Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/431

Rh and orations, nay their very gazettes, are filled with the praises of the learned.

I am satisfied, had they a Philips among them, and known how to value him; had they one of his learning, his temper, but above all of that particular turn of humour, that altogether new genius, he had been an example to their poets, and a subject of their panegyricks, and perhaps set in competition with the ancients, to whom only he ought to submit.

I shall therefore endeavour to do justice to his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. And indeed I can assign no cause why so many of his acquaintance (that are as willing and more able than myself to give an account of him) should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely belonging to me. I shall content myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private; I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there was scarcely so many extraordinary men in any one. I have Rh