fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the
Crown-office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and
Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the
only authentic account of his domestic manners.

John the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread Eagle,
in Bread Street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning.
His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education;
for he was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of
Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants
at Hamburgh, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his
scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.

He was then sent to St. Paul's school, under the care of Mr. Gill;
and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's
College, in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar, Feb. 12, 1624.

He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he
himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of
which the learned Politian has given him an example, seems to
commend the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of
posterity.

But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by
many, and particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of
the mind it is difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled
Milton in their first essays, who never rose to works like "Paradise
Lost."

At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated