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NOTES OF AN ARTIST No. III. 



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FUSELI. 







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MY recollections of the academy, continually present to my 



mind's eye, the figure of Fuseli. In my time he was keeper, and 

 always sat in the evening under the colossal Toso, in the school of 

 the antique. I was accustomed to consider him as a sort of hoary - 

 headed little sprite, whose office it was to guard by his presence that 

 fragment of a giant. It was not easy to divest my fancy of the idea 

 that there was something supernatural about him. Many were the 

 sketches the students made of him as he reclined in a large chair 

 under the powerful light of the lamps, either employed in reading 

 some Greek poet, or gathering subjects from a mystic romance in 

 German. His high sloping forehead, crowned with a profusion of 

 white hair ; his long nose, short chin, remarkable mouth, and pro- 

 minent eyes, gave to his expression a wild imaginative air, whilst 

 there appeared a lurking sarcasm and love of mischief strangely 

 blended with higher thoughts. A foreign accent assisted this im- 

 pression; when he spoke, his words rolled over his tongue like 

 Anglicised Italian ; to those unaccustomed to his pronunciation, he 

 was unintelligible. A gentleman whom I knew, after having taken 

 some pains to obtain an admission to one of his lectures, from which 

 he anticipated great delight, found to his bitter disappointment, that 

 with the utmost stretch of attention he could scarcely catch a sound 

 familiar to his ear. 



It was a curious sight to observe Fuseli, in his latter days, moving 

 about the Academy, attended by Sam, the porter, whose tall gaunt 

 figure contrasted strongly with the small person of the Professor. 

 Fuseli sometimes wore a broad-brimmed black straw hat, and he 

 walked as if his diminutive legs were struggling to support, not a 

 body, but his head ; which, still erect, seemed the most formidable 

 object opposed to the attacks of time the citadel not yet in a state 

 to be stormed. 



Fuseli has been described as the wit of the academy : he might be 

 also justly entitled the wizard of art he possessed the power of 

 opening to our view the hidden world of appalling abstractions. 

 The beings he produced " look not like the inhabitants of the 

 earth," " nor seem aught that man may question/' They own no 

 costume, neither are they naked ; their gestures are the contortions 

 of dumb fiends, or bodies in purgatory ; an ominous forefinger, the 

 index to crime or suffering, violently points their horrid purposes. 

 His capacity was too great to allow him to fail in depicting poetry in 

 her loftiest flight; even something of the sublime occasionally 

 gleamed from his pencil ; but his impatience spurned at the control 

 which a refined taste would impose upon his extravagant manner. 

 All his learning and he was no mean scholar all his knowledge of 

 the finest art, were unable to keep his love of the marvellous, his 

 relish of the terrible, within bounds. Some of his pictures give one the 



