Chapter X: At Oxford: Michaelmas Term, 1810 (1)

Hogg's Toryism--Shelley's Liberalism--In Hogg's Rooms--Shelley's Looks
and Voice--Patron and Idolater--The Ways of Passing Time--Hogg's
Reminiscences--Nocturnal Readings and Conversations--Country about
Oxford--Pistol Practice--Playing with Paper Boats--Windmill and Plashy
Meadow--The Horror of it--Posthumous Fragments of Margaret
Nicholson--University Tattle and Laughter--Eccentric
Inseparables--Pond under Shotover Hill--Pacing 'The High'--Dons'
Civility to Shelley--His Incivility to Dons--Uninteresting Stones and
Dull People--'Partly True and Partly False'--The Fiery Hun!--'My Dear
Boy'--Shelley offers his Sister to Hogg in Marriage--Hogg entertains
the Proposal--End of Term.

Though I have spoken warmly of Hogg's general honesty, and resent the calumnies that have been rained down upon him in the grave, I must admit that Hogg's friendship was so injurious that it might almost be called disastrous to the Oxonian Shelley. Though the youth who had distinguished himself by unruliness at Eton, whose views of life had come to him chiefly from morbid romances, whose natural perversity disposed him to revolt against control of every kind, was far more likely to abuse the liberty and privileges of the academic course than to employ them to his advantage, the conditions are conceivable under which he would have passed through the University with honour--or at least without discredit. It depended chiefly on the friendships he should form immediately upon coming into residence at his college, whether, taking a new moral and intellectual 'departure' he would disappoint the evil promise of his Eton days, or whether he would persist in the perversities in which he had been encouraged by Dr. Lind. For his welfare in the University, it was needful that the young man, so sympathetic and fervid, but absolutely wanting in common sense and mental sobriety, should have for his especial friend a man devoid of moral levity, and should live in a set of young men who, together with tastes congenial to his own, possessed the steadiness of intellect and temper, calculated to restrain and correct the erratic forces of his peculiar nature;--young men who, by their example, rather than by their words, would dispose him to regard his University with pride, his College with affection, his tutors with loyalty. It was a great misfortune for Shelley that, on coming into residence, he found no such companions, and took for his chief associate,--indeed, his only familiar associate,--a young man, whose intellectual vigour and robustness were curiously allied with an intellectual levity and a cynical sprightliness, that rendered him a most baneful companion for a stripling of Shelley's equally fervid and wayward disposition.

A stronger contrast of character is seldom witnessed than the contrast to be noticed in the two undergraduates, who, through meeting casually, and talking together freely at the same dinner table 'in hall,' formed at once a close friendship, that (with the exception of the brief period of estrangement, which renders the story of their intercourse more singular and interesting), endured till death divided them for ever. Whilst Shelley was a Liberal, whose liberalism even at the commencement of this friendship was revolutionary in its aims and enthusiasm, Hogg was a caricature of Eldonian Toryism, who held Dissenters in disdain, snapt his fingers at Catholic Emancipation, and smiled contemptuously at every reference to Irish grievances. In political sentiment the Hogg, who wrote the _New Monthly_ Papers on 'Shelley at Oxford' differed from the Oxonian Hogg, only as the Toryism of a middle-aged man differs from the Toryism of a boy. The election that 'had just taken place,' when he entered University College was a choice he disapproved; though animosity against the Lord Chancellor, who deprived Shelley of his children, and animosity against those of the Chancellor's supporters who expelled Shelley and Shelley's friend from Oxford, caused him in later time to write of Eldon, as though the Chief of the Law were greatly inferior in culture and mental dignity to his victor in the academic conflict. Doubtless, on coming to Oxford immediately after the election of Lord Grenville, the young gentleman declared his disapproval of the triumph of the blue-and-buff faction:--not passionately, for passion seldom stirred his breast; but with much droll ridicule of a business so eminently ridiculous, for even from his boyhood Mr. Hogg (a born humourist and cynic) turned everything, even his own religious convictions, to jest.

Whilst the Oxonian Shelley, already a half-fledged republican, talked tenderly of the poor and the populace, Hogg ever a provincial aristocrat (and by no means devoid of provincial vulgarity), regarded the populace with disgust, and maintained that all the poor wanted was to be kept in their proper places and to their proper work. Ever impatient, Shelley was fervid as fire itself, whilst Hogg, from youth to old age, was remarkable for imperturbable temper and adamantine patience, on every question that had no reference to his academic misadventure. Coming from the North of England to Oxford in the autumn of 1809, some weeks before he donned cap and gown in February, 1810, Hogg entered the University with the purpose of taking honours, and had acquired the reputation of 'a reading man' before the long vacation of 1810.

Coming to Oxford for residence in the autumn of 1810, when Hogg had acquired status and character amongst the younger members of his academic house, the sensitive, simple, never worldly-wise Shelley entered University College with a strong appetite for general knowledge, and an intention to peruse many books on many subjects for his own amusement, but with no ambition for academic honours, no intention of competing for them, no purpose of becoming, in the academic and limited sense of the term, 'a reading man.' Hogg had not been three months in University College, before the tutors saw he meant to put his name in a 'first class.' Shelley, on the other hand, had not been three weeks in College before the tutors saw he meant to go out with the 'pass men,' and were doubtful whether he would take a degree.

