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 Phaedra 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.’

This account given by Mr. Sewel of the Splendid Shilling, is perhaps heightened by personal friendship, and that admiration which we naturally pay to the productions of one we love.  The stile seems to be unnatural for a poem which is intended to raise laughter; for that laboured gravity has rather a contrary influence; disposing the mind to be serious:  and the disappointment is not small, when a man finds he has been betrayed into solemn thinking, in reading the description of a trifle; if the gravity of the phrase chastises the laughter, the purpose of the poem is defeated, and it is a rule in writing to suit the language to the subject.  Philips’s Splendid Shilling may have pleased, because, its manner was new, and we often find people of the best sense throw away their admiration on monsters, which are seldom to be seen, and neglect more regular beauty, and juster proportion.

It is with reserve we offer this criticism against the authority of Dr. Sewel, and the Tatler; but we have resolved to be impartial, and the reader who is convinced of the propriety and beauty of the Splendid Shilling, has, no doubt, as good a right to reject our criticism, as we had to make it.

Our author’s coming to London, we are informed, was owing to the persuasion of some great persons, who engaged him to write on the Battle of Blenheim; his poem upon which introduced him to the earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, esq; afterwards lord viscount Bolingbroke, and other noble patrons.  His swelling stile, it must be owned, was better suited to a subject of this gravity and importance, than to that of a light and ludicrous nature:  the exordium of this piece is poetical, and has an allusion to that of Spencer’s Fairy Queen: