It is generally believed, that while Mr. Fuseli was at Rome, he suggested the idea of the Shakspeare gallery, which was afterwards so happily carried into effect by the late Alderman Boydell. It is said, however, by some, that the idea was purely accidental, and arose in a conversation at the diningtable of Mr. Josiah Boydell, the alderman's nephew, at Hampstead; that the company consisted of Mr. George Nicol, bookseller to his late majesty; Hoole, the translator of Ariosto; Hayley, the poet; and West, Romney, and Paul Sandby, the painters; that after dinner, the subject of historical painting being started, one of the party lamented the neglect of that branch of the art in this country, when the alderman observed that nothing was wanted but a stimulus for genius, which he would willingly furnish, if a proper topic could be selected; that Mr. Nicol immediately mentioned Shakspeare, and that the effect was electrical; every one present spontaneously exclaiming, that a happier hint could not have been thrown out. But whatever might have been the origin of the Shakspeare gallery, Mr. Fuseli painted eight very fine pictures for it, from the plays of "The Tempest," the "Midsummer Night's Dream," Macbeth," the "Second Part of Henry IV.," "Henry V.,” "King Lear," and "Hamlet." The last was his master-piece, and was inferior to none in the entire collection. The scene is that of the Ghost, and it is painted with wonderful sublimity of conception. There never, perhaps, was a greater testimony given to the effect of any picture, than was involuntarily paid to this performance by a celebrated metaphysician now living. As a matter of favour, this gentleman was admitted to an inspection of the gallery sometime before it was opened to the public. He began his scrutiny with the pictures on the side of the room opposite to that where Mr. Fuseli's Hamlet hung; but, on suddenly turning his head in that direction, he caught a sight of the phantom, and exclaimed, in an accent of terror, "Lord have mercy upon me!"

In 1788, Mr. Fuseli was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy; and on the 10th of February, 1790, he was elected a Royal Academician.

Between the years 1790 and 1800, Mr. Fuseli produced his "Milton Gallery," a series of forty-seven pictures, upon subjects taken exclusively from the works of our divine bard. They were exhibited during the years 1799 and 1800; and the extent of the painter's intellectual acquisitions, of his lofty, though sometimes certainly extravagant imagination, and of his fertile and eccentric fancy, was fully appreciated by the few who were capable of judging of such productions. Not a piece but had its own peculiar merit; though some were distinguished by a superiority over the rest, too striking to escape particular notice. Perhaps, of the whole, "The Lazar-House” was the most masterly effort. It has been well observed by an able critic, that from the poet's appalling, but somewhat sickening description, the judicious artist wisely obliterated all that spoke too grossly of human weaknesses; and retained on his canvas those "maladies” alone, which, residing but in the mind, admitted of most etheriality in their representation, and required not that the human form divine should be distorted, or curtailed of its fair proportion, in order to convey the desired resemblance. "Spasms," "epilepsies," "fierce catarrhs," and "ulcers," were left for the engraver of pathological embellishments to a book of surgery; but "demoniac Phrensy" is seen, starting from his iron bed, still entangled in the coarse rug, and still encumbered with the chain that failed to secure him there. His wife, worn out with the long and thankless toil of watching him, has nevertheless made a last effort to save him from self-destruction; but her strength had all been wasted by her former anxieties and exertions, and she sinks at his feet, unnerved in mind and body, and with little more consciousness than yonder infant that lies half lifeless, just fallen from the sterile breast of its dying mother. This latter scene is a beautiful episode of the painter's introduction. It is, to be sure, an interpolation in the text of Milton; but it is one of the few amendments which (notwithstanding Dr. Johnson) may be made without any "token of a rent." But who that has once beheld "moon-struck madness," can ever forget In the European Magazine;

the livid glare that flashes from her eyes? Her child is-vainly striving to win a glance from her; she is not aware even of its presence. In the centre of the back-ground is "Despair," tending the couch of gaunt "Marasmus:" "Moping Melancholy" droops, fixed, though fibreless, in the fore-ground to the right; and "over them," to complete the dismal spectacle, the gloomy, bat-like form of " Triumphant Death" hovers, and

his dart

Shakes, but delays to strike, though oft invok'd."

This exhibition, however, "pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general." In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, it was very unproductive, and after two seasons was closed. Of the pictures of which it had been composed, a few were sold, and dispersed in various directions.

