Fuseli had now been more than two years Keeper of the Academy, which had afforded the students sufficient time to appreciate the value of his instructions, particularly in the antique school. And in order to mark their sense of the advantages which they had derived from his talents, they presented him, by the hands of Mr. Haydon, then a student, with an elegant silver Vase, the design for which, at their solicitation, was given by that eminent artist Flaxman; it bears the following inscription:—
TO
HENRY FUSELI, ESQ. R.A.
KEEPER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY,
FROM
THE STUDENTS.
1807.
The Vase, by the desire of Fuseli and the kindness of his widow, is now in my possession; and I not only value it as a beautiful work of art, but regard it as a tribute paid to the genius and talents of my honoured friend, whose memory will ever be held most dear in my recollection.
In the summer of 1809, Fuseli wished me to accompany him into the country for a short time; but as I had promised to pass three or four weeks with a relation and friend (who was much esteemed by him), the Reverend Thomas Rackett, at Spettisbury, in Dorsetshire, I could not accede to his solicitations. The following letter written to me while there, as it shews the disposition of his mind, and gives some account of his pursuits, may not be uninteresting in this place.
"Somerset House, 31st August, 1809.
"dear sir,
"Your letter of the 26th, which I found on my desk at my return from Fulham, gave me equal surprise and pleasure; nothing but yourself could have been more welcome, and I should not have waited till now, to present you in answer with a scrawl of mine, had I not been desirous of obliging Mr. Cavallo by adding a specimen of Lavater's hand-writing: several old parcels of letters did I turn over, but that which contains the chirognomic characters of my departed friend, I have not yet been able to light on, and am afraid it is in some bundle of papers at Purser's Cross, to which place I shall probably return on Saturday, and on finding what I want, take care to remit it to you for Don Tiberio.[55]
"The spirit in which you wrote your letter, makes me happy; a mind like yours, fraught with all the requisites for genuine pleasure, is sure to find it or to make it in every place; how much must you enjoy then in the friendly mansion which separates you from me and those real friends you have left here!
"Your account of the Nunneries you have visited, confirms Hamlets verdict: 'Frailty, thy name is woman!' How self-contradictory, that the 'animal of beauty,' as Dante calls woman, should exchange her claims to social admiration and pleasure, and the substantial charms of life, for the sterile embraces of a crucifix or some withered sister, by the dim glimmer of cloistered light,—lost to hope, and marked by oblivion for her own! Tyranny, deception, and most of all, that substitute for every other want, 'the undistinguished space of woman's will,' can alone account for such phenomena.