The mysterious inconsistencies of _Vathek_ (1786) have been sufficiently remarked. But every fresh reader cannot help being struck by the strange contrast between the cynical flippancies of the earlier portions and the sombre grandeur and moral conviction inspiring the scenes in the Hall of Eblis. Should we take _Vathek_ merely as an extravaganza with a moral turn--which only serves to make it the more macabre--in which the characters, not being responsible for their actions, are scarcely culpable; or should we take it as an allegory of the vanity of unrestrained desires and inordinate ambition promoting “that blind curiosity which would transgress the bounds of wisdom the Creator has prescribed to human knowledge”? Perhaps Beckford did not intend his tale to be interpreted too solemnly. Some indication of his attitude is given in a letter to Henley dated 23 April, 1785, in which, speaking of the most innocent of his characters, he says: “I have always thought Nouronihar too severely punished, and if I knew how conveniently, would add a crime or two to her share. What say you?” But it would be a mistake to imagine that Beckford was in any way ashamed of his production--far from it!--and it may be that, like Voltaire, he was in the habit of saying the most serious things flippantly. As it is, Vathek himself with his basilisk glance and outrageous appetite is partly a figure of fun, and, by his black magic and pact with the powers of darkness, partly an Oriental Faust, helped on to damnation by his mother, the Princess Carathis, who with her insane thirst for supernatural dominion is a more ghastly Lady Macbeth. But however we regard the enigma of _Vathek_, Beckford’s real claim to remembrance rests on the half-dozen pages at the end of the book, where his description of the Hall of Eblis has been compared to Milton’s Pandemonium, Eblis himself being considered as a kind of inferior Satan. And perhaps there is a touch of _Salammbô_ as well, as Vathek and Nouronihar stand before the ruins of Istakar, with their intolerable mystery and deathly stillness under the moon.