Although John Caspar Füessli, the father, had travelled much, and was not unacquainted with the manners of courts, and could practise, when he thought proper, those of a courtier, yet he had assumed the carriage of an independent man of the world, and acquired an abrupt and blunt manner of speaking. Yet, as he was endowed with learning and possessed of talents, his house was frequented by men the most eminent in literature and in the arts, in Zurich and its neighbourhood. He was also an author, and, among other works, published the Lives of the Helvetic Painters, in which he received considerable assistance, both in its arrangement and style, from his son Henry. This he was enabled to do, notwithstanding, to use his own words, "in boyhood, when the mind first becomes capable of receiving the rudiments of knowledge, he had not the advantage of the amalgamating tuition of a public school."[1] Henry Fuseli not only profited in his early years by the instruction of his parents, but also by the society which his father kept; indeed, he may be said to have been rocked in his cradle by the Muses,--for Solomon Gessner was his godfather. This poet and painter was the intimate friend of the elder Fuseli, and addressed to him an elaborate letter on landscape-painting, which is published in his works. But it was to his mother that Henry considered himself chiefly indebted for the rudiments of his education: she, it appears, was a woman of superior talents, and possessed, in a high degree, the affection and gratitude of her children. Even in the latter days of his life, when Fuseli has spoken of his mother, I have seen tears start into his eyes. Henry Fuseli showed, very early, a predilection for drawing, and also for entomology; but the former was checked by his father, who knowing, from his own pursuits, the difficulty of arriving at any eminence in the fine arts, except a man's whole mind and attention be given to them; and having designed his son Henry for the clerical profession, under the expectation of advantageous preferment for him in the church, he considered that any pursuit requiring more than ordinary attention would draw his mind from those studies which appertain to theology, and thus be injurious to his future prospects. Perhaps, too, his dislike to his son's being an artist may also have arisen from the notion, that he would never excel in the mechanical part of painting; for, in youth, he had so great an awkwardness of hands, that his parents would not permit him to touch any thing liable to be broken or injured. His father has often exclaimed, when such things were shown to his visitors, "Take care of that boy, for he destroys or spoils whatever he touches."