fuoco,-Fuzeli, la fiamma solamente." Immortally said! a lesson to us all. "There are two things in art-the fire and the flame; Raffaelle had the fire, Fuzeli only the flame." In his occasional confidences he said he had made a mistake, but it was now too late to repair it; and that was a worse one. The Elgin marbles shook him deeply, and first gave him a dawning he was wrong; he was never entirely easy after; he tried to sophisticate, but it never succeeded, and he was blinded by foolish flatterers-the bane of distinguished men. His feeling was indisputably Phidian, but he had mistaken the way to render such a feeling useful to the world. Reynolds alluded to him, when he talked of artists thinking it was degradation in acknowledging—“ Nature put them out." I have heard him repeatedly say it, after trying to use a model as if Nature must be wrong and Fuzeli right, because she was not like his imitations of her! Very modest, certainly! In thus speaking in censure of a style which from its lazy and indulgent ease has peculiar fascinations for the tendencies of growing youth, and has misled hundreds to their ruin; yet I should regret if it be supposed I am insensible to his finest conceptions. His Uriel and Satan-Uriel on a cloud, watching with suspicion Satan who had deceived him, as "He throws his steep flight in many an airy wheel, is sublime, and never was surpassed by anything pro duced by Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, or Julio Romano, in their highest poetry of mind. When a boy running from school a print of it caught my eye in my father's shop-window; I stopped and gazed as if enchanted, I drank into my being its poetry with sensations in my brain unfelt before, and never forgotten since. Again, his Satan starting up in his own fiery likeness was sublime. His power of conversation was very great and very delightful, but he had no vigour of argument; a very entertaining collection might be made of his sayings. In all schools of drawing, chalk is rubbed out by bread. One night, a student gifted with more self-conceit than genius, handed his chalk drawing to Fuzeli with an affected humility, by asking him if he thought it wanted any bread. Fuzeli, perceiving he wanted to be praised, thundered out" Yeas, gate a loaffe and youse it all." Reynolds and Burke one night were standing in the plaster-room of the Academy looking at the students; another boy of the same description brought over his drawing to Sir Joshua, saying-"Very spirited, Sir Joshua!" Reynolds, amused, handed it to Burke, who after a minute's reflection what he could say to so high flown a gentleman, echoed his own words, "Very spirited, indeed!" This word " spirited" has been an ignis fatuus to thousands. Spirit must succeed hard labour, not precede it. Every dashing touch of a great master is a separate thought, to accomplish which in a dashing way hundreds of previous failures and previous deductions have led. Boys see only the captivating dash, and imitate the end, but shrink from the beginning. How many men and women of fashion have asked me to teach them to sketch; how must I begin?-simply, I have always said, as my pupils begin. Eight hours a day drawing and dissection for two years will do something, but four years will assuredly do more: the appalling look and faint reiteration of, eight hours! showed the simplicity of their accomplished minds. The result of this young gentleman's spirited efforts were natural-we don't know his name. A great characteristic of all the young men who were afterwards distinguished, was that in their youth they were listeners and not talkers when in the presence of older men of genius. I declare to you I am greatly indebted to this habit in early life at present; and I recommend to all young men never to thwart for the sake of arguing for victory; when a youth, listen and reflect, and inquire the next time; by which cautious means, you draw your superior into confidence: this was our plan, and by which means we gained knowledge we might in heat and irritation have lost. There is hardly now a day passes I do not feel the benefit of contact with Fuzeli's mind; granting he always overshot the mark, still it was only too far in the right road, and required caution before adoption: with the Greeks and the Cartoons as guides, any young man may be safe in any man's presence, however vicious may be the elder man's theories. One great quality of Fuzeli was, his accessibility to the humble and the poor student if he had a spark of talent; no matter what might be his condition of want or necessity, Fuzeli would attend to him with an attention as if he was a boy of rank. With people of fashion he was not a favourite; they were insensible to his merit, and feared his sarcasms; but it was principally his own fault; he could not patiently endure a young dandy of fashion? I ask, why not? I like a young man of fashion and blood; I consider him as a species; I like his manly defiance of a fivebarred gate; it is the same bottom which made him defy John, and get us our great Charter; and a charge of cavalry at Waterloo was no more to him than a fox-chase. Envy is the basis of the affected contempt of all people of fashion; Peter Tomkins says, they are born booted and spurred: granted; but that is no evidence they are born with superior power in their legs to spur with. Here is visible this fact incontrovertible, that they take their chance for the gifts of the Almighty with the rest of their more humble species for his superlative gifts, whatever may be their external advantages of situation or fortune. Fuzeli never did, or never could, resist a witty flash, let who would be before him; and as many people were of repute and station in situation and the world, he engendered enemies in every position; if he were being beaten in argument, he cut it short by a rudeness which stopped conversation altogether. Once an Editor had or was having the best of an argument about Milton, when Fuzeli thundered out, "The fact is, all Editors are scoundrels." Sir Humphry Davy was decidedly beating Fuzeli in argument at Johnson's* table, when Fuzeli archly said, "What is the use of Chemistry?"-"Why," replied Davy, "more to me than Nature is to you, Mr. Fuzeli." He never spoke another word. * The bookseller, St. Paul's Church Yard, where used to be assembled regularly the most eminent men of the day. His inventions were become so extraordinary in latter years, that it was asserted he ate raw suppers. Any one who knew him, will know he had no occasion to indulge indigestion for the purpose of seeing ghosts! Thus this highly-gifted man can only be held up as a beacon. No genius can palliate a contempt of Nature; for Fuzeli could have been silenced in a moment if he had been asked what he was doing?-Was he not imitating Nature to the best of his recollection? And if he did not think, on the whole, that as the longer he was absent from her the weaker his impression would grow, he had better have a model, he never denied that the only way to understand the essential of fine form was to know the essential from the defective form; and the only way to discover what was defective, was to ascertain by investigation and daily practice what was the essential to be imitated in painting. I It is all very well to say I am an inventor." reply, how is the world to know that, if you do not understand the language by which your inventions become known? and you never can be esteemed a great artist, however splendid your powers may be of unidentified invention. These means are called mechanical means, because even dull people can be taught to exercise them to a certain degree; but yet they have their pretensions to genius too, as Reynolds says, and the feeling for a whole denotes a power of mind and of comprehension almost as rare as invention itself. Had Fuzeli taken the pains to paint his inventions on the basis of the great masters, his name must have risen as the nation improved in taste; but he has no chance, |