Mr. Beckford travelled and resided abroad until his twenty-second year, when he wrote in French _Vathek_,[1] a work of startling beauty. More than fifty years afterwards he told Mr. Cyrus Redding that he wrote _Vathek_ at one sitting. "It took me," he said, "three days and two nights of hard labour. I never took off my clothes the whole time. This severe application made me very ill.... Old Fonthill had a very ample loud echoing hall--one of the largest in the kingdom. Numerous doors led from it into different parts of the house through dim, winding passages. It was from that I introduced the Hall--the idea of the Hall of Eblis being generated by my own. My imagination magnified and coloured it with the Eastern character. All the females in _Vathek_ were portraits of those in the domestic establishment of old Fonthill, their fancied good or ill qualities being exaggerated to suit my purpose." An English translation of the work afterwards appeared, the author of which Beckford said he never knew; he thought it tolerably well done. [1] _Vathek_ was dramatised by the Hon. Mrs. Norton some thirty years since, and was offered to Mr. Bunn for Drury Lane Theatre, but declined; the "exquisite beauties of Mrs. Norton's metrical compositions being overloaded by a pressure of dialogue and a redundancy of scenic effects, the fidelity and rapid succession of which it would have puzzled any scene painter or mechanist to follow."--_Bunn's Stage_, vol ii., p. 139. At twenty-four, Mr. Beckford married the Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of Charles, fourth Earl of Aboyne, but the lady died in three years. In 1784 he was returned to Parliament for Wells; in 1790 he sat for Hindon; but in 1794 he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and again went abroad. He now fixed himself in Portugal, where he purchased an estate near Cintra, and built the sumptuous mansion, the decoration and desolation of which some years afterwards Lord Byron described in the first canto of his _Childe Harold_, in the stanza beginning-- There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son, Once form'd thy Paradise, as not aware When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done, Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun. Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan, Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow: But now, as if a thing unblest by man, Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou! Here giant woods a passage scarce allow To halls deserted, portals gaping wide: Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how Vain are pleasaunces on earth supplied; Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!