with a sense of forlornness, and burst into a flood of tears. An incident restored me. I had written a long letter to my father, giving him an account of my voyage and expressing my filial affection-now not weakened by distance-and with this letter in my hand, I inquired of a rude fellow whom I met, the way to the Post Office. My foreign accent provoked him to laughter, and as I stood cursing him in good Shaksperian English, a gentleman kindly directed me to the object of my inquiry." The embarrassment and tears thus described may strike many as suiting better the milkiness of eighteen than the firmer manhood of twenty-two.

After he reached London, we hear no more of the channel of communication which Professor Sulzer employed him to open between the literature of Britain and that of Germany. In what manner this was to be accomplished, I can find no account: he had common letters of credit to Coutts, the banker, and friendly introductions to Johnson, Millar, and Cadell, the booksellers, who all received him with kindness; but he was made acquainted with no man of influence or genius, and had to seek his way into such society as he might. His friends, the booksellers, obtained for him the situation of tutor to the son of some nobleman, whom he accompanied to Paris. This employment suited ill with the fiery impatience and untameable enthusiasm of Fuseli. He never told the name of his pupil, nor alluded to the success of his labours, nor was he willing, it is said, to have the matter mentioned. His governorship is supposed to have been short; and he returned to London to dedicate his pen to the daily toils of literature-to translations, essays, and critiques. Of such pieces he wrote nearly a hundred, but acknowledged none save a translation of Winklemann's work on painting and sculpture; and it required some nerve to make that acknowledgment, for the book, as has been mentioned in the life of

Barry, advocates the doctrine that British genius is unequal to the task of making noble works of arta notion which, however absurd, seems to have sometimes possessed Fuseli himself. The book, which Barry so bitterly answered, excited no general attention here. It is a part of the English temper to listen to such fantastic assailants with exasperating indifference.

Fuseli afterward tried his skill on more inflammable materials-he precipitated himself into the angry controversy then raging between Voltaire and Rousseau. The enthusiasm of his hatred or his love enabled him to compose his Essay with uncommon rapidity, and he printed it forthwith, with the hope that it would fly abroad to exalt Rousseau, and confound Voltaire. "It had," said one of his friends," a short life and a bright ending." The whole impression caught fire, and either angry philosopher lived and died in ignorance whether the future professor of painting in England was his friend or his enemy. Fuseli was afterward much ashamed of this production, and scarcely counted the man his friend who alluded to it. Armstrong, the poet, his constant associate, had once the boldness to tax him in company with having written it-Fuseli kindled up "like fire to heather set" and poured out his fury in both English and German. This calmed himhe then argued that his friend had no right to couple his name with such a work-but he did not deny it.

Though thus busied with tutorships and translations, he had not forgotten his early attachment to art. He found his way to the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and submitted several of his drawings to the President's examination, who looked at them for some time, and then said, "How long have you studied in Italy ?" "I never studied in Italy-I studied at Zurich-I am a native of Switzerlanddo you think I should study in Italy?—and, above all, is it worth while?" "Young man," said Rey

holds, "were I the author of these drawings, and were offered ten thousand a year not to practise as anist, I would reject the proposal with contempt." This very favourable opinion from one who considered all he said, and was so remarkable for accuracy of judgment, decided the destiny of Fuseli; he forsook for ever the hard and thankless trade of literaturerefused a living in the church from some patron who had been struck with his talents-and addressed himself to painting with heart and hand.

The first effort of his pencil was "Joseph interpreting the Dreams of Pharaoh's chief Baker and Butler." I have been unable to learn how this work was executed or received; there was probably no contention for it among the patrons of art, since Johnson, the bookseller, became the purchaser. It hung in his house till it become cracked and faded, when Fuseli took it home to lay what he called the villanous clutch of restoration upon it." The attempt was probably never made, and the picture was lost or destroyed. He had now lived eight years in England, and was in the thirtieth year of his age; his enthusiasm was unbounded, his learning great, his imagination of a high order, and much was expected from his zeal and talents, on whatever feld he might ultimately fix them.

At this period his literary compositions, especially those in the "Analytical Review," were wonderfully free from the peculiarities which mark the writings of foreigners. They have much the air of being written with the scrupulous fastidiousness of one conscious of the sins most likely to beset him, and anxiously avoiding the enthusiasm as well as the idioms of the German style. Perhaps those for whom he wrote such desultory communications, had shown him with a wet pen how to sober down the poetic aspirations of his vein, and finding resistance unprofitable, he submitted the full-blown flowers of his fancy to the editorial scythe with

composure. But when eminence in art brought him into notice, he resumed the original license of his pen, and hazarded freer thoughts and took bolder liberties with language. His German nature prevailed a little against his English_education-and it cannot be denied that it infused a dash of poetic fervour into his lectures and critical compositions.

The sketches and drawings of Fuseli were of a higher order than the works of his pen, and as art speaks a universal language, they were free from those deformities which are so visible in his writings. They exhibited a deep poetic feeling, acquaintance with the poets and historians of old, and a perfect sense of the heroic action and sentiment which the noblest line of art requires. Armstrong, the poet, his friend and counsellor, was not insensible of their excellence, when he joined in persuading him to woo the muse of painting alone. He no sooner formed this resolution than he determined to visit Rome. Armstrong accompanied him, and both used to relate that while they were descanting on the glories of the Eternal City and the splendour of ancient sculpture and modern poetry, their reveries were interrupted by the sudden grounding of the vessel. This happened near Genoa, they took to their boats, landed in safety, and hastened to the capital of art.

Fuseli had from his boyhood admired Michael Angelo in engravings, and he adored him now in his full and undiminished majesty. It was a story which he loved to repeat, how he lay on his back day after day, and week succeeding week, with upturned and wondering eyes, musing on the splendid ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; on the unattainable grandeur of the Florentine. He sometimes, indeed, added, that such a posture of repose was necessary for a body fatigued like his with the pleasant gratifications of a luxurious city. He imagined, at all events, that he drank in as he lay the spirit of the

sublime Michael, and that by studying in the Sistine, he had the full advantage of the mantle of inspiration suspended visibly above him. The flighty imagination of Fuseli required a soberer master; the wings of his fancy were a little too strong sometimes for his judgment, and brought upon him the reproach of extravagance-an error so rare in British art that it almost becomes a virtue. He was no idle votary, for he strove to imitate; he was no ignorant admirer, for he thus praises his great

master.

"Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner are the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted, and, above any other man, succeeded, to unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand; character and beauty were admitted only so far as they could be made subservient to grandeur; the child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants. This is the Terribil via' hinted at by Agostino Caracci, though perhaps as little understood by the Bolognese as by the blindest of his Tuscan adorers, with Vasari at their head. He is the inventor of epic painting in that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which exhibits the origin, progress, and final dispensation of Theocracy. He has personified motion in the groups of the Cartoon of Pisa; imbodied sentiment in the monuments of St. Lorenzo; unravelled the features of meditation in the prophets and sybils of the Chapel of Sixtus; and in the Last Judgment, with every attitude that