was reduced to tranflate the Perfian Tales for Tonfon, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt, that he worked

for

for half-a-crown. The book is divided into many fections, for each of which if he received half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean found.

He was employed in promoting the principles of his party, by epitomifing Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams. The original book is written with fuch depravity of genius, fuch mixture of the fop and pedant, as has not often appeared. The Epitome is free enough from affectation, but has little fpirit or vigour.

In 1712 he brought upon the ftage The Diftreft Mother, almost a translation of Racine's Andromaque. Such a work