d.
'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual
reciprocation of malevolence.'

Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or
nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It
is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and
the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
much humorous comment.

'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's
importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would
never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence,
"You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon
Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his
head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so
much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as
I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows,
sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he,
"you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules,
as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be
understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the
_Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).

His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby
Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to
designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname
and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping
children.'[33]

Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips
stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--

'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
All caressing, none beguiling;
Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
Every charm to nature owing.'

The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in
which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her
future loveliness and maiden reign:

'Then the taper-moulded waist
With a span of ribbon braced;
And the swell of either breast,
And the wide high-vaulted chest;
And the neck so white and round,
Little neck with brilliants bound;
And the store of charms