Nor chattering pie,
May on our bride-house perch or sing,
Or with them any discord bring,
But from it fly!

WILLIAM BECKFORD

(1759-1844)

The translation from a defective Arabic manuscript of the 'Book of the
Thousand Nights and A Night,' first into the French by Galland, about
1705, and presently into various English versions, exerted an immediate
influence on French, German, and English romance. The pseudo-Oriental or
semi-Oriental tale of home-manufacture sprang into existence right and
left with the publishers of London and Paris, and in German centres of
letters. Hope's 'Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek,' Lewis's 'The
Monk,' the German Hauff's admirable 'Stories of the Caravan, the Inn,
and the Palace,' Rueckert's 'Tales of the Genii,' and William Beckford's
'History of the Caliph Vathek,' are among the finest performances of the
sort: productions more or less Eastern in sentiment and in their details
of local color, but independent of direct originals in the Persian or
Arabic, so far as is conclusively known.

[Illustration: WILLIAM BECKFORD]

William Beckford, born at London in 1759 (of a strong line which
included a governor of Jamaica), dying in 1844, is a figure of
distinction merely as an Englishman of his time, aside from his one
claim to literary remembrance. His father's death left him the richest
untitled citizen of England. He was not sent to a university, but
immense care was given to his education, in which Lord Chatham
personally interested himself; and he traveled widely. The result of
this, on a very receptive mind with varied natural gifts, was to make
Beckford an ideal dilettante. His tastes in literature, painting, music
(in which Mozart was his tutor), sculpture, architecture, and what not,
were refined to the highest nicety. He was able to gratify each of them
as such a man can rarely have the means to do. He built palaces and
towers of splendor instead of merely a beautiful country seat. He tried
to reproduce Vathek's halls in stone and stucco, employing relays of
workmen by day and night, on two several occasions and estates, for many
months. Where other men got together moderate collections of _bibelots_,
Beckford amassed whole museums. If a builder's neglect or a fire
destroyed his rarities and damaged his estates to the extent of forty or
fifty thousand pounds, Beckford merely rebuilt and re-collected. These
tastes and lavish expenditures gradua