He was well versed also in the works of foreign poets; but of these, Dante was his favourite, for his imagery made the deepest impression on his mind, and afforded many subjects for his daring pencil. "There was but one instance," he said, "in which Dante betrayed a failure in moral feeling. It is when Frate Alberigo, lying in misery in Antenora, implores him to remove the ice from his face. Dante promises to do so, on this condition--that the sinner shall first inform him who he is, and for what crime he is punished. But after Alberigo has fulfilled the conditions, the poet refuses to render him the service he had promised. That is bad, you know; faith should be kept, even with a poor devil in Antenora." After a pause, he burst out with Dante's description of the Hypocrite's Punishment-- "O in eterno faticoso manto!" "How well this is! I feel the weight, though I'm no hypocrite." He did not accord with the feelings of Rousseau, in an epithet bestowed on Metastasio, _"Le bouillant Metastasio!"_--"I do not know where he discovered this fire; I am sure Metastasio never burnt my fingers, yet he is sometimes beautiful." Fuseli continued, "_I tuoi strali terror de' mortali_, _&c._ (the Coro in the Olimpiade.) These are grand lines." His knowledge of history and its attendant chronology, was accurate and extensive, and few men understood and remembered better the heathen mythology, and ancient and modern geography. He was not ignorant of natural history; but that branch which was cultivated by him with the greatest ardour, was entomology, in which he was deeply informed, particularly in the classes _lepidoptera_ and _coleoptera_, but in the former he took the greatest delight; and in acquiring a knowledge of the habits of insects, he was naturally led into the consideration of their food; hence he was not unlearned in botany. By skill and care, he sometimes reared in his house some of the rarer English insects, among them, the _Sphinx atropos_, _Sphinx uphorbiæ_, and others. His great love for entomology induced him occasionally to introduce moths into his pictures, which he painted with great care and fidelity, and when much taken with the subject, he made them frequently incongruous. Thus, in a picture of Lycidas, from the passage in Milton, "Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, What time the grey-fly winds his sultry horn,"