of his own conception of the halls
of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set
out and rose to an exalted solemnity.

Beckford's mind was so richly stored with the jewels of Eastern
legend that it was inevitable he should shower from his treasury
things new and old, but everything which passes through the
alembic of his imagination is transmuted almost beyond
recognition. The episode of the sinners with the flaming hearts
has been traced[66] to a scene in the _Mogul Tales_, where Aboul
Assam saw three men standing mute in postures of sorrow before a
book on which were inscribed the words: "Let no man touch this
divine treatise who is not perfectly pure." When Aboul Assam
enquired of their fate they unbuttoned their waistcoats, and
through their skin, which appeared like crystal, he saw their
hearts encompassed with fire. In Beckford's story this grotesque
scene assumes an awful and moving dignity. From _The Adventure of
Abdallah, Son of Hanif_, Beckford derived the conception of a
visit to the regions of Eblis, whom, however, by a wave of his
wand, he transforms from a revolting ogre to a stately
prince.[67]

To read _Vathek_ is like falling asleep in a huge Oriental palace
after wandering alone through great, echoing halls resplendent
with a gorgeous arras, on which are displayed the adventures of
the caliph who built the palaces of the five senses. In our dream
the caliph and his courtiers come to life, and we awake dazzled
with the memory of a myriad wonders. There throng into our mind a
crowd of unearthly forms--aged astrologers, hideous Giaours,
gibbering negresses, graceful boys and maidens, restless, pacing
figures with their hands on their hearts, and a formidable
prince--whose adventures are woven into a fantastic but distinct
and definite pattern around the three central personages, the
caliph Vathek, his exquisitely wicked mother Carathis, and the
bewitching Nouronihar. The fatal palace of Eblis, with its lofty
columns and gloomy towers of an architecture unknown in the
annals of the earth, looms darkly in our imagination. Beckford
alludes, with satisfaction, to _Vathek_ as a "story so horrid
that I tremble while relating it, and have not a nerve in my
frame but vibrates like an aspen,"[68] and in the _Episodes_
leads us with an unhallowed pleasure into other abodes of
horror--a temple adorned with pyramids of skulls festooned with
human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with huma