BECKFORD, WILLIAM, the only legitimate son of alderman Beckford, was b. in 1760. When he was about 9 years of age, his father died, and he inherited the larger portion of an enormous property, consisting for the main part of estates in Jamaica, and of the estate of Fonthill, in Wiltshire. His annual revenue is said to have exceeded £100,000. Young Beckford evinced unusual intellectual precocity; for in 1780 lie printed a satirical essay, entitled Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters, in which he does not Spare living artists, and assails the cant of criticism with the polished weapon of his wit. In 1778, he visited the continent, and met Voltaire at Paris. Two years thereafter, he started on his first great continental tour, and spent twelve months in rambling through Flanders, Germany, and Italy. In 1782, he made a second visit to Italy, and in wandered through Portugal and Spain. In 1783, he married the lad)- Margaret Gordon, daughter of Charles, fourth earl of Aboyne; and in the follow. in year he entered parliament. as one of the members for Wells. In the same year, he published Iiithek in French.. Beckford informs us that he wrote this tale, as it now 6tands, at 22 years of nge, and that it was composed at one sitting. "It took me," he says, "three days and two nights of hard labor. I never took off my clothes the whole time. This severe application made me very ill." Immediately on its publi cation, Tizthek was translated Beckford professes never to have known the , translator, but thought his work well done. In 1790, ha sat for Hindon ; in 1794, lie accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and again left England. He fixed his residence in Tortuga', purchased an estate near Cintra, and occupied for a time that "paradise" which Byron commemorated in Harold. Tormented by unrest, he returned to England; and in 1801, the splendid furniture of Fonthill was sold by auction, and the next year his valuable collection, of pictures was disposed of in London. These disper sions were no sooner made than he begun a new collection of books, pictures, furniture, curiosities, and proceeded to erect a new building at Fonthill, the most prominent feature of which was a tower above 260 ft. high. Beckford resided at Fonthill till 1822,
when in one of those strange vagaries of feeling, of width his life was so full, he sold the estate and house, with all its rare and far-gathered contents, to col. Farquhar for £330,000. Soon after, the great tower, which had been raised on au insecure founda tion, came to the ground. On the sale of Fonthill. Bcckford removed to Bath, and immediately proceeded to erect another lofty building, the plan of which also included a tower, but this time not more than 100 ft. high. While residing there, he did not mingle in Bath society, and the most improbable stories concerning the rich and morose genius in their neighborhood were circulated among the citizens, and were believed by them. During all his life, Beckford was a hard-working student, and was devoured by a passion for books. Sonic of his purchases were perfectly imperial in their way. He bought Gibbon's library at Lausanne, to amuse himself when he happened to be in that neighborhood. He went there; read in the fierce way that he wrote, three days and two nights at a sitting; grew weary of his purchase: and handed it over to his physician, 1)r. Scholl. Up till 1834, he had published nothing since Vathek. but in that year the literary silence of half a century was broken by the appearance of a series of letters, entitled Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, in two volumes. In the same year he republished his Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters; and in 1835, he issued another volume, entitled Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaca and Batalha, made in June, 1794. From the period of this last publication till his death, which took place on the 2d of May, 1844, he lived in the deepest retirement.
Beckford, since the publication of his Arabian tale, has been a power in English literature. His wit, his sarcasm, his power of graphic description, may be seen in his journal and letters; and his higher faculties of imaginative conception and delineation reign in the unmatched passages that shadow forth in gloom and glory the '• Hall of Eblis."