  Claudy Phillips, as he was popularly called, seems to have been a man of considerable genius, though not without some of the eccentricities which sometimes accompany it. He was well known throughout the county, which he used to traverse dressed at one time in laced clothes, at others in garments which betrayed the low state of his exchequer. When drawn to it by stress of financial embarassment, he was not above playing in the evening at inns, and throwing himself upon the generosity of his audiences there. As to his qualities as a musician, it is said his forte was in wild and plaintive melody, dictated by the impulses of his own mind, and subject to none of the ordinary rules of studied compositions; his manipulation of the violin was also distinguished for a rapidity of execution unrivalled in those days. The handsome marble tablet erected to his memory soon after his death, in 1732, by public subscription, shows that he must have been held in considerable estimation by a goodly number of admirers. Indeed, he must have been known to some of the most prominent personages of his time, as the following lines upon him have been variously attributed to Dr. Johnson or to David Garrick:— Phillips, whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love,
Rest here! distrest by poverty no more,
Here find that calm thou gav’st so oft before!
Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!
(See also Oliver’s “Wolverhampton,” pp. 98 and 99.) |
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