"Norbury Park.

"SOME one, who had a right to write what he liked, even nonsense ;-Tiberius, I believe, began a letter to the Roman senate thus: Conscript Fathers, you expect a letter from me; but may all the gods and goddesses confound me, if I know on what to write, how to begin, how to go on, or what to leave out :' his perplexity arose certainly from a cause very different from that which occasions mine, though the result appears to be nearly the same. Had I brought my eyes and mind with me, I might perhaps offer some tolerable observations on the charms that surround me, to one who is all eye and all mind; but she who is really possessed by one great object, is blind to all others; and though Milton could never have been the poet of Paradise Lost,' had he been born blind, blindness was of service to him when he composed it.

"When I saw you last, you wished me to point out the passage in Tasso, which appeared to me copied from the Homeric description of the Cestus of Venus, in the Fourteenth Book of the Ilias; I have transcribed it from one which I found here in the library :--

"Teneri sdegni, e placide e tranquille
Repulse, cari vezzi, e liete paci,

Sorrisi, parolette, e dolci stille

Di pianto, e sospir tronchi, e molli baci :
Fuse tai cose tutte, e poscia unille,

Ed al foco temprò di lente faci ;

E ne formò quel sì mirabil cinto,

Di ch'ella aveva il bel fianco succincto.'

“These ingredients have been tried, they have been tasted, they are the fruits of a lover's paradise; yet, here they are nothing but an empty catalogue; and if they have a charm, it lies in the melting genius of the language: compare them with the following lines from the Vision of Arthur, in Spenser.

"Caresses sweet, and lovely blandishment,

She to me made, and bade me love her dear,
For dearly sure her love to me was bent,
As when meet time approached, should appear;
But whether dreams delude, or true it were,
Was never heart so ravished with delight.

"When I awoke and found her place devoid,
And nought but pressed grass, where she had lyen,
I sorrowed as much as erst I joyed,

And washed all the place with watery eyn;
From that day forth I cast in careful mind,
To seek her out-

"Thus, as he spoke, his visage waxed pale.

Here is soul, action, passion.

66

Adieu,

"HENRY FUSELI."

CHAPTER XV.

Character of Fuseli as an Artist. His early style.-His ardent pursuit of excellence in design. His neglect of mechanical means, particularly as regards Colours.-His professional independence, unmixed with obstinacy.-His preeminent faculty of invention, and success in the portraiture of the ideal.-His deficiencies as to correctness, and disinclination to laborious finish. -Causes of his limited popularity as a Painter.-His felicity in Likenesses. His colour and chiar' oscuro.-His qualities as a Teacher of the Fine Arts.-His ardent love of Art.-Arrangements as to the disposal of his Works, &c.-List of his Subjects exhibited at the Royal Academy, from 1774 to 1825.

pen

IT now remains to speak of Fuseli as an artist, and on this subject it is not necessary to be very diffuse, having been favoured with the able article, to be found in the Appendix, from the of William Young Ottley, Esq., a gentleman who was for many years the intimate friend of Fuseli, whose talents as an amateur artist, whose knowledge, taste, and judgment in the Fine Arts are so eminently conspicuous, and whose claims to distinction are so well known to the public by his various works.

It has been shewn throughout this memoir, that the Fine Arts was the ruling passion of Fuseli, but that his father took more than ordinary pains to prevent his becoming an artist, and even checked his wishes to practise in the Fine Arts as an amusement; hence, the benefits which are considered to arise from that early education which artists usually receive, were altogether withheld from him. His style of drawing in early life was formed from those prints, which he could only consult by stealth, in his father's collection, and these were chiefly from the German school. From this circumstance, his early works have figures short in stature, with muscular, but clumsy limbs. But in the invention of the subject, even in his youth, he took the most striking moment, and impressed it with novelty and grandeur; hence some of his early productions tell the stories which they are intended to represent, with a wonderful felicity, and, in this respect, are little inferior to his later works; a circumstance which he himself was not backward to acknowledge. Fuseli always aimed to arrive at the highest point of excellence, particularly in design, and constantly avowed it. When young, he wrote in the Album of a friend, "I do not wish to build a cottage, but to erect a pyramid;" and to

this precept he adhered during life, scorning to be less than the greatest. Until he was twenty-five years of age, he had never used oil colours; and he was so inattentive to these materials, that during life he took no pains in their choice or manipulation. To set a palette, as artists usually do, was with him out of the question; he used many of his colours in a dry, powdered state, and rubbed them up with his pencil only, sometimes in oil alone, which he used largely, at others, with an addition of a little spirit of turpentine, and not unfrequently in gold size; regardless of the quantity of either, or their general smoothness when laid on, and depending, as it would appear to a spectator, more on accident for the effect which they were intended to produce, than on any nice distinction of tints in the admixture or application of the materials. It appears doubtful whether this deficiency in his early education, and his neglect also of mechanical means, will be detrimental to his fame as an artist, particularly in the minds of those who can penetrate beyond the surface; for if he had been subjected to the trammels of a school, his genius would have been fettered; and it is then probable that we should have lost those daring inventions, that boldness and grandeur of drawing, (incorrect, certainly, sometimes in anatomi