and engraver, Mr. Houghton, drew an admirable likeness of him
in this state of dignified extravagance. He is sitting back in his
chair, leaning on his hand, but looking ready to pounce withal. His
notion of repose was like that of Pistol.

"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 fantastic as their minds. One gentleman, of
the existence of whose trousers 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.

"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 licences 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 childlike 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 who 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 laugh
was equine, and showed his teeth upwards at the sides. Wordsworth, who
notices similar mysterious manifestations on the part of donkeys, would
have thought it ominous. Bonnycastle was extremely fond of quoting
Shakespeare and telling stories, and if the _Edinburgh Review_ had just
come out, would have given us all the jokes in it. He had once a
hypochondriacal disorder of long duration, and he told us that he should
never forget the comfortable sensation given him one night during this
disorder by his knocking a landlord that was insolent to him down the
man's staircase. On the strength of this piece of energy (having fir