quently; he amused, delighted, and instructed her. As a painter, she could not but wish to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house; she visited him; her visits were returned. Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society she transferred by association to his person. She had now lived for upwards of thirty years in a state of celibacy and seclusion, and as her sensibilities were exquisitely acute, she felt this sort of banishment from social charities more painfully than persons in general are likely to feel it. The sentiments which Mr. Fuseli excited in her mind taught her the secret to which she was in a manner a stranger. Let it not, however, be imagined, that this was any other than the dictate of a refined sentiment, and the simple deduction of morality and reason. It happened in the present case that Mr. Fuseli was already married; and in visiting at his house his wife became the acquaintance of Mary. Mary did not disguise from herself how desirable it would have been that the man in whom she discovered qualities calling forth all the strength of her attachment, should have been equally free with herself. But she cheerfully submitted to the empire of cir

cumstances.

The coquetting of a married man of fifty with a tender female philosopher of thirty-one can never be an agreeable subject of contemplation; but it is probable that Fuseli felt no disposition to abandon his wife and his duty, however culpable he may have been in permitting the commencement

of this absurd flirtation. Mrs. Fuseli, meanwhile, regarded the philandering of these originals with no easy mind. One day, when she seemed to be in a towering passion, "Sophia, my love," said her sarcastic husband, "why don't you swear?-you don't know how much it would ease your mind.'

To ease her own mind, Mary Wolstonecraft went to France in the year 1792. "One of her principal inducements to this step," says her husband and biographer, "related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had at first considered it as reasonable and judicious to cultivate what I may be permitted to call a Platonic affection for him, but she did not in the sequel find all the satisfaction in this plan which she had originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much pleasure in his society and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she would have found if fortune had favoured their more intimate union. She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender charities which men of sensibility have always treated as the dearest bond of human society. General conversation and society could not satisfy her; she felt herself alone as it were in the great mass of her species, and she repined when she reflected that the best years of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her mind, and for this purpose determined to seek a new climate and mingle in different scenes. It

would have been as well if Philosophy had kept her favourite daughter at home; but I shall lift the veil no further-those who wish to follow out the story of this strange person, may consult the pages of the gentleman who could not only admire, but marry her, and when she was no more, employ the pen, which wrote Caleb Williams, in a detailed narrative of her crazy and vicious career.

Fuseli sought refuge from the active affections of Miss Wolstonecraft, in the absorbing studies of a new and gigantic undertaking-this was the Milton Gallery of Paintings commenced in 1791, completed in 1800, and containing in all forty-seven pictures from the works of the illustrious poet. This magnificent plan originated with Fuseli, was countenanced by Johnson the bookseller, and supported by the genius of Cowper, who undertook to prepare an edition of Milton with translations of his Latin and Italian poems. The pictures were to be engraven and introduced as embellishments to the work. Of this task the poet thus writes to his friend Rose: "You, who know how necessary it is for me to be employed, will be glad to hear that I have been called to a new literary engagement, and that I have not refused it. A Milton, that is to rival, and, if possible, exceed in splendour Boydell's Shakespeare, is in contemplation, and I am in the editor's office. Fuseli is the painter. My business will be to select notes from others, and write original notes: to translate the Latin and Italian poems and give a correct text." Ill-health interfered between the poet and his task-the painter went to work with more than even his accustomed enthusiasm. It would appear, however, that Boy

dell threw obstacles in the way, though of what kind I cannot guess. They are thus alluded to by Cowper in one of his letters. 'As to Milton, the

die is cast-I am engaged-have bargained with Johnson and cannot recede. This squabble, in the mean time, between Fuseli and Boydell does not interest me at all; let it terminate as it may, I have only to perform my job and leave the event to be decided by the combatants. If Boydell was displeased because Fuseli had preferred the offers of Johnson we may then suppose that the Shakespeare had been to him a profitable undertaking-men in business seldom dispute concerning works which are not marketable. The upshot was, that Boydell was vanquished or was pacified, and the work, which perhaps had never been seriously interrupted, went on.

To this high task the artist brought many high qualities; but when the doors of the Milton Gallery were opened to the world, it was seen that the genius of Fuseli was of a different order from that of Milton. To the severe serene majesty of the poet the intractable fancy of the painter had refused to bow; the awful grandeur of the realm of Perdition, and the sublime despair of its untameable Tenant, were too much for him-though he probably thought them too little. He could add fury to Moloch and malignancy to Beelzebub; but he fell below the character of terrible daring, enduring fortitude, and angelic splendour, which mark the arch-apostate of Milton. The most visible want is in that grave and majestic solemnity with which the poet has invested all that he has

touched; and the chief excellences to be set against this prevailing defect, are a certain aërial buoyancy, and a supernatural glow of colour, which in some of these pieces fill the imagination of the observer, and redeem in so far the reputation of Fuseli.

Of the paintings which compose this gallery, The Lazar House is most admired by men of vertù: The rising of Satan at the touch of Ithuriel's Spear is the favourite with the multitude. In the first he showed fine taste and poetic tact, by omitting all which could excite disgust, and by giving a mental rather than a bodily image of the poet's meaning. In the latter he shows us our first parents asleep in all the lustre of innocence, and the discovered fiend starting up in his own likeness at the touch of the celestial spear. In the Lazar House he has handled a difficult subject with wonderful skill-in the other he has successfully shown the power which he possessed above all men of giving aërial motion to his supernatural creations. In the whole compass of art there is not a lovelier or more terrific scene than this-the naked and reposing loveliness of the new created pair, and the startled and louring looks of the audacious fiend as he rises "like a pyramid of fire," are blended into one strange but perfect harmony.

To image forth the undaunted fiend with horror plumed on his helm was no common task, but to give a true and yet an undisgusting picture of the Lazar House, seemed more difficult still. Let the reader only conceive how it was possible to per