To discredit this story, and press it into evidence that Hogg was an egregious liar, your true Shelleyan enthusiast does not hesitate in crying triumphantly, ‘Is it possible for any man, after a lapse of two-and-twenty years, to remember whether his friend on a particular occasion knelt on his right knee or his left knee?’ Yet I conceive no judicial reader will deny that the story bears the brand of substantial truthfulness; that the incident was just the incident to live in the spectator’s memory; that the story accords with what has come to us from other sources of information respecting Shelley’s womanly concern for children,—the feminine tenderness with which he nursed little Allegra in her infancy, and his own babes in their times of sickness.

Other pleasant examples are given by Hogg of the fine human interest Shelley took in the humble, and sometimes unlovely, children they encountered in their pedestrian excursions round about Oxford,—such children as the gipsy girl whom he visited in her parental tent, and her brother, the little gipsy boy, into whose hands he rolled the big orange, which he had brought out with him from Oxford, for his own refreshment during a long walk. It may serve the purpose of Hogg’s detractors to decry these stories as manifest fabrications; but to me they are evidential of Hogg’s substantial truthfulness, because whilst they commemorate just such characteristic trifles as are apt to survive far more important matters in our recollections of the dead who were dear to us long ago, they are the mere trifles which no fraudulent tale-wright would think of inventing. Only to the narrator, who remembered them feelingly, would such trifles appear worthy of record.

The walks in the country round about Oxford took the longer time, because of two of Shelley’s favourite diversions—his delight in pistol-practice, and the pleasure he found in folding and twisting pieces of paper into little boats, and putting them afloat on the surface of pond or streamlet.

His fondness for the former amusement affords another of his numerous resemblances to Byron. Like the Byron of Southwell and Cambridge, the Shelley of Field Place and Oxford, seized every convenient occasion for blazing away with powder and ball, and perfecting himself in the use of ‘the hair-trigger,’—a practice that would have been more remarkable in each of the poets, had it not been usual in the days of duelling for youngsters to regard pistol-practice as an important part of the education of every gentleman, who in his way through life might at any moment be invited to exchange shots at ten paces. To the biographer of the two poets, their fondness for this military pastime is the more interesting, because they lived to fire away at the same mark day after day during their residence at Pisa. That the sport in which he delighted in the last year of his life was one of Shelley’s favourite amusements at Oxford, we know from Hogg, who tells how the youthful poet of ‘mild aspect and pacific habits,’ used to equip himself for a country walk, with a pair of duelling pistols and a good supply of powder and ball. On coming to a solitary spot during a rural ramble, it was his use to fix a card, or some other suitable object, upon a tree or embankment, and fire away at it till his ammunition was exhausted. On one occasion he induced Hogg to have a shot at a slab of wood, about as big as a hearth-rug. Taking the pistol, Hogg discharged it at an unusally long range for pistol-practice, and sent his bullet into the very centre of the wooden target. Shelley was amazed and delighted at the goodness of his friend’s firing, and running to the board gazed intently at the place of the bullet’s lodgment. After satisfying himself that the ball was in the very middle of the board, he more than once measured the distance from the target to the spot where the trigger was pulled by the man, who had never before fired a pistol loaded with ball. ‘I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom the principle of veneration was so strong,’ Hogg remarks, in reference to the poet’s expressions of surprise and delight at the excellence of his comrade’s address with the weapon.

One may well smile at this tribute to the reverential disposition of the Oxonian, who despised the tutors of his college for their dullness, spoke contemptuously of his grandfather, held his father up to ridicule, wrote disdainfully of his mother’s mental narrowness, and had fought the whole tribe of his Eton masters, from Dr. Keate to Mr. Bethell. But the tribute was not altogether undeserved. All through life Shelley valued men for their worth, and honoured superior men ungrudgingly for their superiority, provided they were not placed in authority over him, or had not provoked him to antagonism. Had Hogg been his tutor, Shelley would soon have discovered flaws in his friend’s character, and unsoundness in his attainments,—would have found him overbearing, presumptuous, hypocritical, tyrannical.

