When poor Chatterton--of whom we had speech not far back--was near to starving in London, he made one desperate effort to secure the favor and patronage of the Lord Mayor of the city, who was a very rich West India merchant, by the name of Beckford. Chatterton did gain an interview; did get promise of aid, and win strongly upon the {286} good will of the Lord Mayor; but unfortunately his honor died only a few days thereafter. Had he lived, the young poet might have had a totally different career; and had he lived, the only son and heir of this benevolent Mayor,--William Beckford,[14] then a boy of ten,--would have had a different bringing up. At twenty, this youth printed--though he did not publish--some journals of continental travel which he had conducted in the spirit and with the large accompaniments of a young man who loves the splendor of life, and who had at command an annual revenue of six hundred thousand dollars, at that day said to be the largest moneyed income in England. What a little fragment of this sum which was squandered upon that splendid trail of travel through Europe would have made poor Chatterton happy! But young Beckford was by no means a brainless spendthrift; he had strong intellectual aptitudes; was a scholar in a certain limited yet true sense; and when twenty-two only, had written (in French) {287} that strange, weird romance of _Vathek_; well worth your reading on a spare day, and which in its English version has made his fame, and keeps his name alive, now that his great houses and moneys are known and reverenced no more. It is an Eastern story, with all the glow, color, and splendors of the days of the good _Haroun al Raschid_ in it. There are crime and love in it too; and phantoms and beautiful women, and terrific punishment of the wicked. Vathek, the hero, who might be Beckford himself, wanders through a world of delights, where evil phantoms and genii assail him, and fascinating maidens allure him; and after adventures full of escapes and dangers and feastings, in which he listens to the melody of lutes and quaffs the delicious wine of Schiraz, he reaches at last, in company with the lovely Mironihar, the great hall of Eblis; here we come to something horrific and Dantesque--something which I am sure had its abiding influence upon the work of Edgar Poe.