In 1708 Philips issued "Cyder", his chief work, which is an imitation of Virgil's "Georgics". Tonson agreed to pay Philips forty guineas for it in two books, with ten guineas for a second edition. Philips also received one hundred large-paper copies, and two dedication copies bound in goatskin. He signed a receipt for the forty guineas and the books on 24 January 1707-8 and the poem was published on the 29th (Daily Courant). It has some fine descriptive passages with an exact account of the culture of the apple tree and the manufacture of cider. It has many local allusions to Herefordshire, the County of his ancestors. Philip Miller the botanist told Johnson that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose which do not contain so much truth as that poem". Samuel Johnson objected that the blank verse of Milton, which Philips imitated, "could not `be sustained by images which at most can rise only to elegance". Pope said that Philips succeeded extremely well in his imitation of "Paradise Lost", but was quite wrong in endeavouring to imitate it on such a subject.