As the first Miltonic imitator, John Philips is responsible for keeping blank verse alive at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In an era that favored the elegant rhymed poetry of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift and frowned on John Milton's harsh lines, Philips paved the way for later writers of blank verse, such as William Cowper and James Thomson. Philips was a parodist, whose attitude toward Milton was at once emulous and playful. With wit and humor he carried Milton beyond the narrow walls of the academy to clubs and coffeehouses. He also managed to overcome the stumbling block of Milton's radical politics, adapting the antimonarchist to the purposes of eighteenth-century nationalism and making him respectable and readable in an age that frowned on political dissent.

Philips was born at Bampton, Oxfordshire, where his father, Stephen Philips, was the vicar. He was the sixth of seven sons...