AMBROSE, an English poet of some note in his day, was descended from an old Leicestershire family, and was born about 1671. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his master's degree in 1700, and where, four years before, he printed a copy of English verses on the death of Queen Mary, in the collection published by the university. Little is known of his career till the year 1709, when six pastorals appeared from his pen, published along with Pope's in Tomson's Miscellany. During the same year Philips wrote his poetical Letter from Copenhagen, addressed to the Duke of Dorset. It appeared in the Tatler, with a laudatory criticism from Richard Steele, and Pope spoke of it as the production of a man "who could write very nobly." Meanwhile Philips contrived to support himself by translating the Persian Tales from the French for Tonson, and by eminishing Hackett's Life of Archbishop Williams. In 1712 he brought upon the stage his tragedy of the Distrest Mother, which, although little more than a translation of Racine's Andromaque, yet was received with rapturous applause, particularly from all trusty Whigs. The Spectator took an entire number to herald its advent, and after its appearance another Spectator was written "to tell what impression it made upon Sir Roger;" and, to crown all, Addison, in the name of Budgell, wrote an epilogue for it, which, according to Johnson, was "the most successful epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the English theatre." (Lives of Brit. To have a rival, and a Whig too, thus puffed into fame, was too much for the forbearance of Pope, who, not content with whispering something about "packed audiences" into the ear of his friend Spence, resolved, by an unexampled artifice of irony, to strip Philips of his laurels. A short time before Addison had bestowed high praise on the "admirable pastorals and winter-piece" of Philips both in the Spectator and Guardian. Pope, under a guise of favourable criticism, put a paper into the hands of the guileless Steele, which he inserted in the fortieth number of the Guardian. This piece turned out, however, to be filled with the most subtle irony and covert mockery of Philips' pastorals, while written with the apparent design of magnifying their superiority to Pope's own. The open feud which ensued between the two poets was never healed. Philips, by threatening to cane Pope, kept him out of his way, but the satirist sought his revenge by garnishing the Art of Sticking in Poetry with the choicest specimens of his rival's verse. Again, when Philips attempted to cultivate simplicity and ease in neat little verses, with very short lines and rather childish thoughts, Pope joined Henry Carey in calling it "namby-pamby." In 1722 Philips produced the tragedies of The Briton, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which are now forgotten. His happiest undertaking was a periodical called the Free-Thinker, in which one of his associates was Dr Boulter; who, upon his being made archbishop of Armagh, took Philips with him, and got him a seat in the Irish Parliament. In 1726 he was made secretary to the lord chancellor, and in 1733 had risen to be judge of the prerogative Court in Ireland. Having resigned in 1748, he returned to London, where he died on the 18th of June 1749.

Philips, John, an English poet of some eminence, was born in 1676. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, where he became acquainted with the works of Milton, whom he studied with great application, and traced in all his successful translations from the ancients. The first poem by which he distinguished himself was his Splendid Shilling, which in the Tuller is styled the "finest burlesque poem in the English language." His next was entitled Blenheim, which was written at the request of the Earl of Oxford and Mr Henry St John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, on the victory obtained by the Duke of Marlborough in the year 1704. It was published in 1705; and the year after, he finished another poem upon Cider, the first book of which had been written at Oxford. It is on the model of Virgil's Georgics, and is thought a very excellent piece. We have no more of Philips' writings except a Latin ode to Mr Henry St John, which is esteemed a masterpiece. He was meditating a poem on the Last Day, when he was cut off by consumption on the 15th of February 1708.