to distress such a friend as Miss Moser with my own whimsical miseries:- they may be fancied evils, but to him who has fancy, real evils are unnecessary, though I have them too. All I can say is, that I am approaching the period which commonly decides a man's life with regard to fame or infamy: if I am distracted by the thought, those who have passed the Rubicon will excuse me, and you are amongst the number. Madam, your most obliged servant and friend-FUSELI."

In 1774 he sent to the British Exhibition a drawing of the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, and three years after, a Scene from Macbeth-both marked by much boldness and originality. His mind loved to range with Shakespeare and Milton -the Satan of the latter, majestic even in ruin, was a favourite study, and he imagined no one save himself could body him forth in all his terror and glory; the Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream contained images no less congenial, and he had already filled his portfolio with designs worthy of the wand of Prospero or the spells of Puck. His imagination-though he seemed not aware of it was essentially Gothic; his mind dwelt with the poetry and the superstitions of Christendom ; he talked about, but seldom drew, the gods and goddesses of Olympus.

In the year 1778 Fuseli left Italy with commissions for pictures in his pocket to a large amount; commissions, most of which, I grieve to say it, were afterwards ungenerously withdrawn. Such fickle patrons are not uncommon in the history of British art-the meanness of the great, and the sordidness of the wealthy, pressed sorely upon Fuseli, soured

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his temper, and brought on those fits of despondency which are the surest inheritance of the imaginative. He paid a visit to his native Zurich, and lived six months with his father, whom he loved tenderly. His elder brother, Rodolph, had settled in Vienna, and become librarian to the emperor, and his brother Caspar died in the prime of life, after having distinguished himself by several skilful compositions on entomology. Early in 1779 he left Zurich, to which he never returned, and came back to London with his mind strengthened in knowledge, and his hand improved in its cunning. With the reputation of an eight years' residence in Rome upon him, he commenced his professional career, and the beginning was auspicious.

Thus stood art at that time in England. Reynolds excelled all men in portraiture and wrought unrivalled and alone. Wilson and Gainsborough sufficed for the moderate measure of public demand in landscape. Barry and West shared between them the wide empire of religious and historic composition, and there was nothing left for Fuseli save the poetical. Nature had endowed him eminently for this field, and the nation showed symptoms of an awakening regard for it. No preceding painter had possessed himself of the high places of British verse. The enthusiasm for Milton, and especially for Shakespeare, was warmer and also more intelligent than at any former time; and Fuseli was considered by himself and by many friends as destined to turn this state of feeling to excellent account.

The first work which proved that an original mind had appeared in England, was the "Night

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mare," exhibited in 1782. “The extraordinary and peculiar genius which it displayed," says one of his biographers," was universally felt, and perhaps no single picture ever made a greater impression in this country. A very fine mezzotinto engraving of it was scraped by Raphael Smith, and so popular did the print become, that, although Mr. Fuseli received only twenty guineas for the picture, the publisher made five hundred by his speculation." This was a subject suitable to the unbridled fancy of the painter, and perhaps to no other imagination has the Fiend which murders our sleep ever appeared in a more poetical shape. Though the Nightmare was the work which caught the public fancy most, the Edipus and his Daughters-a work of a far higher order-was the first which he exhibited on his return from Rome. This is indeed a picture of singular power-full of feeling and terror. The desolate old man is seated on the ground, and his whole frame seems inspired with a presentiment of the coming vengeance of heaven. His daughters are clasping him wildly, and the sky seems mustering the thunder and fire in which the tragic bard has made him disappear. "Pray, Sir, what is that old man afraid of?" said some one to Fuseli, when the picture was exhibited. Afraid, Sir," exclaimed the painter, "why afraid of going to hell!"

His rising fame-his poetic feeling-his great knowledge and his greater confidence-now induced Fuseli to commence an undertaking worthy of the highest genius-The Shakespeare Gallery. An accidental conversation at the table of the nephew of Alderman Boydell, started, it is said,

the idea; and West, and Romney, and Hayley, shared with Fuseli in the honour. But to the mind of the latter, such a scheme had been long present; it dawned on his fancy in Rome, even as he lay on his back marvelling in the Sistine, and he saw in imagination a long and shadowy succession of pictures. He figured to himself a magnificent temple, and filled it, as the illustrious artists of Italy did the Sistine, with pictures from his favourite poet. All was arranged according to character. In the panels and accessaries were the figures of the chief heroes and heroines-on the extensive walls were delineated the changes of many-coloured life, the ludicrous and the sad—the pathetic and the humorous-domestic happiness and heroic aspirations while the dome which crowned the whole exhibited scenes of higher emotion-the joys of heaven-the agonies of hell-all that was supernatural and all that was terrible. This splendid piece of imagination was cut down to working dimensions by the practised hands of Boydell, who supported the scheme anxiously and effectually. On receiving £500 Reynolds entered, though with reluctance, into an undertaking which consumed time and required much thought: but Fuseli had no rich commissions in the way—his heart was with the subject-in his own fancy he had already commenced the work, and the enthusiastic alderman found a more enthusiastic painter, who made no preliminary stipulations, but prepared his palette and began.

Shakespeare presented an entire world to the eye of art; and to embody the whole or any considerable portion of his visions, would demand a

combination of powers not to be hoped for. As might have been expected, Fuseli grappled with the wildest passages of the most imaginative plays; and he handled them with a kind of happy and vigorous extravagance, which startled common beholders.

The Tempest, the Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, and Hamlet, suggested the best of the eight Shakespearian pictures which he painted, and of these, that from Hamlet is certainly the noblest. It is, indeed, strangely wild and superhuman-if ever a Spirit visited earth, it must have appeared to Fuseli. The majesty of buried Denmark is no vulgar ghost such as scares the belated rustic, but a sad and majestic shape with the port of a god; to imagine this, required poetry, and in that our artist was never deficient. He had fine taste in matters of high import; he drew the boundary line between the terrible and the horrible, and he never passed it; the former he knew was allied to grandeur, the latter to deformity and disgust. An eminent metaphysician visited the gallery before the public exhibition; he saw the Hamlet's Ghost of Fuseli, and exclaimed, like Burns's rustic in Halloween, "Lord preserve me!" He declared that it haunted him round the room.

Two of these pictures merit a more detailed account the Infant Shakespeare, and Titania. The first is a fine piece of imagination introductory to the series of paintings, and the other is scarcely less so, though professing only to embody a particular passage of the great poet. In the Infant Shakespeare, Tragedy is represented, a beautiful and mournful dame, nursing in her bosom the