At Rome he swore friendship with Fuseli. The Scot was the elder, but the Swiss the more learned. They had probably both quite made up their minds about art before they met, and what drew them together was very much the similarity of their opinions. Neither was liable to change of view, let who would be the teacher. Runciman no more took his style from Fuseli, than Fuseli from Runciman, and the unquestionable resemblance between their works was only the natural result of a similarity of idiosyncrasy. They both worked hard together, making painstaking copies of the great masters. 'Runciman I am sure you will like,' Fuseli wrote home, 'he is one of the best of us here.' No doubt Fuseli found him quite a kindred spirit--mad as himself about heroic art--given to like insane ecstasies--like pell-mell execution--like whirling, extravagant drawing--like wild ideas interpreted by a like wild hand, and in a like execrable nankeen and slate tone of colour. Runciman returned in 1771, and proceeding to Edinburgh, arrived just in time to receive the vacant situation of professor of painting to the academy established in Edinburgh College, in the year 1760. The salary was L120 a year. The artist accepted the appointment gleefully, and, had his knowledge and his taste been equal to his enthusiasm, few could have better fulfilled the duties of his office. Soon he began to dream of a series of colossal pictures that should make his name live for ever in the annals of art. The dream took form. There were but two or three men in Scotland who would even hear out the project. Fortunately he lighted on one of these. Sir James Clerk consented to the embellishment of his hall at Penicuik with a series of pictures illustrative of Ossian, by the hand of Runciman.