PHILIPPIC, the name originally applied to Demosthenes’ three great orations against Philip of Macedon, then to Cicero’s speeches against Mark Antony; now denotes any violent invective written or spoken.

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS (8,500), a large and numerous group in the north of the Malay archipelago, between the China Sea and the Pacific, of which the largest, Luzon, and the next Mindanao, are both much greater than Ireland; are mountainous and volcanic, subject to eruptions and continuous earthquakes.  In the N. of the group cyclones too are common.  The climate is moist and warm, but fairly healthy; the soil is very fertile.  Rice, maize, sugar, cotton, coffee, and tobacco are cultivated; the forests yield dye-woods, hard timber, and medicinal herbs, and the mines coal and iron, copper, gold, and lead.  The chief exports are sugar, hemp, and tobacco.  The aboriginal Negritoes are now few; half-castes are numerous; the population is chiefly Malayan, Roman Catholic at least nominally in religion, and speaking the Tagal or the Visayan language.  Discovered by Magellan in 1521, who was killed on the island of Mactan; they were annexed by Spain in 1569, and held till 1898, when they fell to the Americans.  The capital is Manilla (270), on the W. coast of Luzon; Laoag (37), San Miguel (35), and Banang (33) among the largest towns.

PHILIPS, AMBROSE, minor poet, born in Leicester, of good family; friend of Addison and Steele, and a Whig in politics; held several lucrative posts, chiefly in Ireland; wrote pastorals in vigorous and elegant verse, and also some short sentimental verses for children, which earned for him from Henry Carey the nickname of “Namby-Pamby” (1678-1749).

PHILIPS, JOHN, litterateur, born in Oxfordshire, author of “The Splendid Shilling,” an admirable burlesque in imitation of Milton, and a poem, “Cider,” an imitation of Virgil (1676-1708).

PHILIPS, KATHERINE, poetess, born in London; was the daughter of a London merchant and the wife of a Welsh squire, a highly sentimental but worthy woman; the Society of Friendship, in which the members bore fancy names—­hers, which also served her for a nom de plume, was Orinda—­had some fame in its day, and brought her, as the foundress, the honour of a dedication from Jeremy Taylor; her work was admired by Cowley and Keats; she was a staunch royalist (1631-1664).

PHILISTINE, the name given by the students in Germany to a non-university man of the middle-class, or a man without (university) culture, or of narrow views of things.

PHILISTINES, a people, for long of uncertain origin, but now generally believed to have been originally emigrants from Crete, who settled in the plain, some 40 m. long by 15 broad, extending along the coast of Palestine from Joppa on the N. to the desert on the S., and whose chief cities were Ashdod, Askelon, Ekron, Gaza, and Gath; they were a trading and agricultural people, were again and again a thorn in the side of the Israelites, but gradually tamed into submission, so as to be virtually extinct in the days of Christ; their chief god was DAGON (q. v.).