Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 724 pages of information about Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4.

Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 724 pages of information about Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4.

     BY SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER

     Roses, their sharp spines being gone,
     Not royal in their smells alone,
       But in their hue;
     Maiden-pinks, of odor faint,
     Daisies smell-less yet most quaint,
       And sweet thyme true;

     Primrose, first-born child of Ver,
     Merry spring-time’s harbinger,
       With her bells dim;
     Oxlips in their cradles growing,
     Marigolds on death-beds blowing,
       Larks’-heels trim.

     All, dear Nature’s children sweet,
     Lie ’fore bride and bridegroom’s feet,
       Blessing their sense! 
     Not an angel of the air,
     Bird melodious or bird fair,
       Be absent hence!

     The crow, the slanderous cuckoo, nor
     The boding raven, nor chough hoar,
       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

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Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.