10-10-45 Newman MEMOIR. BY WILLIAM NORTH. WILLIAM BECKFORD, the author of the W following celebrated Eastern tale, was born in 1760, and died in the spring of 1844, at the advanced age of eighty-four years. It is to be regretted, that a man of so remarkable a character, did not leave the world some record of a life offering points of interest different from that of any of his contemporaries, from the peculiarly studious retirement and eccentric avocations in which it was chiefly passed. Such a memoir would have formed a curious contrast with that of the late M. de Chateaubriand, who, born nearly at the same period, outlived but by a few years the strange Englishman, whose famous romance forms a brilliant ornament to French literature, which even "Atala" is unlikely to outlive in the mem 266192 |