He now offered himself as a candidate for Academic honours. He was not a likely man to succeed, yet he did all he could to conciliate the more influential Academicians, and certainly he had merits that entitled him fairly to look for the distinction. He painted a portrait of Northcote, said to be the best that had ever been taken of the veteran artist, and the number of portraits of him was very great. He also painted Stothard and Nollekens, and the well-known and admirable portrait of Fuseli. With this he took extraordinary pains, had numerous sittings, and was two whole days engaged upon the right hand only--a long time according to the art-opinion of his day, when it was the fashion to finish a portrait in a very dashing style of execution, after one sitting, and in a few hours' time. Mr. Leslie allowed Harlow's portrait of Fuseli to be the best. 'But,' he said, 'it would have required a Reynolds to do justice to the fine intelligence of his head. His keen eye of the most transparent blue I shall never forget.' But the Academy would not think favourably of Harlow. In later days Northcote sturdily declaimed: 'The Academy is not an institution for the suppression of Vice but for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The dragging morality into everything in season and out of season, is only giving a handle to hypocrisy, and turning virtue into a byword for impertinence.' There was only one Academician who could be found to give a vote for Harlow. This was, of course, Fuseli. He was accused of it, and vindicated himself--'I voted for the talent, not for the man!' He was seeking to estimate the fitness of the claimant for art-honours, by means of perhaps the fairest criterion. The Academy tested on a different plan. It was hard to say that Harlow's moral character rendered him unfit to associate with the painters of his day; yet such was the effect of the decision of the Academy.