his left hand over her neck, and embrace her with his right.

There are some expressions in which the author's elucidation is wanted, as when he says, Your navel is like a goblet in which there is always something to drink; your belly is like a bushel of wheat; your breasts are like two young roes; your nose is as the tower of Lebanon.

This I own is not the stile of Virgil's Eclogues; but all have not a like stile, and a Jew is not obliged to write like Virgil.

I suppose it may likewise be another beautiful strain of eastern eloquence to say, Our sister is yet little; she has no breasts; what shall we do for our sister? If she be a wall, let us build on her; if a door, let us shut her.

We will allow that such words might have escaped Solomon, though the wisest of men, in a merry mood. This composition is said to be an epithalamium on his marriage with Pharaoh's daughter but is it natural that Pharaoh's son-inlaw should leave his beloved in the night, to go and saunter in his walnut-yard; and that the queen should run after him bare-footed? that the city watch should beat her, and take her gown from her ?

Could a king's daughter have said, I am brown, yet am I beautiful like Solomon's furs (1). Such expressions might be overlooked in a home-spun swain; though, after all, there can be little affi

nity

(1) The Geneva and Dutch translations say, Curtains: Beza has it, Similis sum inhabitantibus aulæa Schelomonis. The author seems disingenuous in most of his quotations.

nity between furs and a girl's beauty. Well, but Solomon's furs might be exceedingly admired in their time; and for a low-lived Jew in a lay to his sweetheart, to tell her in his Jewish gibberish, that never any Jewish king had such fine furred gowns as her dear self, was not at all out of character; but Solomon must have been strangely infatuated with his furs to compare them to his mistress. Were a king in our times to write such an epithalamium on his marriage with a neighbouring monarch's daughter, he would forfeit all title to the laurel.

Several Rabbis have advanced that this luscious eclogue not only is not Solomon's, but is not so much as authentic. Theodore de Mopsueste was of the same opinion; and the celebrated Grotius calls the Song of Songs a libidinous work, flagitiosus; yet is it received as canonical, and reputed to be throughout an allegory of Christ's and his church's espousals. The allegory must be owned a little forced; and what the church could mean by its little sister having no bubbies, and that if a wall, she must be built on, is impenetrably obscure (1).

Ecclesiastes is of a more serious turn, but no more Solomon's than the Song of Songs. The author is commonly thought to be Jesus the son of Sirach, whilst others attribute it to Philo of Biblos; but whoever he was, the Pentateuch seems not to have been known in his time, else

he

(1) The Rabbis I think compare the book of Proverbs to the outward court of the temple, Ecclesiastes to the inward court, and the Song of Songs to the sanctuary.

he would not have said that, at the time of the deluge Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac, or have spoken of Joseph the patriarch as a king of Egypt.

The Proverbs have been attributed to Isaiah, Elziah, Sobna, Eliakim, Joake, and many others; but to whomsoever we owe this collection of eastern sentences, we may be sure it does not come from a royal hand. Would a king have said, The wrath of a king is as the roaring of a lion? This is the language of a subject or slave, who trembles at a frown from his master. Would Solomon have harped so much on a whorish woman? would he have said, Look not on wine when it appears bright in the glass, and its colour shines?

I very much question whether drinkingglasses were made in Solomon's time; the invention is but modern: the ancients drank out of wooden or metal cups; and this single passage betrays that book to be the work of some Alexandrine Jew, and written long since Alexander.

We now come to Ecclesiastes, which Grotius affirms to have been written in the time of Zoro. babel. This author's freedom is known to every body; he says, "That men are in nothing bet"ter than beasts; that it is better never to have "been born than to exist; that there is no other "life; that the only good is to eat and drink, "and be merry with the woman one loves."

Solomon perhaps might have talked in this manner to some of his women, and some construe these sayings as objections which he makes to himself; but besides the libertinism of which they strongly savour, they have nothing of the appearance of objections; and to make an author

mean

mean the contrary of what he says, is an insult on the world.

However, several of the fathers tell us, that Solomon repented, and imposed on himself a severe penance: now this should silence all animadversions on his conduct.

But though these books were written by a Jew, what is that to us? The Christian religion is indeed founded on Judaism, but not on all the Jewish books. Why should the Song of Songs be held more sacred among us than the fables of the Talmud? The answer is, because we have included it in the Hebrew canon. And what is this same canon? It is a collection of authentic works. Well, and must a work of course be divine, for being authentic? For instance, a history of the kings of Juda and of Sichem, what is it but a history? A strange prepossession, indeed! We despise and abhor the Jews; and yet we insist, that all such of their writings which we have collected, bear the sacred stamp of divinity. Never was such a contradiction heard of!

SENSATION.

OYSTERS, we are told, have two senses,

moles four, and other animals, like men, have five. Some are for admitting a sixth, but it is evident that the voluptuous sensation, which is what they mean, comes within the touch; and that five senses make up our whole portion. We cannot conceive or desire any thing beyond.

The inhabitants of other globes may have sen. ses which we know nothing of: the number of

the

the senses may gradually increase from globe to globe; and the being endued with innumerable senses and all perfect, may be the apex or period of all beings.

But we with our five organs, what power have we over them? It is always involuntarily that we feel, and never from our own inclina tion; in the presence of the object it is impossi ble not to have the sensation appointed by our nature. The sensation, though in us, does not at all depend on us; we receive it, and in what manner? Is there any affinity between the vi brations of the air, the words of a song, and the impression which these words make on my brain?

Thought seems to us something strange; but sensation is no less wonderful: a divine power equally shews itself in the sensation of the meanest insect, as in a Newton's brain. Yet at seeing thousands of little animals destroyed, you are not in the least concerned what becomes of their sensitive faculty, though this faculty be the work of the Being of beings. You look on them as machines in nature, born to perish and make room for others.

Wherefore and how should their sensations subsist, when they no longer exist? What need is there for the author of every thing that has being, to preserve properties of which the subject is extinct? It may as well be said, that the power of the Sensitive Plant, to draw in its leaves towards its twigs, subsists when the plant is withered. Here undoubtedly it will be asked, how it is that the sensation of animals perishing with them, man's faculty survives him? That is a question beyond the verge of my knowledge; Y

all