Translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Lives of Antiochus, and Berenice, from the French, 1717.
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The Revd. Dr. SAMUEL CROXALL,
The celebrated author of the Fair Circassian, was son of the revd. Mr. Samuel Croxall, rector of Hanworth, Middlesex, and vicar of Walton upon Thames in Surry, in the last of which places our author was born. He received his early education at Eton school, and from thence was admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge. Probably while he was at the university, he became enamoured of Mrs. Anna Maria Mordaunt, who first inspired his breast with love, and to whom he dedicates the poem of the Circassian, for which he has been so much distinguished. This dedication is indeed the characteristic of a youth in love, but then it likewise proves him altogether unacquainted with the world, and with that easiness of address which distinguishes a gentleman. A recluse scholar may be passionately in love, but he discovers it by strains of bombast, and forced allusions, of which this dedication is a very lively instance.
'The language of the Fair Circassian, says he, like yours, was natural poetry; her voice music, and the excellent colouring and formation of her features, painting; but still, like yours, drawn by the inimitable pencil of nature, life itself; a pattern for the greatest master, but copying after none; I will not say angels are not cast in the same mould.' And again in another place, 'Pardon, O lovely deity, the presumption of this address, and favour my weak endeavours. If my confession of your divine power is any where too faint, believe it not to proceed from a want of due respect, but of a capacity more than human. Whoever thinks of you can no longer be himself; and if he could, ought to be something above man to celebrate the accomplishment of a goddess. To you I owe my creation as a lover, and in the beams of your beauty only I live, move, and exist. If there should be a suspension of your charms, I should fall to nothing. But it seems to be out of your power to deprive us of their kind influence; wherever you shine they fill all our hearts, and you are charming out of necessity, as the author of nature is good.' We have quoted enough to shew the enthusiasm, or rather phrenzy, of this address, which is written in such a manner as if it were intended for a burlesque on the False Sublime, as the speeches of James I. are upon pedantry.
Mr. Croxall, who was intended for holy orders, and, probably, when he published the Circassian, had really entered into them, was cautious lest he should be known to be the author of this piece, since many divines have esteemed the Song of Solomon, from which it is taken, as an inspired poem, emblematic of the Messiah and the Church. Our author was of another opinion, and with him almost all sensible men join, in believing that it is no more than a beautiful poem, composed by that Eastern monarch, upon some favourite lady in his Seraglio. He artfully introduces it with a preface, in which he informs us, that it was the composition of a young gentleman, his pupil, lately deceased, executed by him, while he was influenced by that violent passion with which Mrs. Mordaunt inspired him. He then endeavours to ascertain who this Eastern beauty was, who had charms to enflame the heart of the royal poet. He is of opinion it could not be Pharaoh's daughter, as has been commonly conjectured, because the bride in the Canticles is characterised as a private person, a shepherdess, one that kept a vineyard, and was ill used by her mother's children, all which will agree very well with somebody else, but cannot, without great straining, be drawn to fit the Egyptian Princess. He then proceeds, 'seeing we have so good reason to conclude that it was not Pharaoh's daughter, we will next endeavour to shew who she was: and here we are destitute of all manner of light, but what is afforded us by that little Arabian manuscript, mentioned in the Philosophical Transactions of Amsterdam, 1558, said to be found in a marble chest among the 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.