Finding the pistol-practice lessen his enjoyment of their country walks, Hogg, with some difficulty, induced Shelley to relinquish the diversion; but the north-countryman was unsuccessful in his attempts to wean the poet from the other pastime, in which he delighted so keenly. On coming to a large pond in their rambles, Shelley, indifferent to the coldness of wind, even though it were a ‘cutting north-easter,’ drew up, took paper from his pocket, twisted it into a boat, and floated it out upon the glassy surface. If the frail bark succumbed quickly to the forces of wind and water, another bark of the same description was speedily fitted and launched for the perilous voyage. When the paper-boat was wafted safely to the opposite shore, no child could have been more delighted than the Oxonian student at so trivial a cause of satisfaction. Sometimes the player at this curious game floated several paper-boats out upon the water as nearly as possible at the same moment, and then watched the fortunes of his fleet with the liveliest interest. After leaving Oxford, Shelley often amused himself in the same manner, continuing to play thus childishly at the water’s brink, till he had made away with all his provision of waste-paper to the last scrap. Even then he could not desist from the fascinating pastime; but would prolong his enjoyment with the sacrifice of letters written by his dearest friends, and fly-leaves torn from volumes that he had in his pockets. It was told of him for the first time by an imaginative humorist, and has been often repeated for true history by dullards, incapable of recognizing and appreciating a humorous invention, that on one occasion after consuming in this way all his store of comparatively valueless pieces of paper, he manufactured a toy-ship out of a bank-post bill for fifty pounds, which he committed to the water of the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, when the miniature lake was more than usually agitated by a breeze from the northeast. ‘The story, of course,’ says Hogg, ‘is mythic fable, but it aptly portrays the dominion of a singular and most unaccountable passion over the mind of an enthusiast.’

The pond at the foot of Shotover Hill, lying on the left of the pedestrian about to make the ascent, was one of the waters near which Hogg (of the adamantine patience) was often constrained to wait, whilst Shelley folded and twisted scraps of paper into boats, with fingers empurpled by the cold. By that same water the poet used to linger till dusk, ‘repeating verses aloud, or earnestly discussing themes that had no connexion with surrounding objects.’ Ever and again on these occasions the curious boy, who developed into so marvellous a man, would throw a stone as far away from himself as possible into the pond, and then exult in the splash and disturbance of the usually tranquil waters. Hogg could also remember how his friend, with the blue eyes and disorderly hair, used to split the slaty stones into thin and flat pieces, with which he would gravely make ducks-and-drakes on the water’s surface.

That Shelley delighted in the scenery of the neighbourhood of Oxford we know from Hogg’s assurances. That the scenes, which delighted him in 1810-11, lived in his memory we know from the poem that was in the main an outgrowth of his recollections of the quiet garden, to which reference has just been made; and from the way in which he used in later years to dream of one particular bit of Oxfordshire landscape.

To this extraordinary revelation of one of the innermost chambers of a human soul by the soul’s own self, Mrs. Shelley long after her husband’s death appended this note:—

Why this horror, that caused Shelley to drop the pen, at this recollection of a common-place bit of landscape, justly styled ‘a tame and uninteresting assemblage of objects,’ beheld by him for the first time just five years ago;—no, not this horror at the recollection of so tame a scene, but this horror at recollecting how often the uninteresting scene had recurred to him in his dreams? Those who would know the Real Shelley, whose long locks, peculiar dress, and eccentric aspect, were matters of tattle and laughter in the common-rooms of the colleges in 1810-11, should ponder this self-revelation of Shelley’s own soul, and should also take heed of his widow’s note upon it. Let readers recall what they have been told of the way in which Byron’s memory, sensibility, and imagination acted and inter-acted upon one another; the memory stirring the sensibility, the sensibility quickening the imagination, the imagination stimulating the memory again and again, till the recollections of old impressions far surpassed the original impressions in vividness and intensity; and let them then observe how Shelley was similarly constituted, with a memory singularly retentive of particular impressions, a sensibility (apt to be roused to morbid activity by these recollected impressions), and an imagination no less quick at the instance of sensibility to intensify the pictures of memory. It was thus that the tame scene, so clearly and deeply printed in his mind as to be repeatedly offered by memory to his re-awakening consciousness, acquired a vividness that was in itself terrifying. But the terror begotten of this vividness was not the terror that made the poet drop his pen. Whilst his sensibility was being stirred to morbid and distressing activity by recollection and fancy, he was suddenly surprised by remembering how repeatedly the same tame scene had come back to him in dreams,—i.e. at the moment of the re-awakening of consciousness,—and in his agitation, heightened by perplexity at so singular a fact, the surprise affected him with horror, even as any surprise (one that is the merest trifle to a cool and self-possessed mind)—a surprise arising from the rustling of a leaf, the echo of a footfall, the shadow of a spray by moonlight,—is apt to plunge the agitated and unbalanced mind into the Horror of Perplexity.

