Page:Nollekens and His Times, Volume 2.djvu/448

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436
NOLLEKENS'S CONTEMPORARIES.

tion to dress, that I have known him to follow the height of Fashion's follies so closely, that in consequence of the enormous length of his spurs, he has been inevitably obliged to walk down-stairs backwards, to save himself from falling headlong.

Fuseli, when in company, was frequently teased by persons, who asked him what he thought of such a work? how he held the talents of such a man? and, indeed, some would go so far as to observe, "I wonder you can suffer snch trash to be praised."

To one of these persons he put the following question: "Pray, Sir, do you think I am to carry a shovel wherever I go, to clear away every dunghill I meet with?"

When Northcote was touching upon his celebrated picture of the lowering the Princes down the steps to their place of burial, so spiritedly engraved by Skelton for Boydell's Shakspeare, Fuseli objected to the hands belonging to a figure below, raised to receive the victims. "You should not," observed the critic, "have the fellow's hands so employed; he ought to be digging the hole for them: only think how awfully grand it would have been had you made him with a pick-axe—dump—dump—dump!" Upon which Northcote, who was fully