John Phillips (1631–1706) was an English author, the brother of

Edward Phillips Edward Phillips (August 1630 – c. 1696) was an English author. Life He was the son of Edward Phillips of the crown office in chancery, and his wife Anne, only sister of John Milton, the poet. Edward Phillips the younger was born in Strand, L ...

, and a nephew of

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...

Life

Anne Phillips, mother of John and Edward, was the sister of John Milton, the poet. In 1652, John Phillips published a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

reply to the anonymous attack on Milton entitled ''Pro Rege et populo anglicano''. He appears to have acted as unofficial secretary to Milton, but, unable to obtain regular political employment, and (like his brother) chafing against the discipline he was under, he published in 1655, a bitter attack on

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

ism titled a ''Satyr against Hypocrites'' (1655). In 1656, he was summoned before the

privy council A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a state, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the mon ...

for his share in a book of licentious poems, ''Sportive Wit'', which was suppressed by the authorities, but almost immediately replaced by a similar collection, ''Wit and Drollery''. In ''Montelion'' (1660) he ridiculed the

astrological Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Dif ...

almanacs of

William Lilly William Lilly (9 June 1681) was a seventeenth century English astrologer. He is described as having been a genius at something "that modern mainstream opinion has since decided cannot be done at all" having developed his stature as the most imp ...

. Two other skits of this name, in 1661 and 1662, also full of coarse royalist wit, were probably by another hand. In 1678, he supported the agitation of

Titus Oates Titus Oates (15 September 1649 – 12/13 July 1705) was an English priest who fabricated the " Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II. Early life Titus Oates was born at Oakham in Rutland. His father Samuel (1610� ...

, writing on his behalf, says Anthony Wood, many lies and villanies. Dr Oates's ''Narrative of the

Popish Plot The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate C ...

'' indicated it was the first of these tracts. In the same year he published the first English translation of

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689) was a 17th-century French gem merchant and traveler. Tavernier, a private individual and merchant traveling at his own expense, covered, by his own account, 60,000 leagues in making six voyages to Persia ...

's 'Six Voyages' recounting a lifetime of travel in the Middle East and South Asia.Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 45, Phillips, John (1631-1706) He began a monthly historical review in 1688, entitled ''Modern History or a Monthly Account of all considerable Occurrences, Civil, Ecclesiastical and Military'', followed in 1690, by ''The Present State of Europe, or a Historical and Political Mercury'', which was supplemented by a preliminary volume giving a history of events from 1688. He executed many translations from the French language, and a version (1687) of ''

Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of Wester ...

'', which has been called by ''Quixote'' translator

Samuel Putnam Samuel Putnam (October 10, 1892 – January 15, 1950) was an American translator and scholar of Romance languages. He is also noteworthy as the author of ''Paris Was Our Mistress'', a memoir on writers and artists associated with the American ex-p ...

the worst English translation ever made of the novel. Putnam goes so far as to say in his Translator's Preface that Phillips's version "cannot be called a translation". This is largely because Phillips actually changes the novel by substituting references to famous English locales in place of the original Spanish ones, and including references to things British not found in the original novel. An extended account of the brothers is given by Wood in ''Athenæ Oxononienses'' (ed. Bliss, iv. 764 seq.), where a long list of their works is dealt with. This formed the basis of

William Godwin William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for ...

's ''Lives of Edward and John Phillips'' (1815), with which was reprinted Edward Phillips's ''Life of John Milton''.

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips, John 1631 births 1706 deaths English writers Place of birth unknown Date of death unknown Place of death unknown Date of birth unknown English male writers