Happy in themselves, Hogg and Shelley did not care to be happy with other undergraduates, either of their own college or of the other colleges. A few old Etonians, belonging to other colleges, occasionally visited University College, to see the whilom Atheist of their former school; but though Shelley was civil to them, and on the eve of his abrupt withdrawal from the University paid Halliday a farewell call, he showed no disposition to be intimate with them. Three or four other undergraduates, to whom the supremely self-sufficient Mr. Hogg refers loftily as harmless and inoffensive persons, also found themselves now and then in the young poet’s rooms; but no cordial pressure was put upon them to come oftener. Mr. Hogg and the freshman were sufficient unto themselves.

Necessarily known, under these circumstances, within their own college as ‘the Inseparables,’ the two close friends were also known throughout the University as ‘the Inseparables.’ How could it be otherwise, when they were seen by walking men and riding men, day after day (weather permitting) walking along the roads and over the meadows round about Oxford? Whilst both were almost daily seen together, it was seldom that either of them was ever seen ‘out of college’ without the other. Men who thus ‘keep themselves to themselves’ are never popular with the multitude from whom they hold aloof. There was much curiosity about the two singular young men, after the publication of the Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson (published on, or just before, 17th November, 1810), of which they were generally understood to be joint-authors;—but the curiosity was not flattering nor even friendly. It was averred that they aimed at eccentricity in costume and deportment; that they thought too well of themselves, and said by their looks, ‘We are superior to everybody;’ that Shelley’s turn-down collars (worn, of course, so that he might be taken for another Lord Byron, and capable of writing a better satire than the English Bards), and his blue coat with glittering (Birmingham steel) buttons, were unutterably ludicrous; that his shock of wildly flowing hair was a disgrace to the University; that known as Mad Shelley, before he was sent away from Eton in disgrace, he seemed bent on justifying the nickname.

If the gossip about the young poetaster and novelist had the note of malice, it had, also, the ring of sincerity, and was not altogether wanting in justice. Though the morning on which he awoke to find himself famous was still in the future, Byron had made himself a celebrity before he started for the East; and had not the success of the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (published in 1809) brought his peculiar collars into vogue with young gentlemen of poetical aspirations, Shelley would never have thought of wearing them to everybody’s amusement at the University. Possibly, his blue coat with glittering buttons was not more defiant of the academic orders touching costume than other coats worn by modish Oxonians of his period; but the freshman who donned it must have meant to be observed and talked about. Even Hogg admits that his young friend’s appearance was peculiar even to eccentricity, and that his long and bushy hair was remarkable, when all other undergraduates wore their hair short, and that, in consequence of the conspicuous superfluity of his tresses, the ‘little round hat upon his little round head’ had a ‘troubled and peculiar’ air.

Eccentric in his costume, Mr. Bysshe Shelley, of University College, was even more eccentric in his demeanour in the public ways. The poor scholar who fights his way to higher knowledge, whilst toiling for his daily bread as a clerk or craftsman, must needs read as he runs to and fro between his place of nightly rest and his place of daily labour, must con the printed page whilst eating his meals, and seize moments for study without care for his spectators. But though Hogg commends the Oxonian Shelley for seldom appearing by himself in the High Street without an open volume under his eyes, most people will attribute the needless show of studious zeal to a whimsical affectation rather than to sincere delight in learning, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Why could not Mr. Shelley read his books in those pleasant rooms where he spent so much time daily in writing letters for mere amusement, in correcting the proof-sheets of a comically bad novel, in playing with his air-pump and solar microscope, and in holding desultory conversations with an agreeable companion?

To appreciate this comical parade of scholarly enthusiasm, readers must remember how much time the undergraduate consumed in playing with paper boats and ‘making ducks-and-drakes’ at the pond under Shotover Hill. Why did the freshman, so prodigal of precious hours, thus affect the part of a student set on turning every minute of his time to the best account? What was his motive in figuring under the public gaze in a character so widely different from his real character? In answering these questions, readers should forget, as far as possible, the freshman’s subsequent greatness, and thinking of him as the Eton scatter-brain, judge him precisely as they would judge any youngster, who should behave in the same absurd fashion in this present year of grace.

The freshman, who read the Latin and Greek classics as he paced ‘the High,’ had other ways of calling attention to himself in the public places of Oxford. On their return from a stroll, in cap and gown, Shelley and Hogg were holding high discourse on certain Platonic questions, when they encountered on Magdalen Bridge, a woman with a child in her arms,—an infant that might have been taken clean out of her arms, had the eccentric freshman encountered no resistance from the lawful owner of the baby.

