With all
his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last of the
Goths.
CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
Beckford's _History of the Caliph Vathek_, which was written in
French, was translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, who had the
temerity to publish the English version--described as a
translation from the Arabic--in 1786, before the original had
appeared. The French version was published in Lausanne and in
Paris in 1787. An interest in Oriental literature had been
awakened early in the eighteenth century by Galland's
epoch-making versions of _The Arabian Nights_ (1704-1717), _The
Turkish Tales_ (1708) and _The Persian Tales_ (1714), which were
all translated into English during the reign of Queen Anne. Many
of the pseudo-translations of French authors, such as Gueulette,
who compiled _The Chinese Tales_, _Mogul Tales_, _Tartarian
Tales_, and _Peruvian Tales_, and Jean-Paul Bignon, who presented
_The Adventures of Abdallah_, were quickly turned into English;
and the Oriental story became so fashionable a form that didactic
writers eagerly seized upon it as a disguise for moral or
philosophical reflection. The Eastern background soon lost its
glittering splendour and colour, and became a faded, tarnished
tapestry, across which shadowy figures with outlandish names and
English manners and morals flit to and fro.
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