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