‘Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, Madam?’ the excited disputant asked in a piercing voice, as he suddenly caught hold of the long-robed infant.

The woman was still in the act of recovering the self-possession, of which so singular an assault had deprived her for a few moments; when Shelley repeated the question in the same penetrating tone and with unabated earnestness.

‘He cannot speak, Sir,’ the woman replied with respectful seriousness.

‘Worse and worse!’ cried the eccentric undergraduate, shaking his long locks in a manner that must have heightened the woman’s perplexity and alarm. ‘But surely, Madam, the babe can speak if it will, for he is only a few weeks old. He may fancy, perhaps, that he cannot, but it is only a silly whim; he cannot have forgotten entirely the use of speech in so short a time; the thing is absolutely impossible.’

‘It is not for me,’ replied the woman, eyeing the two youthful gownsmen, with mingled deference and consternation, ‘to dispute with you, Gentlemen, but I can safely declare that I never heard him speak, nor any child, indeed, of his age.’

Having thus troubled and frightened the worthy woman, for no purpose, except that he might execute an awkward and feeble pleasantry, the gownsman, who liked to be talked about, pressed the baby’s cheeks with his fingers, and turned away saying to his companion, ‘How provokingly close are those new-born babes! But it is no less certain, notwithstanding their cunning attempts to conceal the truth, that all knowledge is reminiscence: the doctrine is far more ancient than the times of Plato, and as old as the venerable allegory, that the Muses are the daughters of Memory; not one of the Nine was ever said to be the child of Invention.’

Whilst the freshman amused himself at Oxford in ways glanced at in the foregoing pages, how did he get on with the tutors of his college, and the other academic authorities? That he had no cause to complain of their treatment of him during the earlier weeks of his brief time at Oxford, he admitted in clear and noteworthy terms, to the Etonian who inquired of him in Hogg’s hearing, ‘Do you mean to be an Atheist here, too, Shelley?’

To this inquiry, whether he meant to worry, harass, and defy the tutors of his college as he had worried, harassed, and defied the persons put in authority over him at Eton, the University College freshman answered decidedly, ‘No! certainly not. There is no motive for it; there would be no use in it; they are very civil to us here; they never interfere with us; it is not like Eton.’

For the precise words of this reply, represented by Hogg as having been made by Shelley, the biographer was doubtless indebted in some degree to his imagination. But even the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts’ will admit that the tenor of the reply was something Hogg might have remembered. Bearing in mind also that Hogg disliked the University College ‘dons,’ and held them in bitter remembrance as the authors of his own academic disgrace, the same enthusiasts will admit that he was not likely to have invented such a piece of testimony to the general inoffensiveness of ‘the dons’ he detested. Even by them, therefore, it will be admitted that at this early point of his brief ‘residence’ in college, Shelley admitted that the ‘dons’ of University College treated him, as gentlemen in their position should treat a gentleman in his position; that they did not ‘interfere’ with him, that he had no grievance against them, or any grounds for worrying them. They were not like the Eton masters. They were gentlemen. This admission is the more noteworthy because Hogg (wildly wrong-headed and considerably less than historically truthful in matters touching his own and the poet’s expulsion from University College) in his bitterness against those same ‘dons,’ was at much pains to declare them no gentlemen.

If the ‘dons’ were civil to Shelley, it must be admitted that he was less than civil to them. One would like to be able to say otherwise; but the evidence is conclusive that the undergraduate was uncivil to the ‘dons’ of his college, and to ‘dons’ not of his college, both in his bearing towards them, and his speech of them.

On the very first evening of their acquaintance, Shelley withdrew from Hogg’s rooms at 6.45 p.m., immediately ‘after wine,’ in order to attend a lecture on mineralogy,—leaving his entertainer with a promise to return to tea. An hour later he reappeared, chilly and disappointed. The evening was raw and cold, and the lecture had ‘bored’ him. He would never listen to another lecture by the dull lecturer.

Coming close up to Hogg, and speaking in a shrill whisper, the young gentleman said with an arch look,—

Discreditable to the youngster’s intelligence and scientific knowledge, the story is highly discreditable to his breeding. Instead of being ‘uninteresting things in themselves,’ stones are things of extreme interest. If the lecture was dull, he was bound by academic etiquette and common social courtesy, to remain to the end of it. As the lecture was poorly attended, he was especially bound by politeness to hear it out to the last word. Leaving the lecture as he did, blundering out of the room with noise so as to attract the lecturer’s attention, he was guilty of an extravagance of incivility and rudeness to one of the Professors[5] of his University. The freshman, who in the first week or ten days of his ‘residence in college,’ could behave in this way to the lecturer, who had bored him, was a freshman who on the slightest provocation would be ‘an Atheist’ at Oxford, in the same sense in which he had been an Atheist at Eton.

