"You may by this time have forgot the contents of your letter: it contains a comparison between your pursuits and mine; and no doubt I make the most advantageous figure on paper. I am on a road of glory; you are only crawling about from the white to the brown bed. I should, however, not be very uneasy if I could, without a total change of situation, obtain a little of that "elbow-room" for my mind, which it seems you get by moving from a large house to a smaller one. Notwithstanding the success of my election at the Academy, and of the pictures which I have painted for the Shakspeare Gallery, my situation continues to be extremely precarious. I have been and am contributing to make the public drop their gold into purses not my own; and though I am, and probably shall be, fully employed for some time to come, the scheme is hastening with rapidity towards its conclusion. "There are," says Mr. West, "but two ways of working successfully, that is, lastingly, in this country, for an artist,--the one is, to paint for the King; the other, to meditate a scheme of your own." The first he has monopolized; in the second he is not idle: witness the prints from English history, and the late advertisement of allegorical prints to be published from his designs by Bartolozzi. In imitation of _so great a man_, I am determined to lay, hatch, and crack an egg for myself too, if I can. What it shall be, I am not yet ready to tell with certainty; but the sum of it is, a series of pictures for _exhibition_, such as Boydell's and Macklin's. To obtain this, it will be necessary that I should have it in my power to work without commission or any kind of intermediate gain, for at least three years; in which time I am _certain_ of producing at least twenty pictures of different dimensions. The question is, what will enable me to live in the mean time? With less than three hundred a-year _certain_, I cannot do it. My idea is, to get a set of men (twenty, perhaps,--less if possible, but not more,) to subscribe towards it. Suppose twenty pounds each annually, to be repaid either by small pictures or drawings, or the profits of the exhibition, should it succeed, of which there can be no very great doubt. "Such is, at present, the rude outline of my scheme: it is in this manner alone that I can exhibit that variety of picturesque ideas of which, I flatter myself, you have seen specimens amongst my productions on paper and canvass; and now, tell me your opinion with your usual openness. I am in earnest, yours truly, "H. Fuseli." "W. Roscoe, Esq."