Cultural References
According to E. H. Coleridge, Beckford is the person referred to in Lord Byron's short poem, "To Dives — A Fragment." Byron describes a person of great wealth, "of Wit, in Genius, as in Wealth the first," who feels "Wrath's vial on thy lofty head burst" when he is "seduced to deeds accurst" and "smitten with th' unhallowed thirst of Crime unnamed." Byron also refers to him in Childe Harold, Canto I, stanza 22. (The poems are readily retrievable online from many sources, as is Coleridge's edition of Byron's works.)
Read more about this topic: William Thomas Beckford
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and superseded by elements of lower quality.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)