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Ambrose Philips
Ambrose Philips (1674 – 18 June 1749) was an English poet and politician. He feuded with other poets of
his time, resulting in Henry Carey bestowing the nickname "Namby-Pamby" upon him, which came to mean
affected, weak, and maudlin speech or verse.

Life
Philips was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St
John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699.[1] He seems to have lived chiefly at
Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in this period. He
worked for Jacob Tonson the bookseller, and his Pastorals opened the sixth volume of Tonson's Miscellanies
(1709), which also contained the pastorals of Alexander Pope.[2] Ambrose Philips, an
anonymous 18th-century
Philips was a staunch Whig, and a friend of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. In Nos. 22, 23, 30 and 32 engraving.
(1713) of The Guardian he was rashly praised as the only worthy successor to Edmund Spenser. The writer,
probably Thomas Tickell, pointedly ignored Pope's pastorals. In The Spectator Addison applauded Philips for
his simplicity, and for having written English eclogues unencumbered by the machinery of classical mythology. Pope's jealousy resulted in an
anonymous contribution to the Guardian (No. 40), in which he drew an ironic comparison between his own and Philips's pastorals,
censuring himself and praising Philips's worst passages. Philips is said to have threatened to hit Pope with a rod he kept hung up at Button's
Coffee House for the purpose.[2]

At Pope's request, John Gay burlesqued Philips's pastorals in his Shepherd's Week, but the parody was admired for the very quality of
simplicity which it was intended to ridicule. Samuel Johnson describes the relations between Pope and Philips as a perpetual reciprocation
of malevolence. Pope lost no opportunity of mocking Philips, who figured in the Bathos and the Dunciad, as Macer in the Characters; and in
the instructions to a porter how to find Edmund Curll's authors, Philips is a Pindaric writer in red stockings.[2] Others who ridiculed him
included Henry Carey, who coined the nickname "Namby-Pamby" in the 1725 poem of that name:

All ye poets of the age,

All ye witlings of the stage …
Namby-Pamby is your guide, To Charlotte Pulteney
Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride.
Namby-Pamby, pilly-piss, TIMELY blossom, Infant
Rhimy-pim'd on Missy Miss fair,
Tartaretta Tartaree Fondling of a happy pair,
From the navel to the knee; Every morn and every
That her father's gracy grace night
Might give him a placy place. Their solicitous delight,
Sleeping, waking, still at
Pope's poem The Dunciad (1728) follows: "Beneath his reign, shall ... Namby Pamby be prefer'd for ease,
Wit!"[4] Gay and Swift also picked up the nickname, which became a general term for affected, weak, and Pleasing, without skill to
maudlin speech or verse. please;
Little gossip, blithe and
In 1718, Philips started a Whig paper, The Free-Thinker, in conjunction with Hugh Boulter, then vicar of
hale,
St Olave's, Southwark. Philips had been made justice of the peace for Westminster, and in 1717 a
Tattling many a broken
commissioner for the lottery, and when Boulter was made Archbishop of Armagh, Philips accompanied
tale,
him as secretary. Between 1727 and 1749, he sat in the Irish House of Commons for Armagh Borough,
Singing many a tuneless
was secretary to the lord chancellor in 1726, and in 1733 became a judge of the prerogative court. His
song,
patron died in 1742, and six years later Philips returned to London, where he died on 18 June 1749.[2]
Lavish of a heedless
tongue;
Simple maiden, void of art,
Works Babbling out the very
heart,
His contemporary reputation rested on his pastorals and epistles, particularly the description of winter
Yet abandoned to thy will,
addressed by him from Copenhagen (1709) to the Earl of Dorset. In T. H. Ward's English Poets, however,
Yet imagining no ill,
he is represented by two of the simple and charming pieces addressed to the infant children of John
Yet too innocent to blush;
Carteret, 2nd Lord Carteret, and of Daniel Pulteney. These were scoffed at by Jonathan Swift, and earned
Like the linnet in the bush
for Philips the nickname of "Namby-Pamby" as described above.[2]
To the mother-linnet's
Philips's works include an abridgment of Bishop John Hacket's Life of John Williams (1700); The note
Thousand and One Days: Persian Tales (1722), from the French of F Pétis de la Croix; three plays: The Moduling her slender
Distrest Mother (1712), an adaptation of Racine's Andromaque; The Briton (1722); Humphrey, Duke of throat;
Gloucester (1723). Many of his poems, which included some translations from Sappho, Anacreon and Chirping forth thy petty
Pindar, were published separately, and a collected edition appeared in 1748.[2] joys,
Wanton in the change of
toys,
Like the linnet green, in

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Ambrose Philips - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Philips

May
References Flitting to each bloomy
spray;
Wearied then and glad of
1. "Philips, Ambrose (PHLS693A)" (http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=&suro=w&fir=&
firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=PHLS693A&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50). A Cambridge rest,
Alumni Database. University of Cambridge. Like the linnet in the nest;
2. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public -
domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Philips, Ambrose". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). This thy present happy lot,
Cambridge University Press. p. 401. This in time will be forgot:
3. A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from The Best Poets. With An Introduction by Other pleasures, other
William Cullen Bryant (https://books.google.com/books?id=kXd4bRr71a4C&dq=Oliver+Wendell+Hol cares,
mes+Katydid&pg=PA7), New York, J.B. Ford and Company, 1871, p. 7. Ever busy Time prepares;
4. Martin, Gary. " 'Namby-pamby' – the meaning and origin of this phrase" (https://www.phrases.org.uk/ And thou shalt in thy
meanings/namby-pamby.html). Phrasefinder. Retrieved 27 October 2020. daughter see,
This picture, once, resembled
thee.
Sources
By Ambrose Philips[3]
Stephen, Leslie (1896). "Philips, Ambrose" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Bio
graphy,_1885-1900/Philips,_Ambrose). In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography.
Vol. 45. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Varney, Andrew. "Philips, Ambrose (bap. 1674, d. 1749)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22119 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fref%3Aodnb%2F22119). (Subscription or UK public library membership (https://ww
w.oxforddnb.com/help/subscribe#public) required.)

External links
Media related to Ambrose Philips at Wikimedia Commons
Works by or about Ambrose Philips at Wikisource
Quotations related to Ambrose Philips at Wikiquote
Ambrose Philips (http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00302.shtml) at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA) (ht
tp://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/)
Ambrose Philips pastorals (http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/AuthorRecord.php?&method=GET&recordid=32930)

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