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 Stran ...

, and a nephew of

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and politic ...

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 languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

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 rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

ism titled a ''Satyr against Hypocrites'' (1655). In 1656, he was summoned before the privy council 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 propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions of celesti ...

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 was the Baptis ...

, 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 assassinat ...

'' 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 , the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...

'', 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 authored ''Paris Was Our Mistress'', a memoir on writers and artists associated with the American ex-patriate community in Paris ...

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 fo ...

'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