n started--all at once the old theme
is renewed, and the old ideas are redressed in all the affluent imagery
and profuse eloquence of which Mr. Macaulay is so eminent a master. Now
of the fancy and fashion of this we should not complain--quite the
contrary--in a professed novel: there is a theatre in which it would be
exquisitely appropriate and attractive; but the Temple of History is not
the floor for a morris-dance--the Muse Clio is not to be worshipped in
the halls of Terpsichore. We protest against this species of _carnival_
history; no more like the reality than the Eglintoun Tournament or the
Costume Quadrilles of Buckingham Palace; and we deplore the squandering
of so much melodramatic talent on a subject which we have hitherto
reverenced as the figure of Truth arrayed in the simple argments
[Transcriber's note: sic] of Philosophy. We are ready to admit an
hundred times over Mr. Macaulay's literary powers--brilliant even under
the affectation with which he too frequently disfigures them. He is a
great painter, but a suspicious narrator; a grand proficient in the
picturesque, but a very poor professor of the historic. These volumes
have been, and his future volumes as they appear will be, devoured with
the same eagerness that _Oliver Twist_ or _Vanity Fair_ excite--with the
same quality of zest, though perhaps with a higher degree of it;--but
his pages will seldom, we think, receive a second perusal--and the work,
we apprehend, will hardly find a permanent place on the historic shelf--
nor ever assuredly, if continued in the spirit of the first two volumes,
be quoted as authority on any question or point of the History of
England.

LOCKHART ON THE AUTHOR OF "VATHEK"[1]

[From _The Quarterly Review_, June, 1834]

[1] "Italy: with sketches of Spain and Portugal. In a series of letters
written during a residence in these Countries." By William Beckford,
Esq., author of _Vathek_. London, 1834.

Vathek is, indeed, without reference to the time of life [before he had
closed his twentieth year] when the author penned it, a very remarkable
performance; but, like most of the works of the great poet (Byron) who
has eloquently praised it, it is stained with poison-spots--its
inspiration is too often such as might have been inhaled in the "Hall of
Eblis." We do not allude so much to its audacious licentiousness, as to
the diabolical levity of its contempt for mankind. The boy-author
appears to have alread