f prints, after his designs, for Shakspeare and Cowper,
exhibit a chaos of mingled genius and absurdity, such as, perhaps, was
never before seen. He endeavored to bring Michael Angelo's apostles and
prophets, with their superhuman ponderousness of intention, into the
common-places of modern life. A student reading in a garden, is all over
intensity of muscle; and the quiet tea-table scene in Cowper, he has
turned into a preposterous conspiracy of huge men and women, all bent on
showing their thews and postures, with dresses as fantastical as their
minds. One gentleman, of the existence of whose trowsers you are not
aware till you see the terminating line at the ankle, is sitting and
looking grim on a sofa, with his hat on and no waistcoat. Yet there is
real genius in his designs for Milton, though disturbed, as usual, by
strainings after the energetic. His most extraordinary mistake, after
all, is said to have been on the subject of his coloring. It was a sort
of livid green, like brass diseased. Yet they say, that when praised for
one of his pictures, he would modestly observe, "It is a pretty color."
This might have been thought a jest on his part, if remarkable stories
were not told of the mistakes made by other people with regard to color.
Sight seems the least agreed upon, of all the senses.

Fuseli was lively and interesting in conversation, but not without his
usual faults of violence and pretension. Nor was he always as decorous
as an old man ought to be; especially one whose turn of mind is not of
the lighter and more pleasurable cast. The licenses he took were coarse,
and had not sufficient regard to his company. Certainly they went a
great deal beyond his friend Armstrong; to whose account, I believe,
Fuseli's passion for swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be a
great swearer, and Fuseli thought it energetic to swear like him. His
friendship with Bonnycastle had something child-like and agreeable in
it. They came and went away together, for years, like a couple of old
schoolboys. They, also, like boys, rallied one another, and sometimes
made a singular display of it--Fuseli, at least, for it was he that was
the aggressor.

Bonnycastle was a good fellow. He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man,
with large features and spectacles, and a deep, internal voice, with a
twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate, like a horse. I
often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His lau