The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-01 00:00:00

'rum a

cr.-rain

lan seven

night of extraordinary dreaming, the awful morning came.
I took my sketch-hook and drawings, in ki“g the pro-
tection of my gotd genius to bring me back alive, and
galled forth to meet the enchanter in his den ! Aft, r an
ab,tracted aaik of perpetual musing, on what I should
say. how I should look, and what I s .ould do, I found
myself b fore his &-;or in Berners-ctreet,—lB;.;s. I re-
member taking up the knocker with a nervous energy,

tion of the hinge, that it absolutely stud( in the air as it'
bewitched, incieasirg rn mysterious fears. I stared at
the knocker, as much as to say, is this fair? when, dri-
ving it down with great viol,nce, the servant came to the
door as if the house was burning! 1 stammered out my
wishes, and was shown into a room which did not add to
my self-pos.ession, for it was full of Fuzeli's hideous
conceptions! galvanised and
.spasmodic deforms! Satans
crossing chaos! witches, malignant and ugly, brewing
their iii,:antations! Medusa's snaky head! Paulo and
FranceSC3. Lady Macbeth, and the dreadful Lag rr house !
with its insanities, its diseases, and its pathos, vvindihg
up the hideous assembly. Imagine a young man of nine-
teen, fresh from Devoushire, viho had relished and
brooded ever the works of this wild genius from eight
years old ; hour after hour had Le dwelled on his sublime
conception of U iel and Satan, as he dived to the earth
io many an airy whe. I,—and now he was actually in his
room, and ac!ually heard his footsteps ! Men who ate
rought up in London have no idea of our freshness
feeling when float the provinces we enter it for the first
time, and see and talk to the celebrated men we have
heard of, and read of, and seen of from boys, for tears.
At last, whilst I was wondering what metatnorposis
was to undergo, the door slowly opened, and I saw a little
hand come slowly round the edge of it, which did not

wok very gigantic, or belonging to a very powerful figute,
and rnund came a little white-faced, lion•headed man,
dressed in an old Mime! dressing-gown tied by a rope,
and the bottom of Mrs. Fuzeli's work•basket on his head
for a cap. I was pet fectly amazed ! There stood the
des;gner of Satan in many an airy wheel plunging to the
(-arm, and was this the painter himself? Ctirtaitily not
such as I had imagined when enjoying his inventions. I
did not Irt;o.s, whether to laugh or cry, but at any rite I
was his match, if he attempted the supernatural! We
stared quietly at each other, and Fuzeli kindly under-
standing my astonishment and inexperience, raked in the
mildest voice for my drawings. Ilere my 'evil genius
took the lead, and instead of showing him :my btudi 8
from the antique, which I had brought, and had meant
to have shown him. I showed him my sketch-book I dui
not. mean to show him, with a sketch I had made coming
along, of a man pushing a sugar-cask into a grocer's shop.
Puzeli, seeing my fright, said, by way of ecc,iuragement,
" At least the fellow does his business with energy."
From that hour commenced a friendship which lasted till
his death, though of course my political opposition to the
academy rendered our meetings sometimes rather stormy,
and less frequent during the latter part of his life.—/lay.
don's Lectures on Painting and Design.