And the contagion spread.

For general and epidemic purposes it had to wait till the Germans had carried it over the North Sea and sent it back again.

For particular ones, it found a new development in one of the most remarkable of all novels, twenty years younger than _Otranto_, and a few years older than the new outburst of the "Gothic" supernatural in the works of Anne Radcliffe and Mat Lewis.
_Vathek_ (1786) stands alone--almost independent even of its sponsors--it would be awkward to say godfathers--Hamilton and Voltaire; apart likewise from such work as it, no doubt, in turn partly suggested to Peacock and to Disraeli.

There is, perhaps, no one towards whom it is so tempting to play the idle game of retrospective Providence as towards the describer of Batalha and Alcobaca, the creator of Nouronnihar and the Hall of Eblis.

Fonthill has had too many vicissitudes since Beckford, and Cintra is a far cry; but though his associations with Bath are later, it is still possible, in that oddly enchanted city, to get something of the mixed atmosphere--eighteenth century, nineteenth, and of centuries older and younger than either--which, _tamisee_ in a mysterious fashion, surrounds this extraordinary little masterpiece.
Take Beckford's millions away; make him coin his wits to supply the want of them; and what would have been the result?
Perhaps more _Vatheks_; perhaps things even better than _Vathek_;[14] perhaps nothing at all.