:

or over the whole that this was the condition on which, and the limits within which, the ancients permitted invention to represent what was strictly speaking impossible, we may with plausibility surmise from the picture of Zeuxis, described by Lucian in the memoir to which he has prefixed that painter's name, who was probably one of the first adventurers in this species of imagery. Zeuxis had painted a family of Centaurs the dam, a beautiful female to the middle, with the lower parts gradually sliding into the most exquisite forms of a young Thessalian mare, half reclined in playful repose, and gently pawing the velvet ground, offered her human nipple to one infant centaur, whilst another greedily sucked the feline udder below, but both with their eyes turned up to a lion whelp held over them by the male centaur, their father, rising above the hillock on which the female reclined, a grim feature, but whose ferocity was somewhat tempered by a smile.

"This picture the artist exhibited, expecting that justice from the penetration of the public which the genius deserved that taught him to give plausibility to a compound of heterogeneous forms, to inspire them with suitable soul, and to imitate the laws of existence; he was mistaken. The novelty of the conceit eclipsed the art that had embodied it; the artist was absorbed in his subject, and the unbounded praise bestowed was that of idle restless curiosity gratified. Sick of gods and goddesses, of demigods and pure human combinations, the Athenians panted only for what was new. The artist, as haughty as irritable, ordered his picture to be withdrawn. Cover it, Micchio,'

said he to his attendant, cover it, and carry it home, for this mob stick only to the clay of our art.' Such were the limits set to invention by the ancients: secure within these it defied the ridicule thrown on that grotesque conglutination which Horace exposes: guarded by these, their mythology scattered its metamorphoses, made every element its tributary, and transmitted the privilege to us on equal conditions. Their Scylla and our Portress of Hell-their dæmons and our spectres―the shade of Patroclus and the ghost of Hamlet-their naïads, nymphs and oreads, and our sylphs, gnomes and fairies-their furies and our witches-differ less in essence than in local temporary social modifications: their common origin was fancy operating upon the materials of nature, assisted by legendary tradition and the curiosity implanted in us of diving into the invisible; and they are suffered or invited to mix with or superintend real agency, in proportion to the analogy which we discover between them and ourselves. Pindar praises Homer less for that winged power' which whirls incident on incident with such rapidity, that, absorbed by the whole and drawn from the impossibility of single parts, we swallow a tale too gross to be believed in a dream, than for the greater power by which he contrived to connect his imaginary creation with the realities of nature and human passions: without this, the fiction of the poet and the painter will leave us rather stupified by its insolence than impressed by its power; it will be considered only as a superior kind of legerdemain-an exertion of ingenuity to no adequate end."

The chief aim of the new Professor was to impress on his audience a sense of the nobleness of art, and the high purposes to which alone it ought to be dedicated. With his own pencil he endeavoured to obey his own maxims, and the subjects which he painted were all in their nature poetical. Neither the advice of friends, the taunts of enemies, nor the offers of the wealthy, could induce him to descend farther down the scale of art. Like some of the old preachers, who, in their fierce sermons, ordered the profane and those who were not chosen, to rise and depart, he dismissed from his lecture-room all students with sordid minds, who looked upon art as the way to gain-and who had none of the fervour of natural genius. On those who made mere fac-similes of human life, or who painted new-mown meadows, or well-fed oxen, he had little mercy. He asserted in conversation, if not in lectures, that the Royal Academy robbed the plough and the shoemaker's stall of very meritorious persons, and that many came to the sculptor's chisel and the painter's pencil, who might have handled the joiner's plane or the tailor's scissors with greater advantage to the public and profit to themselves.

To support his theory of Invention, he was ready with illustration from ancient lore and the stores of an inexhaustible imagination. On one occasion he introduced the following happy quotation from Quintilian :- "We give,” says that eminent Roman, "the name of visions to what the Greeks call phantasies: that power by which the images of ancient things are represented by the mind with the energy of objects moving before

our eyes he who conceives these rightly will be a master of passions; his is that well-tempered fancy which can imagine things, voices, acts, as they really exist—a power, perhaps, in a great measure, dependent on our will. For if those images so pursue us when our minds are in a state of rest, or fondly fed by hope, or in a kind of waking dream; that are seen to travel, to sail, to fight, to harangue in public, or disposes of riches we possess not, and all this with an air of reality, why should we not turn to account this view of the mind? Suppose I am to plead the case of a murdered man, why should not every supposable circumstance of the act float before my eyes? Shall I not see the murderer, unawares, rush in upon him-in vain he tries to escape-see how pale he turns-hear you not his shrieks-his entreaties? -do you not see him flying, struck, falling? Will not his blood, his ashy semblance, his groans, his last expiring gasp, seize on every mind?”

"By this radiant recollection of associated ideas," continues Fuseli, "the spontaneous ebullitions of nature, selected by observation, treasured by memory, classed by sensibility and judgment, Shakespeare became the supreme master of passions and the ruler of our hearts: this embodied his Falstaff and his Shylock-Hamlet and LearJuliet and Rosalind. By this power he saw Warwick uncover the corpse of Gloucester and swear to his assassination and his tugs for life: by this he made Banquo see the Weird Sisters bubble up from earth, and in their own air vanish: this is the hand that struck upon the bell when Macbeth's drink was ready, and from her chamber

pushed his dreaming wife once more to methodize the murder of her guest:—and this was the power of Theon; such was the unpremeditated conception which inspired him with the idea of that warrior, who, in the words of Ælian, seemed to embody the terrible graces and the enthusiastic furor of the God of War. Impetuous he rushed onward to oppose the sudden incursion of enemieswith shield thrown forward and high brandished falchion, his step, as he swept on, seemed to devour the ground; his eye flashed defiance-you fancied to hear his voice his looks denounce perdition and slaughter without mercy. figure, single, and without other accompaniments of war than what the havoc of the distance showed, Theon deemed sufficient to answer the impression he intended to make on those whom he had selected to inspect it. He kept it covered till a trumpet, after a prelude of martial symphonies, at once by his command blew with an invigorated fierceness a signal of attack—the curtain dropped

His

the terrific figure appeared to start from the canvass, and irresistibly assailed the astonished eyes of the assembly."

Not the least valuable parts of Fuseli's lectures are those in which he, for the illustration of his own opinions, describes and compares particular works of the great masters. The Lecture on Expression (published in 1820) is especially rich in passages of this kind, nor perhaps has Vasari himself surpassed, even in his famous description of Giorgione's St. Mark, the effect produced by the style of Fuseli in treating of the Samson of