On the secession of Mr. Barry from the office of Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy, in the year 1799, Mr. Fuseli was appointed to succeed him. He immediately began the composition of three lectures, his professional avocations not permitting him to prepare more at that time; which lectures, the first on Ancient Art, the second on Modern Art *, and the third on Invention, were delivered with great effect at Somerset House, in March 1801; and were published in the course of the same year, with a dedication to William Lock, Esq. of Norbury Park, Surrey.

Having held the office of Professor of Painting until the year 1804, Mr. Fuseli was then, on the death of Mr. Wilton, appointed Keeper of the Royal Academy; and there being a standing order of the institution, that no member should enjoy two offices in it at the same time, he resigned the professorship. However, on the death of Mr. Opie, and the subsequent

* The following note by Mr. Fuseli to his account of Leonardo da Vinci, in his second lecture, is a fine instance of that manliness of character with which, though far from being a vulgar leveller of distinctions, he invariably asserted the superiority of genius to rank: "Much has been said of the honour he received by expiring in the arms of Francis the First. It was indeed an honour, by which destiny in some degree atoned to that monarch for his future disaster at Pavia.”

death of Mr. Tresham (who never lectured), he was, in the year 1810, unanimously re-elected; and the Royal Academy rescinded the order above alluded to, to enable him to retain both his appointments. He soon produced and read three additional lectures; the first on the resumed subject of Invention, the second on Composition and Expression, and the third on Chiaro-scuro; but they were not published until 1820, Of Mr. Fuseli's profound knowledge of the history and principles of his art, and of the energetic and comprehensive manner in which he was accustomed to communicate that knowledge to the Students of the Royal Academy, they only can adequately judge who were so fortunate as to be his auditors; but the following introduction to his last series of lectures may convey to others some idea of the extent of his learning, and of the power of his English style.

"It cannot be considered as superfluous or assuming to present the reader of the following lectures with a succinct characteristic sketch of the principal technic instruction, ancient and modern, which we possess; I say a sketch, for an elaborate and methodical survey, or a plan well digested and strictly followed, would demand a volume. These observations, less written for the man of letters and cultivated taste, than for the student who wishes to inform himself of the history and progress of his art, are to direct him to the sources from which my principles are deduced, to enable him, by comparing my authors with myself, to judge how far the theory which I deliver may be depended upon as genuine, or ought to be rejected as erroneous or false.

"The works or fragments of works which we possess, are either purely elementary, critically historical, biographic, or mixed up of all three. On the books purely elementary, the van of which is led by Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Durer, and the rear by Gherard Lairesse, as the principles which they detail must be supposed to be already in the student's possession, or are occasionally interwoven with the topics of the lectures, I shall not expatiate, but immediately proceed to the

historically critical writers; who consist of all the ancients yet remaining, Pausanias excepted.

"We may thank destiny that, in the general wreck of ancient art, a sufficient number of entire and mutilated monuments have escaped the savage rage of barbarous conquest, and the still more savage hand of superstition, not only to prove that the principles which we deliver formed the body of ancient art, but to furnish us with their standard of style. For if we had nothing to rely on to prove its existence than the historic and critical information left us, such is the chaos of assertion and contradiction, such the chronologic confusion and dissonance of dates, that nothing short of a miracle could guide us through the labyrinth, and the whole would assume a fabulous aspect. Add to this the occupation and character of the writers, none of them a professional man. For the rules of Parrhasius, the volumes of Pamphilus, Apelles, Metrodorus, all irrecoverably lost, we must rely on the hasty compilations of a warrior, or the incidental remarks of an orator, Pliny and Quintilian. Pliny, authoritative in his verdicts, a Roman in decision, was rather desirous of knowing much than of knowing well; the other, though, as appears, a man of exquisite taste, was too much occupied by his own art to allow ours more than a rapid glance. In Pliny it is necessary, and for an artist not very difficult, to distinguish when he speaks from himself, and when he delivers an extract, however short; whenever he does the first, he is seldom able to separate the kernel from the husk; he is credulous, irrelevant, ludicrous. The Jupiter of Phidias, the Doryphorus of Polycletus, the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, the Demos of Parrhasius, the Venus of Apelles, provoke his admiration in no greater degree than the cord drawn over the horns and muzzle of the bull in the group of Amphion, Zetus, and Antiopa; the spires and winding of the serpent in that of the Laocoon; the a fine of the foam from the sponge of Protovulga his Jalysus, the grapes that imposed

genes, the p

on the birds,

.ote

with

tain which deceived Zeuxis. Such