fortune, and,
making him his secretary, added such preferments as enabled him to
represent the county of Armagh in the Irish Parliament. In December,
1726, he was made secretary to the Lord Chancellor, and in August, 1733,
became Judge of the Prerogative Court.

After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland, but at
last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he returned (1748) to
London, having doubtless survived most of his friends and enemies, and
among them his dreaded antagonist Pope. He found, however, the Duke of
Newcastle still living, and to him he dedicated his poems collected into
a volume.

Having purchased an annuity of 400 pounds, he now certainly hoped
to pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope
deceived him: he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749, in his
seventy-eighth year.

Of his personal character all that I have heard is, that he was eminent
for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was
solemn and pompous. He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment
may be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a
gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. "Philips," said he, "was
once at table, when I asked him, 'How came thy king of Epirus to drive
oxen, and to say, "I'm goaded on by love"?' After which question he
never spoke again."

Of The Distressed Mother not much is pretended to be his own, and
therefore it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies,
I believe, are not below mediocrity, nor above it. Among the poems
comprised in the late Collection, the "Letter from Denmark" may be
justly praised; the Pastorals, which by the writer of the Guardian were
ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic Muse, cannot
surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which did not
exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of
such a state is allowed to be pastoral. In his other poems he cannot
be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom
much force or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are
those which, from Pope and Pope's adherents, procured him the name of
"Namby-Pamby," the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to
all ages and characters, from Walpole the "steerer of the realm," to
Miss Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and
the diction is seldom faulty. They are not loaded with