an allusion in Paradise Lost, drawn from the thoughts and expressions of Homer or Virgil, which Mr. Philips could not immediately refer to, and by that he perceived what a peculiar life and grace their sentiments added to English poetry; how much their images raised its spirit, and what weight and beauty their words, when translated, gave to its language:  nor was he less curious in observing the force and elegance of his mother tongue; but by the example of his darling Milton, searched backwards into the works of our old English poets, to furnish him with proper sounding, and significant expressions, and prove the due extent, and compass of the language.  For this purpose he carefully read over Chaucer and Spencer, and afterwards, in his writings, did not scruple to revive any words or phrases which he thought deserved it, with that modesty, and liberty which Horace allows of, either in the coining of new, or the restoring of ancient expressions.’  Our author, however, was not so much enamoured of poetry, as to neglect other parts of literature, but was very well acquainted with the whole compass of natural philosophy.  He seems in his studies, as well as his writings, to have made Virgil his pattern, and often to have broken out with him in the following rapturous wish, in the Second Book of the Georgies which, for the sake of the English reader, we shall give in Mr. Dryden’s translation.

  ’Give me the ways of wand’ring stars to know,
  The depths of heav’n above, or earth below;
  Teach me the various labours of the moon,
  And whence proceed the eclipses of the sun. 
  Why slowing tides prevail upon the main,
  And in what dark recess they shrink again. 
  What shakes the solid earth, what cause delays
  The summer-nights, and the short winter days.’

Mr. Philips was a passionate admirer of nature, and it is not improbable but he drew his own character in that description which he gives of a philosophical and retired life, at the latter end of the first Book of his Cyder.

  —­He to his labour hies,
  Gladsome intent on somewhat that may ease
  Unearthly mortals and with curious search
  Examine all the properties of herbs,
  Fossils, and minerals, that th’ embowell’d earth
  Displays, if by his industry he can
  Benefit human race.

Though the reader will easily discover the unpoetical flatness of the above lines, yet they shew a great thirst after natural knowledge, and we have reason to believe, that much might have been attained, and many new discoveries made, by so diligent an enquirer, and so faithful a recorder of physical operations.  However, though death prevented the hopes of the world in that respect, yet the passages of that kind, which we find in his Poem on Cyder, may convince us of the niceness of his observations in natural causes.  Besides this, he was particularly skilled in antiquities, especially those of his own country; and part of this study too, he has with much art and beauty intermixed with his poetry.