A few days after this incident, the freshman (the brilliant author of Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne) discovered that the tutors of University College were ‘very dull people.’ One of these very dull people, in the performance of his official duty, sent for the freshman to speak with him about the subjects of study to which he should give his mind, and the lectures he should attend. The interview between the dull person and the brilliant Mr. Bysshe Shelley (author of Zastrozzi and certain Original Poetry that was not original) left the younger gentleman with a mean opinion of his intellectual adviser, and probably left the elder gentleman with a no less unfavourable opinion of his pupil. What took place at this interview shall be told here in the words of the pupil, whose ex parte account of the matter (given to his friend, Mr. Hogg) is by no means creditable to the narrator.—

The reader may be left to fill in and expand this brief sketch of an interview between one of the tutors of University College and the freshman, who acknowledged that the same tutors were ‘very civil’ to the undergraduates of the college. However, filled in and expanded, it must remain the account of an interview, in which the tutor, behaving with proper considerateness, and in no degree going outside the lines of his official duty, was treated with freedom, bordering on gross impertinence, by the pupil. Can anyone peruse the brief account without coming to the conclusion that Shelley gave and meant to give Hogg the impression, that he had treated the tutor saucily, smoked him elegantly (if I may use a word of obsolete slang), or, as school-boys would say, ‘cheeked him’ to his face. Of course Shelley’s words come to us through Hogg, who is stigmatized as a treacherous and false friend by the ‘Shelleyan enthusiasts.’ But even they will admit that Hogg (with a personal interest in making the world imagine that the authorities of University College treated him and Shelley with unprovoked harshness) was not likely to misrepresent Shelley in this particular matter to his disadvantage.

Having discovered that the tutors of University College were ‘dull people,’—a sentiment in which his familiar friend concurred,—Mr. Bysshe Shelley reminded Hogg on a subsequent occasion how very dull they were. Hogg was looking over one of his friend’s Latin exercises, a translation into Latin of a portion of a paper in the Spectator, when he drew Shelley’s attention to ‘many portions of heroic verses, and even several entire verses,’ observing that they were ‘defects in a prose composition.’ Smiling archly, the freshman replied in his peculiar piercing whisper, ‘Do you think they will observe them? I inserted them intentionally to try their ears! I once showed up a theme at Eton to old Keate, in which there were a great many verses; but he observed them, scanned them, and asked why I had introduced them? I answered, that I did not know they were there; this was partly true and partly false; but he believed me, and immediately applied to me the line, in which Ovid says of himself:

“Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.”’

It was thus that the modest and loyal Shelley (as he is styled by ‘the enthusiasts’) dealt with the tutors who were very civil to him,—putting blemishes into his Latin exercises, in the hope that, by overlooking them, the dull people would afford him another occasion for ridiculing their dullness. Surely the freshman, who dealt with and talked of his tutors in this style, was ripe and yearning to rebel against them, even as he had rebelled against his masters at Eton. ‘I answered,’ he says of his reply to Dr. Keate, ‘that I did not know they were there; this was partly true and partly false,’—words to remind the reader of the semi-delusions (as Peacock called them) of the poet’s later time. ‘This was partly true and partly false!’ What an admission respecting the Etonian Shelley, who (to use Lady Shelley’s words), was ‘more outspoken and truthful than other boys!’

Though they saw at once he had no intention of throwing himself heartily into the studies of the place, and had reason to smile at certain of his more grotesque eccentricities, the tutors of University College discovered no more serious cause for complaining of the freshman’s behaviour during Michaelmas term. On the contrary, as they of course were not ignorant of the character he had borne, and the trouble he had given at Eton, and even of the circumstances that occasioned his premature withdrawal from the school, the tutors of the Oxford College may well have congratulated themselves on the general orderliness of his behaviour, and have imagined if they left him to his own course, and interfered with him as little as possible, the perverse and contumacious Atheist of Eton would go through an ordinary academic career without discredit. It is not to their shame that they neither detected nor suspected his latent genius, which, besides being latent, was so absolutely dormant, that it may be said to have had no existence up to a time, considerably later than his expulsion from Oxford. All they could say of him in the earlier of his two residence-terms was that he behaved fairly well.

