Nothing human however is unmixed.  If Mary derived improvement from Mr. Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some of his faults.  In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that belles-lettres scholars frequently possess.  Of consequence, the favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites.  Homer is with Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection.  Milton, Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention.  The nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean Jacques Rousseau.  A young man embraces entire the opinions of a favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the opinions of his youth to a revision.  Smitten with Rousseau’s conception of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt and indifference.  One of his favourite positions is the divinity of genius.  This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no subsequent assiduity can amend.  Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search, in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure.  I believe Mary came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she went into it.

But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary, and this celebrated artist, remains to be told.  She saw Mr. Fuseli frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her.  As a painter, it was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house.  She visited him; her visits were returned.  Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him.  The delight she enjoyed in his society, she transferred by association to his person.  What she experienced in this respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished society condemn an unmarried woman.  She conceived a personal and ardent affection for him.  Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the acquaintance of Mary.  She readily perceived the restrictions which this circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any difficulty that might arise out of them.  Not that she was insensible to the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex, but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct.