The death of Opie, which took place rather unexpectedly, in 1807, after he had delivered only four lectures at the Royal Academy, in which he availed himself of several remarks of Fuseli in his unpublished discourses, caused a vacancy in the Professorship, which was filled by the election of Mr. Tresham. This appointment he held until the early part of the year 1810, and then tendered his resignation, declining to lecture under the plea of indisposition. The Academicians met for the purpose of electing a Professor of Painting; but no one offering himself, all being aware of the great talents of Fuseli in this particular, they came to a resolution, that a law which forbids the same person to hold two situations, should be dormant in his case; he was therefore re-elected Professor of Painting on the 10th of February, 1810, and was allowed to retain the joint offices of Keeper of the Academy and Professor of Painting during the remainder of his life. A higher compliment than this could not have been paid to any man, and it marked in an extraordinary manner the estimation in which his talents were held.
CHAPTER XI.
Fuseli's prefatory Address to his resumed Lectures.—His second Edition of Pilkington.—He suffers from a nervous fever, and visits Hastings in company with the Biographer.—His Picture of Marcus Curius, and Letter relative to it.—Letter from Mr. Roscoe.—Canova's Intercourse with Fuseli.—Anecdotes of Fuseli and Harlow.—Letters from Fuseli to the Biographer.—Republication of his Lectures, with additions.—Death of Professor Bonnycastle, and Anecdote concerning him.—Death of Fuseli's friend and patron, Mr. Coutts.—An agreeable party at Fuseli's house.
On the 26th of February 1810, Fuseli resumed his course of lectures, and prefaced them by the following address:—
"Mr. President, and Gentlemen,
"Sincere as my gratitude and pleasing as my emotions must be on being, by the indulgence of the Academy, appointed to address you again, I should feel myself unworthy of this honour were I not to regret the infirm state of health, the unfortunate cause which occasioned the resignation of the Professor of Painting, and disappointed the expectation you had a right to form from the display of his brilliant talents. Severely, however, as this disappointment may be felt by you, it is a consolation to reflect that we still possess him, and that the Academy may still profit by his advice and practical abilities: but what can I offer to mitigate our grief on the awful decree which snatched from us his predecessor, your late lecturer, my departed friend? In him society has lost one of its best members, our Art one of its firmest supporters, the Academy one of its brightest ornaments, and you a solid, experienced, forcible, and lucid instructor. The innate vigour of his mind supplied every want of education; his persevering energy ruled circumstances, and made necessity the handmaid of the art; his judgment, at a very early period, discriminated the art itself from those vehicles of which he possessed, in a very high degree, the most splendid; add to these, that insatiable curiosity, which not only stimulated him to examine every system, and to collect every observation on art, but to court all relative knowledge, and whatever, though more distant, might tend to illustrate his argument, enforce his proofs, or assist his researches; and you have an aggregate of qualities, which, if he had been suffered to complete his course, would have enabled him to present you with a more connected series of instructions for your studies than perhaps ever fell to the lot of any other school, and might have conferred on England the honour of having produced the best combined, least prejudiced, if not the most lofty or extensive system of art.
"Such was your teacher:—to expatiate on the artist before his companions, admirers, rivals, and scholars, within these walls, which have so often borne testimony to the splendour and versatility of his powers, would be equally presumption and waste of time: that characteristic truth, that unaffected simplicity and air of life which discriminate his portraits; the decision, the passion, the colour, the effects that animate his history; the solidity of his method, his breadth and mellowness of touch, now fresh before us, with his writings, will survive and consecrate to memory the name of Opie."
Fuseli, this year (1810), gave a second edition of his "Pilkington's Dictionary of the Painters;" to this he added more than three hundred names and characters of artists, chiefly of the Spanish school, enlarged the notes given in the previous edition, corrected some mistakes in dates, and gave in an appendix a few names which had been omitted in the alphabetical order, and also many particulars of the great masters of the Italian school; the last he considered as too prolix for the body of the work.