Thus much they could say of him. Living almost entirely with a single friend (even as Byron in his earliest time at Cambridge lived in shy seclusion almost entirely with a young chorister and a single friend of gentle degree), he kept morning chapels with fair regularity, attended a sufficient number of the college lectures, ‘pricked æger’ (when he was quite well) no oftener than usage permitted, gave no noisy wine-parties, had no noisy acquaintances, never ‘knocked’ into college after the appointed hours for ‘knocking in,’ showed no propensity to any kind of dissipation. It was true that he appeared ‘in hall’ less often than so quiet a young gentleman might be expected to appear at the freshmen’s dinner-table; but attendance ‘at hall’ was not insisted on. True, also, that he was understood to have written an extremely silly novel and a very absurd book of poems; but it was well and needful young men should amuse themselves, and better that they should amuse themselves with pen and ink than with dice and cards.

Throughout the term, Shelley was more occupied with his literary diversions than with the serious studies recommended by his tutor. Whilst correcting the proofs of the Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson (published on or a little before 17th November, 1810, by J. Munday, of the firm of Munday and Slatter, Printers and Booksellers, Herald Office, High Street, Oxford), he was in correspondence with Mr. John Joseph Stockdale, of Pall Mall, about The Wandering Jew, and writing verses that were shown to Hogg, and probably sent without delay to his sister Elizabeth and Miss Harriett Grove, to each of whom he wrote frequently. Before there was laughter in the colleges over the Posthumous Fragments (a performance that, doubtless, found more readers than admirers in the University), he had returned the amended manuscript of St. Irvyne to the Pall Mall publisher; and before he had done with the proofs of that singular tale, or, at the latest, before the story was offered to the circulating libraries, he was at work upon another novel (which never saw the light, and probably was never finished),—the work of which he wrote to Mr. Stockdale on 18th December, 1810:—

In the same term (probably during the second month of it) he found time to make, with Hogg’s assistance, ‘the very careful analysis’ (mentioned in Hogg’s Life) of Hume’s Essays, to which he was chiefly indebted for the theological views of The Necessity of Atheism, and for the other arguments, with which he troubled the minds of the several indiscreet persons, whom he lured with delusive letters into confidential controversy on matters pertaining to religion.

From this survey of his literary diversions and other ways of spending his time during this academic term, it is obvious that the freshman had not many hours for strenuous study. Few, indeed, were the minutes left to him out of the twenty-four hours for any purpose, when he had spent five hours in bed, an hour in attending chapel and breakfasting, two or three hours in attending lectures, an hour in playing with his scientific toys, an hour or two in writing letters to some of his numerous correspondents, two hours in correcting proofs and producing fresh copy for the printers, four hours in walking (with ‘breaks’ for pistol practice, playing with paper boats, and ‘making ducks-and-drakes’ on the water), an hour at dinner and supper, from two to four hours in his usual evening-nap, and four hours in conversation with his peculiar friend. Some reading, together with much talk, was doubtless done by the friends during these last-mentioned four hours; but though it may be refreshing and otherwise serviceable, the reading, which two sociable and naturally loquacious fellow-students get through in each other’s company, is never strenuous and ‘hard reading,’—must ever be more or less light and desultory. The best apology to be made for the freshman’s practice of conning the printed page in the High Street, is that his various diversions left him so little time for reading in his own rooms.

Whilst amusing himself with his young friend, whose eccentricities afforded him so much amusement, the lightly humorous and severely practical Hogg (ever with an eye to the ‘first-class’ and the ‘fellowship,’ that should serve him as stepping-stones to higher social success, if not to social greatness) held to his hard-reading and was a prudent economist of the time, which the freshman spent in busy idleness. Rising from his bed at seven, and passing the earlier hours of the day on the work for which he had come to Oxford, the reading-man never entered Shelley’s rooms before one p.m., and sometimes kept away from them till a later hour of the afternoon. In the evening he resumed his studies, and pursued them without interruption, whilst Shelley took his evening-slumber, lying sometimes on a sofa, but oftener on the hearth-rug before the large fire, that, ever bright and fierce, never burnt too fiercely for his comfort. Suddenly overcome by drowsiness the slight and nervous stripling surrendered himself to torpor almost in an instant, and dropping on the sofa or rug, lay in deep lethargy for two or three (on some evenings for four) hours, stretched like a cat before the glowing fire. If he dropt off in this fashion at six o’clock, he slept for four hours; if he fell into slumber at eight o’clock he slept for only two hours. Whatever the time when it began, the nap of profound slumber—never a short one—ended at ten o’clock, or within a few minutes. That the heat of the glowing stove affected the sleeper agreeably, was obvious from the way in which he rolled away from any object that screened him from the fire, and placed his little head so that it felt more sensibly the ardour of the burning coals. Occasionally he talked in his sleep, more often his rest was not less silent than long. Whilst the youngster slept, the reading-man worked steadily at his books and papers.

