John Phillips (author)

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John Phillips (1631 - 1706), was an English author, the brother of Edward Phillips.

Anne Phillips, mother of John and Edward, was the sister of John Milton, the poet. In 1652, John Phillips published a Latin 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 Puritanism entitled 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 almanacs of William Lilly. Two other skits of this name, in 1661 and 1662, also full of course royalist wit, were probably by another hand. In 1678 he supported the agitation of Titus Oates, writing on his behalf, says Anthony Wood, many lies and villanies. Dr Oates's Narrative of the Popish Plot indicated was the first of these tracts.

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.

An extended account of the brothers is given by Wood in Athen. oxon. (ed, Bliss, iv. 764 seq.), where a long list of their works is dealt with. This formed the basis of William Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Phillips (1815), with which is reprinted Edward Phillips's Life of John Milton.