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worse than its predecessor. "Fleetwood" is full of highstrained theatrical bombast, without one touch of nature, and it is also prosy and immoral. "St. Leon" is prolix and wearisome, without a gleam of genius. "Mandeville "

is yet worse; and "Cloudesley" is beneath contempt.

There was good reason why Godwin did not succeed in that branch of literature, in which he was ambitious of winning applause. In the first place his mental powers were only respectable and merely good intelligence is not enough for a master of fiction. Talfourd, prone in the warmth of his affectionate nature and the generosity of his polished mind, to over-rate the capacities of his companions, has said of Godwin, "he had no imagination, no fancy, no wit, no humour, or, if he possessed any of those faculties, they were obscured by that of pure reason." In the second place Godwin's early social position, (as the son of a dissenting minister, educated at a dissenters' school, and as such debarred from educated circles, during those years when men are most observant of trifles and most pliant) caused him to be as ignorant as a child, to his dying day, of the manners and tone of decent society. When he raised himself from the obscure rank in which he was born, and became the companion of statesmen and men of letters, he was too old to learn the subtle tricks and turns of drawing-room etiquette, and the demeanour and follies of the fashionable world. Had he been a great poet, of course the memory of the old slough would not have precluded his altering with circumstances, adapting himself to new positions, and learning the new lessons set before him; but, as has been often remarked already, he was not an extraordinary man, in the just sense of that term,—and in nothing did he exhibit the respectable mediocrity of his mind more than in being self-absorbed and unpliant.

CHAPTER XXI.

WILLIAM BECKFORD.

The history of the Beckford family-its humble origin, the means by which it emerged from obscurity, its mushroom growth, its meretricious splendour, the avidity with which its members were seized upon by the proudest families of our aristocracy, anxious, as the French peeress observed, to manure their impoverished soil, and its almost total absorbtion in a great ducal house which has, in the slow course of ages, devoured many wealthy upstarts, and shall devour many more-may be regarded by the philosophic student of our manners, with amusement and instruction.

Once upon a time there lived at Maidenhead, a tailor, who had two sons, named Thomas and Peter. These sons came up to London, worked hard, and throve. Peter's vocations can only be guessed at by us, but still guessed at, we think, with tolerable certainty; of Thomas's deeds there can be no doubt, for they are matter of history;—he was a clothworker and slopseller, was advanced to the then respectable office of Sheriff of London, and knighted on the 29th December, 1677. He, moreover, married a lady who was the sister of Sir William Thomas, Bart., of Folkingham, in Sussex, and the widow of John Eversfield, Esq., son and heir of Sir Thomas Eversfield, Knt., of Hollington. This was the first step made by the family in the direction of the aristocracy; and it is with this Sir Thomas that polite chroniclers commence, as a rule, their mention of the Beckford pedigree,--the Maidenhead tailor being regarded as a vulgar character, not to be introduced into good society.

Peter Beckford, Sir Thomas's brother, did one great thing

in life he begat a child, who bore the paternal name, and devoted himself to military and other pursuits. Pepys, who was on intimate terms (perhaps even had dealings in cloth) with the Beckfords, has an interesting statement in his diary concerning this young Peter, which we shall transcribe in full." A.D. 1667—8, February 21st. Comes to me, young Captain Beckford, the slop-seller, and there presents to me a little purse with gold in it, it being, as he told me, for his present to me, at the end of the last year. I told him I had not done him any service I knew of. He persisted, and I refused; and telling him that it was not an age to make presents in, he told me he had reason to present me with something, and desired me to accept of it, which, at his so urging me, I did." Without a doubt, Pepys here attributes to Captain Beckford a personal connection with the family tailoring establishment, and his doing so suggests the probability of the Captain's original military position, being only in the train-bands. It may, however, be only a careless way of mentioning the son (?) and nephew of a tailor. Anyhow, this prudent young gentleman, who persisted in liberality to such a powerful stateofficial as Pepys, made his way in the world. He rose to the rank of Colonel in the army, was made President of the Council in Jamaica in the latter part of Charles the Second's reign, and was appointed Lieut.-Governor (not Governor, as Lord Braybrooke asserts) and commander-in-chief of the island, by William III. This lucky fellow served in a humble capacity in the armament of Penn and Venables, which captured that important island. He died in the year 1710, leaving immense wealth behind him, and two sons, Peter and Thomas, who both lived to be fathers of large families. Peter, the elder of the two, the Speaker of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, died in 1735, and was succeeded first by his eldest son, Peter, who died (s. p.), and then by his second son, William.

