Philips, John

Philips, John, 1676–1709, English poet. He was one of the few to write in blank verse in an age when the heroic couplet was the standard form. His Splendid Shilling (1701, 1705) is a parody of Milton. Cyder (1708), a utilitarian poem describing the cultivation of apples and the pressing of cider, is modeled after Vergil's Georgics.

See his poems (ed. by M. G. L. Thomas, 1927).

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