virtuous ones, not because the tendency to right is not as vigorous as that to wrong, but because the same fair field is never given to resistance as to gratification.

Hard work, dissection, repeated and repeated hours of laborious imitation, are considered at an advanced period of manhood as fitter for a youth; why more fit for a youth than a man in similar predicaments? if a man be as ignorant as a youth, he ought never to be ashamed to take the same methods to conquer it.

Fuzeli, almost ignorant of all the simple elements of design, plunged at once to the highest efforts, and his deficiency of elementary knowledge harassed him, as he richly deserved, the whole of his life.

With a fancy bordering on frenzy, the becoming again a little child (as our Saviour beautifully says) when arrived at man's estate, was an effort of philosophy and a mortification of pride, a humility of spirit and an acknowledgment of error, I regret to say, Fuzeli had not common sense enough to reverence as became him; he found Nature did not come up to the uncontrollable fancy of his own outrageous dreams, and he concluded at once Nature was tame, and unworthy the admiration of a great genius; at the very outset he got into the wrong road, and through the whole of his life he obstinately maintained it was the right one; but every now and then his conscience gave indisputable evidence it was not easy, and that it was his pride, and not his conviction, which induced him to defend his error.

When painters let their imaginations take entirely the reins, before they are perfect in the language of their art, every day's indulgence renders them more helpless and more sophisticating.

Their great delight is perpetual invention, which, being

involuntary, is no trouble; not realizing or identifying one superb thought, not dwelling for years in completing the thought to the highest degree of excellence and perfection; but such men as Fuzeli, as soon as the relish of a new thought is over, fly off to another; content if, in spite of any deficiency of form, or any abomination of colour, or any violence of action, the thought be intelligible to themselves, and to their limited perceptions of the moral utility of the art, that is always sufficient.

To such temperaments the modest loveliness of Nature becomes a reproof and an annoyance: finding her simplicity an evidence of their own extravagance, they shrink from her with affected contempt and real apprehension :

"Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,

But boast themselves more comely than before."

Fuzeli's idea of a standard form was Greek and Phidian, but not being founded on a thorough knowledge of the component parts of man as a machine or a natural object, and being nothing but an idea from a superficial survey, vague and settled on no one principle of life, his representation of that idea ended in extravagance and falsehood.

When first I saw the Elgin marbles,* strange as it may seem, their length of limb and fire of action put me in mind of Fuzeli's general notion of figure; but, considering their simplicity, their beauty, and their truth, nothing could be more totally opposite.

In moments of caprice or temporary irritability, he would defend his style of art, and say it was above Nature; but if you took advantage of moments of confidential placidity of temper, he acknowledged his defects.

* 1808.

Style, as I proved to you all in the first lectures, is a result, and not a cause; when you know deeply the component parts of the machine, you know what in its condition is accident, and what is essence; but, if you are not so informed, you may and cannot help mistaking accident for essence, or you may reject essence in idealizing the model before you, and this of course would be not style, but absurdity.

No style of figure can be sound when so based, and to generalize on any other basis than knowledge-a deep scientific knowledge-must end, as Fuzeli's design did, in violence and mistake.

To the superficial, his works had a vast look of anatomical knowledge, because he obtruded offensively the little he knew there never was a greater mistake, and nobody knew this better than himself, for he had scarcely any anatomical knowledge at all.

:

I have heard him with great candour express great regret at the sight of dissecting drawings, that he had not deeply pursued the same course; for he had too great an elevation of soul, and too great a love for his art, to defend even his own ignorance when he was honestly convinced of it.

The people of England have been blamed for not relishing Fuzeli's works: this is unjust; Fuzeli, when he first appeared, astonished and attracted, but every year finding his works nothing but modifications of the first they had seen, of course they felt 'weary of such talented violations of nature.

His original conception of the Night-mare, spread his name over the earth: he, the inventor, was paid £30, whilst the engraver of it cleared £600! by the print.*

* From Fuzeli.

So far from blaming the English people for their apathy to Fuzeli in his latter days, so extravagant had he become, it was to their honour and credit they had taste to perceive he deserved it.

The people of Britain are often blamed for not having taste for this style or that. First they are told they have no taste because they perceive the extravagance of the German school; then they have no taste because they abhor the false view of Nature in the French school; but you never find them having these objections to Titian, to Raffaelle, or the Greeks. Believe me, to me these are evidences that my countrymen are organized to receive true impressions from Nature, and not false ones; I believe the people and know them to be in advance of the production, and if our statesmen would back their sympathies for great works, we should soon see productions which would put a stop to this calumnious and offensive censure.

Fuzeli, the whole of his life, was the butt of the press : all the critics saw his violence, but all the critics did not or would not see the poetry of his ideas, the beauty of his compositions,-encumbered, I acknowledge, by extravagance or deformity.

His beauties were often wilfully neglected to raise a laugh at his expense. Amongst all classes he was considered the painter of horrors; whereas his genius was essentially one of terror, a very different sentiment.

This is a distinction all students should keep in view: Rembrandt's Sampson, with the Philistines dashing out his eyes with a dirk, and a Saint being impaled, in the Louvre, are subjects of horror and blood; while the Ghost in Hamlet, Lady Macbeth listening before the murder, or Ugolino brooding over his dear children, are subjects of

terror, in which sentiment there is a great deal of pleasurable sympathy.

Not being advanced enough in art to make this distinction is one reason why Fuzeli got a reputation, which legitimately may be called a bloody reputation; and such was the horror connected with his name, that I remember perfectly well the day before I was to go to him, an introduction having been prepared by Prince Hoare, a letter from my father concluded in these words: "God speed you with the terrible Fuzeli.”

I never had heard his person described, and apprehended, with a sort of mysterious doubt, he was at least as tall as his own Satan, certainly hardly less than seven feet!

Awaking from a night of extraordinary dreaming, the awful morning came. I took my sketch-book and drawings, invoking the protection of my good genius to bring me back alive, and sallied forth to meet the Enchanter in his den!

After an abstracted walk of perpetual musing, on what I should say, how I should look, and what I should do, I found myself before his door in Berners Street,-1805.

I remember taking up the knocker with a nervous energy, but so unconsciously violent, and beyond the usual motion of the hinge, that it absolutely stuck in the air as if bewitched, increasing my mysterious fears; I stared at the knocker, as much as to say, is this fair? when, driving it down with great violence, the servant came to the door as if the house was burning! I stammered out my wishes, and was shewn into a room which did not add to my self-possession, for it was full of Fuzeli's hideous conceptions!-galvanized and spasmodic demons! Satans crossing chaos! witches, malignant