ruins of Palmyra, and presented to the university of Leyden by Dr. Hermanus Hoffman.  The contents of which are something in the nature of Memoirs of the Court of Solomon; giving a sufficient account of the chief offices and posts in his houshold; of the several funds of the royal revenue; of the distinct apartments of his palace there; of the different Seraglios, being fifty two in number in that one city.  Then there is an account given of the Sultanas; their manner of treatment and living; their birth and country, with some touches of their personal endowments, how long they continued in favour, and what the result was of the King’s fondness for each of them.  Among these, there is particular mention made of a slave of more exceeding beauty than had ever been known before; at whose appearance the charms of all the rest vanished like stars before the morning sun; that the King cleaved to her with the strongest affection, and was not seen out of the Seraglio, where she was kept, for about a month.  That she was taken captive, together with her mother, out of a vineyard, on the Coast of Circassia, by a Corsair of Hiram King of Tyre, and brought to Jerusalem.  It is said, she was placed in the ninth Seraglio, to the east of Palmyra, which, in the Hebrew tongue, is called Tadmor; which, without farther particulars, are sufficient to convince us that this was the charming person, sung with so much rapture by the Royal poet, and in the recital of whose amour he seems so transported.  For she speaks of herself as one that kept a vineyard, and her mother’s introducing her in one of the gardens of pleasure (as it seems she did at her first presenting her to the King) is here distinctly mentioned.  The manuscript further takes notice, that she was called Saphira, from the heavenly blue of her eyes.’

Notwithstanding the caution with which Mr. Croxall published the Fair Circassian, yet it was some years after known to be his.  The success it met with, which was not indeed above its desert, was perhaps too much for vanity (of which authors are seldom entirely divested) to resist, and he might be betrayed into a confession, from that powerful principle, of what otherwise would have remained concealed.

Some years after it was published, Mr. Cragg, one of the ministers of the city of Edinburgh, gave the world a small volume of spiritual poems, in one of which he takes occasion to complain of the prostitution of genius, and that few poets have ever turned their thoughts towards religious subjects; and mentions the author of the Circassian with great indignation, for having prostituted his Muse to the purposes of lewdness, in converting the Song of Solomon (a work, as he thought it, of sacred inspiration) into an amorous dialogue between a King and his mistress.  His words are,

  Curss’d be he that the Circassian wrote,
  Perish his fame, contempt be all his lot,
  Who basely durst in execrable strains,
  Turn holy mysteries into impious scenes.