This wonderful work, engraved for Boydell's Shakspeare Gallery, is esteemed among the best of Fuseli's works. It is, indeed, strangely wild and superhuman—if ever a Spirit visited earth, it must have appeared to Fuseli. The "majesty of buried Denmark" is no vulgar ghost such as scares the belated rustic, but a sad and majestic shape with the port of a god; to imagine this, required poetry, and in that our artist was never deficient. He had fine taste in matters of high import; he drew the boundary line between the terrible and the horrible, and he never passed it; the former he knew was allied to grandeur, the latter to deformity and disgust. An eminent metaphysician visited the gallery before the public exhibition; he saw the Hamlet's Ghost of Fuseli, and exclaimed, like Burns' rustic in Halloween, "Lord, preserve me!" He declared that it haunted him round the room.
FUSELI'S "TITANIA."
His Titania (also engraved in the Shakspeare Gallery), overflows with elvish fun and imaginative drollery. It professes to embody that portion of the first scene in the fourth act where the spell-blinded queen caresses Bottom the weaver, on whose shoulders Oberon's transforming wand has placed an ass' head. Titania, a gay and alluring being, attended by her troop of fairies, is endeavoring to seem as lovely as possible in the sight of her lover, who holds down his head and assumes the air of the most stupid of all creatures. One almost imagines that her ripe round lips are uttering the well-known words,—
"Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy."
The rout and revelry which the fancy of the painter has poured around this spell-bound pair, baffles all description. All is mirthful, tricksy, and fantastic. Sprites of all looks and all hues—of all "dimensions, shapes, and mettles,"—the dwarfish elf and the elegant fay—Cobweb commissioned to kill a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle, that Bottom might have the honey-bag—Pease-Blossom, who had the less agreeable employment of scratching the weaver's head—and that individual fairy who could find the hoard of the squirrel and carry away his nuts—with a score of equally merry companions are swarming everywhere and in full employment. Mustard-Seed, a fairy of dwarfish stature, stands on tiptoe in the hollow of Bottom's hand, endeavoring to reach his nose—his fingers almost touch, he is within a quarter of an inch of scratching, but it is evident he can do no more, and his new master is too much of an ass to raise him up.
FUSELI'S ELECTION AS A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN.
Fuseli was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1788, and early in 1790 became an Academician—honors won by talent without the slightest coöperation of intrigue. His election was nevertheless unpleasant to Reynolds, who desired to introduce Bonomi the architect. Fuseli, to soothe the President, waited on him beforehand, and said, "I wish to be elected an academician. I have been disappointed hitherto by the deceit of pretended friends—shall I offend you if I offer myself next election?" "Oh, no," said Sir Joshua with a kindly air, "no offence to me; but you cannot be elected this time—we must have an architect in." "Well, well," said Fuseli, who could not conceive how an architect could be a greater acquisition to the Academy than himself—"Well, well, you say that I shall not offend you by offering myself, so I must make a trial." The trial was successful.