John Philips

In January 1707-8 Fenton published in his Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany Poems, a short "Bacchanalian Song" by Philips.

Philip Miller the botanist told Johnson that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose which do not contain so much truth as that poem".

Samuel Johnson objected that the blank verse of Milton, which Philips imitated, "could not `be sustained by images which at most can rise only to elegance".

[3] Philip's minor productions include a clever Latin "Ode ad Henricum S John" written in acknowledgement of a present of wine and tobacco, which was translated by Thomas Newcomb.

Thomas Tickell in his Oxford (1707) had compared Philips with Milton, saying he "equals the poet, and excels the man".

[5] In the same year Leonard Welsted published "A Poem to the Memory of the Incomparable Mr Philips" with a dedication to St John.

[6] In 1713, William Diaper paid his tribute by including the episode of Pomona mourning Thyrsis near the beginning of his Dryades; or, the Nymphs Prophecy (1713).