Recovering consciousness as suddenly as he lost it, Shelley was no sooner awake than he was restored to perfect mental alertness. Rising to his feet with startling alacrity, he was ready for talk as soon as he had rubbed his eyes and passed his long fingers through his long hair. At the same instant, the north-countryman looked up from his books and turned away from his papers. On different evenings, the talk ran on poetry and science, logic and history, morals and religion, man’s relation to the universe, the soul’s immortality, the errors of the creeds, and the reasons why a reasonable man should not believe in anything. Sometimes the talk resulted in reference to books, and the reference to books for particular passages led sometimes to larger reading of them. If it was not begun and perfected, the ‘very careful analysis’ of Hume’s Essays was often referred to, reconsidered and amended at these nocturnal conferences.

At other times, when the youthful philosophers were weary of high and exhausting themes, the talk turned on their domestic interests, their kindred and prospects, their respective homes and counties, the humours of Durham and Yorkshire, and the manners of Sussex. When the gossip played about these homely topics, the freshman was even more entertaining to his delightful and incomparable friend, than when they discoursed on loftier matters. Lying back in his chair, and laughing in his sleeve as he tried to discriminate between the fact and fiction of his companion’s marvellous communications, Mr. Hogg, of University College, learnt many things that were not altogether true of Field Place, its inmates, and its traditions. From the commencement of their friendship, it was obvious to the young gentleman from the neighbourhood of Stockton-on-Tees, that his friend’s statements were to be taken with allowance for the vigour of a fertile fancy, and the speaker’s propensity for drawing the colloquial long-bow. When the scientific enthusiast described with needless emphasis and much extravagant gesticulation how nearly he had killed himself at Eton, by inadvertently swallowing some mineral poison, the interested but scarcely sympathetic listener suspected that a lively imagination was in some degree accountable for the thrilling tale. The stories about the ‘Old Snake’ were received in the same sceptical spirit by the auditor, who regarded the staggering legends as signally wanting in ‘the commonplace truth of ordinary matters of fact,’ though doubtless rich in ‘the far higher truth of poetical verity and mythological necessity.’ The Michaelmas Term was still young, when the same sceptical auditor listened with more interest than credulity to Shelley’s account of the way in which he was saved from the madhouse, to which he would have been consigned by his inhuman father, had it not been for Dr. Lind’s timely and intrepid action. Before the Term had grown old, Mr. Hogg had heard much, of which he believed little, to the discredit of the worthy, though curiously pompous gentleman, who retained the confidence of the New Shoreham electors, without possessing his eldest son’s good opinion.

To say that Shelley told his whole heart and mind to his fellow-collegian during this season of their closest and most cordial intimacy, would be saying too much of a young man, whose candour was less real than apparent:—of the rash and seemingly reckless speaker who, resembling Byron in the freedom with which he talked of his private affairs to slight acquaintances and the whole world, resembled him also in having reserves from those to whom he was most communicative, even at the moments when he seemed most incapable of secresy or any other kind of self-restraint. Hogg, however, may well have imagined that nothing was withheld from him by the freshman, who, talking to him copiously of half-a-hundred matters he had better have kept to himself, submitted his letters from Field Place to so recent an acquaintance, letters from his father, and letters (containing specimens of her poetry) from his sister. Expressing great admiration of the young lady’s verse and prose, Mr. Hogg was vastly tickled by the peculiarities of Mr. Timothy Shelley’s epistles, which he turned to ridicule with much piquant sprightliness, and to the lively gratification of their writer’s son.

Because these epistles began in kindly fashion with ‘My Dear Boy,’ the writer was suspected of wishing to imitate the style of Chesterfield’s Letters, and also of thinking he resembled the courtly Earl in elegance, accomplishments, and worldly wisdom. It was easy, and no less pleasant than easy to the two undergraduates, to make fun of the epistles, so curiously deficient in coherence and perspicacity. Always franked by the member for New Shoreham, the letters sometimes ‘scolded the dear boy nobly, royally, gloriously.’ One of these franked, furious and fiery missives having moved Hogg to speak of it derisively, and with a sprightly reference to a familiar line of Campbell’s ‘Hohenlinden,’ Shelley henceforth took to speaking of his father as ‘the fiery Hun.’ The son had other nicknames for the father, whom he so often offended,—sometimes unintentionally, and sometimes with deliberate and malicious purpose to rouse and exasperate the irritability, that afforded the two youthful Oxonians so much diversion;—the irritability which the son (of whose poetical light and sweetness so much has been written by fantastic adulators) was bound by filial duty to consider tenderly and soothe to the utmost of his ability; was bound by honour and care for his own dignity to screen and palliate. Writing and talking of him as ‘the Fiery Hun,’ Shelley could also speak of his father contemptuously as ‘Killjoy’ and ‘the Old Boy,’ in the letters that passed between him and Hogg after their dismissal from University College.

