g Lear_); 'Ghost of Hamlet's
Father' (_Hamlet_); 'Falstaff and Doll' (_King Henry IV., Second Part_);
'Macbeth meeting the Witches on the Heath' (_Macbeth_); 'Robin
Goodfellow' (_Midsummer Night's Dream_). This gallery gave the public an
opportunity of judging of Fuseli's versatile powers.

"The stately majesty of the 'Ghost of Hamlet's Father' contrasted with
the expressive energy of his son, and the sublimity brought about by the
light, shadow, and general tone, strike the mind with awe. In the
picture of 'Lear' is admirably portrayed the stubborn rashness of the
father, the filial piety of the discarded daughter, and the wicked
determination of Regan and Goneril. The fairy scenes in _Midsummer
Night's Dream_ amuse the fancy, and show the vast inventive powers of
the painter; and 'Falstaff with Doll' is exquisitely ludicrous.

"The example set by Boydell was a stimulus to other speculators of a
similar nature, and within a few years appeared the Macklin and
Woodmason galleries; and it may be said with great truth that Fuseli's
pictures were among the most striking, if not the best, in either
collection."

"A.D. 1787," says Northcote, in his "Life of Reynolds," "when Alderman
Boydell projected the scheme of his magnificent edition of the plays of
Shakespeare, accompanied with large prints from pictures to be executed
by English painters, it was deemed to be absolutely necessary that
something of Sir Joshua's painting should be procured to grace the
collection; but, unexpectedly, Sir Joshua appeared to be rather shy in
the business, as if he thought it degrading himself to paint for a
printseller, and he would not at first consent to be employed in the
work. George Stevens, the editor of Shakespeare, now undertook to
persuade him to comply, and, taking a bank-bill of five hundred pounds
in his hand, he had an interview with Sir Joshua, when, using all his
eloquence in argument, he, in the meantime, slipped the bank-bill into
his hand; he then soon found that his mode of reasoning was not to be
resisted, and a picture was promised. Sir Joshua immediately commenced
his studies, and no less than three paintings were exhibited at the
Shakspeare Gallery, or at least taken from that poet, the only ones, as
has been very correctly said, which Sir Joshua ever executed for his
illustration, with the exception of a head of 'King Lear' (done indeed
in 1783), and now in possession of the Marchioness of Thomond, and a
portrait of