Note 338 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 3)

Fuseli’s quaint violences of speech were many, and gained in effect from his Swiss accent. He swore roundly, a habit which Haydon says he caught from his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. He said a subject should interest, astonish, or move; if it did none of these, it was worth “noding by Gode.” A visitor to his imposing, but unsuccessful, Milton Gallery of forty paintings, said to him, “Pray, sir, what is that picture?” “It is the bridging of Chaos; the subject from Milton.” “No wonder,” said the inquirer, “I did not know it, for I never read Milton, but I will.” “I advise you not, sir, for you will find it a d——d tough job.” He said, on looking at Northcote’s painting of the angel meeting Balaam and his ass: “Northcote, you are an angel at an ass, but an ass at an angel.” Once, at the table of Mr. Coutts, the banker, Mrs. Coutts, dressed like Morgiana, came dancing in, presenting her dagger at every breast. As she confronted Nollekens, Fuseli called out, “Strike—strike—there’s no fear; Nolly was never known to bleed.” He recommended a sculptor to find some newer emblem of eternity than a serpent with a tail in its mouth. The something newer (says Cunningham) startled a man whose imagination was none of the brightest, and he said, “How shall I find something new?” “Oh, nothing so easy,” said Fuseli; “I’ll help you to it. When I went away to Rome I left two fat men cutting fat bacon in St. Martin’s Lane; in ten years’ time I returned, and found the two fat men cutting fat bacon still; twenty years more have passed, and there the two fat fellows cut the fat flitches the same as ever. Carve them—if they do not look like an image of eternity, I wot not what does.”