{\b Ambrose Philips}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1674

{\b Date of Death}.: 18 June 1749

{\b Works}.

'Epistle to the Earl of Dorset' (1709), Pastorals  (1710), The Distrest Mother 
 (1712), A Collection of Old Ballads  (1723).

{\b Featured Works}.

'To Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in Her Mother's Arms'.

{\b General Comment}.

Ambrose Philips, poet, was born in Shropshire and educated at Cambridge. He 
became one of the Joseph Addison circle. He started a journal, the 
Freethinker, an imitation of Addison's the Spectator, which he largely wrote 
himself, and which was published twice weekly from 1718-21. His reputation 
stems from his relationship with Alexander Pope, and the extreme dislike each 
felt for the other. Before the first performance of Philips's The Distrest 
Mother  (1712), an adaptation of Racine's Andromanque, a whole issue of the 
Spectator  was given over to advertising it. Pope was annoyed and in 
retaliation published a scathing satire on Philips' work in The Guardian , 
thereby ruining his reputation as a poet. Dr Johnson in his Lives of the Poets 
 (1781) reports that, 'from that time on Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual 
reciprocation of malevolence'.

In 1714 Philips was made a justice of the peace for Westminster. He went to 
Ireland in 1724 as a secretary to Hugh Boulter (1672-1742). He returned to 
London in 1748. The term 'Namby-Pamby' was coined to describe his poems to 
children. 'To Miss Margaret Pulteney' (1727) begins: 'Dimply damsel, sweetly 
smiling, /All caressing, none beguiling ...'.