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Of the many journeys of this Roundabout life, that drive through Amsterdam is to be specially and gratefully remembered. You have never seen the palace of Amsterdam, my dear sir? Why, there's a marble hall in that palace that will frighten you as much as any hall in Vathek, or a nightmare.
Leicester's famous welcoming of Elizabeth to Kenilworth was perhaps the last spectacular "revel" of its kind to strike the imagination; though we must not fail to remember with gratitude the magnificent Beckford, with his glorious "rich man's folly" of Fonthill Abbey, a lordly pleasure house which naturally sprang from the same Aladdin-like fancy which produced "Vathek."
"Italy: with sketches of Spain and Portugal. In a series of letters written during a residence in these Countries." By William Beckford, Esq., author of Vathek. London, 1834. We do not allude so much to its audacious licentiousness, as to the diabolical levity of its contempt for mankind.
Beckford's "Vathek" and Lewis' "The Monk" are variations upon this theme, which for a while was very popular and is decidedly to be seen in the work of the first novelist upon American soil, Charles Brockden Brown, whose somber "Wieland," read with the Radcliffe school in mind, will reveal its probable parentage.
Vathek, ninth Caliph of the race of the Abassides, was the son of Motassem, and the grandson of Haroun Al Raschid. From an early accession to the throne, and the talents he possessed to adorn it, his subjects were induced to expect that his reign would be long and happy.
Vathek, too much cast down to express the indignation excited by such a discourse, ordered the Afrit to remove Carathis from his presence, and continued immersed in thought, which his companion durst not disturb.
Nouronihar persuaded herself that she heard in the fatal music the groans of her dying father, and Vathek the sobs of the fifty children he had sacrificed to the Giaour.
Amidst these complicated pangs of anguish they perceived themselves impelled towards the shepherd, whose countenance was so commanding, that Vathek for the first time felt overawed, whilst Nouronihar concealed her face with her hands.
That he could write as well as read he showed as a mere boy by his satirical Memoirs of Painters, and by the great-in-little novel of Vathek , respecting the composition of which in French or English divers fables are told. Then he published nothing for forty years, till in 1834 and 1835 he issued his Travels in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, recollections of his earliest youth.
Vathek stands alone almost independent even of its sponsors it would be awkward to say godfathers Hamilton and Voltaire; apart likewise from such work as it, no doubt, in turn partly suggested to Peacock and to Disraeli.
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