He had a happy method of giving likenesses, from memory, of those persons whose physiognomic cast of countenance took his fancy; but the only portraits which he painted regularly from life, were those of Dr. Priestley, and Mrs. Neunham, a niece of Mr. Johnson's. The portrait of Dr. Priestley is very characteristic; and Fuseli always felt convinced that he should have succeeded as a portrait painter, beyond the expectations of his contemporaries, if he had turned his attention to that branch of the art. It has been considered by some, who mistake style for manner, that Fuseli was in all respects a mannerist. That his pictures always have a marked and distinguishing character is true; but if he had a manner, it was peculiarly his own, and it belongs to no other artist. It must however, in justice, be confessed, that a sort of family-likeness runs through many of his figures. But if the pictures which composed his greatest work, the Milton Gallery, be critically compared, one with the other, it will be found that, in the invention of them in particular, few painters have made greater deviations than he has done; no two being composed or painted upon precisely the same principles. As a colourist, Fuseli has never ranked high; for in his works there is generally nothing of that splendour which captivates us in the Venetian and Dutch schools, as they usually have the sobriety of tone which is more peculiar to fresco than to oil-painting; he was not unaware of this, and expresses himself thus, in one of his lectures on colour:--"Of this it is not for me to speak, who have courted, and still continue to court--colour, as a lover courts a disdainful mistress." But if, by the term colouring, be meant an adaptation of hues and general tone to the nature of the subject represented, then he may be considered, in the strictest sense of the word, a colourist. Yet, if we take a wider range, we shall find many examples in his pictures which must be acknowledged by every one to possess fine colour: thus, the back figure of a female (Sin) in "The bridging of Chaos," the child in "The Lapland Witches," and the figure of Sin in the picture of "Sin pursued by Death," may be adduced as unanswerable proofs of this fact. When the excellence of particular pigments to produce fine colouring has been the topic of conversation, he has said, "The colours, as now prepared in England, are sufficently good; it only requires the mind and eye to adapt, and the hand to regulate them."