Whilst Hogg was exquisitely droll about the defects of Mr. Timothy Shelley’s letters, he of course heard all about his friend’s passion for his cousin, Harriett Grove, which, though it never touched the boy’s deepest and strongest affections, was still a sufficiently fervid sentiment to justify him in thinking it a grand and eternal devotion. It is not surprising that Shelley opened his heart on this interesting topic to his constant companion. On the contrary, it would be strange had he done otherwise. It is rare for a boy to pass through his first love-fever without confiding to a sympathetic hearer of his own sex, how he fares under the violent delights and still more violent anxieties of his heart’s unrest. In speaking to his dear and incomparable Hogg of Miss Harriett Grove’s beauty and accomplishments, her irresistible voice and richly radiant tresses, her composure that too nearly resembled coldness, and the circumspection that might not be imputed to her for unkindness, young Bysshe Shelley only did as most youngsters would have done under similar circumstances,—as most youngsters under similar circumstances will do, to the end of Time and Love.

But though he did nothing unusual or otherwise remarkable in talking of his love and his Harriett’s loveliness to his one familiar male friend, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley did what few young Englishmen of gentle lineage and culture would have done,—what no young gentleman could do, without lacking in some degree the delicate fastidiousness and proud reserve befitting a youth of breeding and quality,—when, out of fraternal concern for the young lady’s welfare, and in the fervour of his generous affection for so incomparable a friend, he invited Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg to visit Field Place on the first convenient opportunity, for the express purpose of seeing the eldest daughter of the house, falling in love with her, and marrying her. It is not often that a young lady (ætat. sixteen, living under the protection of her father and mother) is thus offered in marriage by her elder brother (ætat. eighteen) to a young gentleman whom she has never seen. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Bysshe Shelley that his father and mother were entitled to a voice on the disposal of their daughter in marriage, that before entering on negotiations on so delicate a subject, with a gentleman of whose person and family they were alike ignorant, he should consult the Fiery Hun on the business, and learn from the Fiery Hun’s wife, whether the arrangement would be agreeable to her feelings.

From what is known of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg’s character and lively humour in his later time, one may imagine that in the lightness and levity of his earlier time he was vastly tickled by his young friend’s flattering proposal for this alliance of their respective houses; that he saw the probable advantage of wedding the daughter of so wealthy a baronet, as Mr. Timothy Shelley would become on the death of his aged father; and that he was strongly predisposed to admire his young friend’s sister, who was said to resemble her brother in the colour of her eyes and hair, no less than in the pink-and-white freshness of her complexion, and to surpass him greatly in facial comeliness, by virtue of the delicate symmetry of a countenance, whose most prominent feature was faultless in size and shape. Anyhow, the undergraduate from the northern county, who, on account of its remoteness, had no intention of returning to his father’s roof at Christmas or Easter, consented readily to a project that, even if nothing more came of it, would enable him to pass the shorter vacations in congenial society at no inconvenient distance from the University.

It was doubtless a matter for regret and apologetic explanation with Mr. Bysshe Shelley, that, owing to the Fiery Hun’s peculiarities, he could not safely carry his friend with him to Sussex at the close of the Michaelmas term, but was under the necessity of preceding him to Field Place and foregoing the delights of his society, until he should be authorized by the capricious, and too often austere Killjoy, to invite him thither for the gaieties of Christmas and the New-Year. The evidences are not conclusive on the point; but they afford particulars from which it may be fairly assumed that, for several days after Shelley’s withdrawal from the University for the Christmas holidays, Hogg (whether lingering at Oxford, or staying at the London Hotel, where he received several letters from Shelley in the closing days of December, 1810, and the opening days of January, 1811) looked to each successive post for an invitation to Field Place, and to the presence of the young lady, with whom he was predisposed to fall in love, and had promised to fall in love, if he found it in his power to do so.

CHAPTER XI.