This William Beckford quitted Jamaica, and became a

distinguished man in London. He was twice Lord Mayor of that city, and was its representative in Parliament. As a politician, he was intimately associated with Wilkes, in espousing whose cause he bearded George the Third in an ever-memorable speech in the year 1770, the year of his second mayoralty, and the year of his death. When Dr. Johnson ate that famous veal dinner with Wilkes, he asked the demagogue, with his usual delicacy of feeling, "Where did Trecothick and Beckford learn English ?" Upon this vulgar gibe of the Doctor's, Boswell remarks, "That Trecothick could both speak and write good English is well known. I myself was favoured with his correspondence concerning the brave Corsicans. And that Beckford could speak it with a spirit of honest resolution, even to his Majesty, as his faithful Lord Mayor of London,' is commemorated by the noble monument erected to him in Guildhall." Then comes editorial Croker, who mentions Mr. Bosville's manuscript note on the above passage, to the following effect :— "The monument records, not the words of Beckford, but what was prepared for him by John Horne Tooke, as agreed on at a dinner at Mr. George Bellas's, in Doctors' Commons." Gifford also says that Beckford never uttered one syllable of the speech."

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The offspring of the old tailor of Maidenhead (of whom we are strong-minded enough to think without emotions of scorn) had become numerous; and the descendants of the prudent Peter manifested a wise prejudice in favour of matrimonial alliances with those who were wealthy, or high-born, or both. The student of the Gentleman's Magazine (that glorious encyclopædia of family gossip) is continually falling upon announcements of the marriage of so and so Beckford, Esq. to Miss so and so with 3,000l. a year, or to a great titled lady, or the elevation of a Miss Beckford by wedlock to the dignity of nobility. Francis Beckford of Basing Park, Hants, married Lady Alicia Bertie, daughter of Peregrine,

Duke of Ancaster and Kasteven; and a Miss Elizabeth Beckford became the wife of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Effingham; and Harriet Beckford, the niece of the demagogue Lord Mayor, married her wealthy cousin, of West Indian estate, Andrew Arcedeckne, of Glevering Hall, Suffolk.

The opulence and aristocratic magnificence of the family culminated in the persons of the child and grandchildren of the Lord Mayor, or, as he was more generally known, Alderman Beckford. The alderman married Maria, daughter and co-heir of the Hon. George Hamilton, M.P. for Wells (a very wealthy man), the second surviving son of James, sixth Earl of Abercorn, and by her had one only child and heir, William Beckford, Esq., the author of " Vathek," and the subject of this memoir. This lady, moreover, was descended from a female branch of the ancient Scotch family, Hannay, of which Mr. James Hannay, the brilliant novelist, is a member.

Alderman Beckford (as has been already stated) died in the year 1770, during his second mayoralty,- perchance,' said his political enemies,-'punished with death for his impious insolence to George the Third.' His heir, William Beckford, was then only ten years old. The Alderman's death was really caused by his parsimony, which was as remarkable as his profusion; positively with all his wealth he allowed the gout to kill him, from denying himself through motives of economy a proper quantity of Madeira wine.

As one destined on arrival at manhood to enter upon the enjoyment of a princely fortune, and as a member of the noble family of Hamilton, young Beckford was wisely educated in such a manner that he should adorn his distinguished position. Even before his father's death the advice of Lord Camden and of Chatham had been sought as to the best course of instruction that could be prosecuted by the infant Attalus; and after the alderman's demise, no pains were

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