SOURCE: Buckingham, Elinor M. “The Matchless Orinda.” Sewanee Review 10 (1902): 269-84.

In the following essay, Buckingham relates the significance of Philips's contributions to English poetry.

Every age has its little lights that burn for a time with more or less brilliancy and then go out. Possibly a memory of them lingers on into the next age or to succeeding generations; but for the most part the memory is dwindled to a mere name, and few stop to inquire what gave the name its meaning. Among the names that have come down to us from the time of Charles II. is that of “The Matchless Orinda,” so called, a lady who passed for a great poetess in her day, and who attracted to her side some of the best and most distinguished men of the Restoration period; whose poetry was read and admired well on into the eighteenth century, but...