As it must be held in some measure accountable for the influence he acquired over Shelley, readers must assign considerable weight to the fact that Hogg was qualified by several matters--his seniority on the College books, priority in residence, greater knowledge of the University, higher status in the lecture-rooms,--to play the part of academic superior to his new acquaintance. Superlatively trivial to men of _the_ world, the matters that gave Hogg this precedence and superiority over Shelley in University College, are no light affairs in the small world of the University, the still smaller world of a single College. The sensitive Shelley would not have presumed to invite Hogg to his rooms after their first meeting 'in hall.' It was for Hogg to pay the compliment to the freshman in his first term of residence; and no old University man will doubt that Shelley felt he received a considerable attention, when so notable a personage amongst the first-year's men as Mr. Hogg said to him, 'Come and have wine at my rooms.'

As Hogg and Shelley sat over their wine in consequence of this invitation, the host took an opportunity to examine the aspect of his new acquaintance more minutely, and to observe that his girlish pink-and-white complexion was much freckled. 'His complexion,' says Hogg, 'was delicate, and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting;' a piece of description that is referred to by 'the Shelleyan enthusiasts' as an example of Hogg's imaginativeness. No one (if we may credit Shelleyan enthusiasts) but a suspiciously imaginative historian would have ventured to say he could remember, after twenty years, the sun-spots of an old college friend's complexion. I venture to say that the disfigurement is a good example of the kind of things, likely to live in the memory of certain observers.

In respect to a part of what he says of the freckles in Shelley's skin, Hogg is corroborated in a remarkable manner by Medwin, who (his inaccuracy notwithstanding) was generally right in the main facts, and not always wrong in the details of his statements. 'He,' Medwin says of Shelley's shooting in the winter of 1809 and the autumn of 1810, 'had during September often carried a gun in his father's preserves; Sir Timothy being a keen sportsman, and Shelley himself an excellent shot, for I well remember on one day in the winter of 1809, when we were out together, his killing, at three successive shots, three snipes, to my great astonishment and envy, at the tail of the pond in front of Field Place.' The three successive and successful shots are good examples of the small incidents likely to live in a sportsman's memory. What old sportsman, with snow upon his head, cannot remember quite as vividly just as small matters, that occurred long since on the moors or during a run across country?

Another of the small matters of Hogg's _Life_, that unquestionably lived in his memory. He remembered how, in the early morning at the close of Shelley's first visit to his rooms, after 'lighting' the poet downstairs with the stump of a candle, he 'soon heard him running through the quiet quadrangle in the still night,'--adding in the words of truth's own music, 'That sound became afterwards so familiar to my ear, that I still seem to hear Shelley's hasty steps.'

The evidence is clear that whilst Shelley, the freshman (ever a feminine creature on one side of his nature), regarded Hogg as an exemplary scholar, great thinker, and worthy leader,--the self-sufficient, hard-headed, cynical, humorous youngster from the North of England regarded Shelley as a delightful plaything, a brilliant absurdity, a piquant joke. When the 'reading man,' who rose from his bed every morning as the clock struck seven, had spent the first six hours of the day in strenuous study and attendance at lectures, he went to his 'young friend' for diversion, never before one o'clock, oftener when the clock had struck two p.m. It amused the north-countryman, as he lay back in the easiest chair of his young friend's well-furnished and disorderly room, to watch his young friend work fiercely at the handle of his electrical machine, till the crackling and snapping sparks flew forth viciously; to see the youngster's long locks bristle and dishevel into wildness, surpassing their usual disorder; to observe the animation of his countenance, the singular brightness of his prominent blue eyes, and to hear him talk volubly for half-hours together, in the thin shrill voice that often screamed as harshly as the voice of a highly excited parrot, about the blessings that would flow from chemistry to the ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-treated toilers of the human race.

The excruciating voice, that was so 'intolerably shrill, harsh, and discordant' to the north-countryman's sensitive ear at the opening of his acquaintance with this eccentric and delightfully unconventional undergraduate, became less disagreeable, even in its sharpest notes, to the critical auditor as it grew more familiar. Moreover, the voice was not always at torture-pitch. It was only when he was under excitement that the youngster afflicted his hearers by 'speaking' (to use Peacock's description of the poet's vocal peculiarity) 'in sharp fourths, the most unpleasing sequence of sound that can fall on the human ear.' When he spoke calmly, the voice was not otherwise than agreeable; when he read poetry that delighted him, the voice became musical, 'was good' (says Peacock) 'both in tune and in tone; was low and soft, but clear, distinct, and expressive.' Hogg had not known his young friend many days without discovering that the voice could be no less melodious and charming than harsh and screeching. In these vocal characteristics, as in so many other matters, Shelley resembled Byron, who used to shriek and scream in his frequent paroxysms of hysterical rage, and yet had a voice sweeter even than his verse, when he gossiped contentedly with women, and prattled lovingly with little children.

It is not wonderful that the self-sufficient, critical, humorous Hogg's interest in his young friend was composed equally of amusement and admiration, cynical curiosity and amiable contempt; a disposition to love him, and an even stronger disposition to laugh at him. There was so much to admire and love in the eccentric boy, who overflowed with pity for the miseries of mankind, and prattled with almost childish communicativeness about his cousin Harriett's beauty and his sister Elizabeth's perfections; so much that was inexpressibly ludicrous in the youthful chemist and scientific enthusiast who, believing in the 'Elixir Vitæ,' was at the same time an astronomer and astrologer--in the sceptical philosopher who, equally credulous and incredulous, spoke no less reverentially of dreams than irreverentially of the Scriptural miracles, could embrace any fable provided it were not one of 'the delusions' of Christianity, and had no doubt he ought to believe in ghosts, whilst deeming it questionable whether he ought to believe in God. Under Hogg's tuition this last question was erased from the list of Shelley's moot points. Having repudiated Christ at Eton, the freshman had not entered on his second term of residence at Oxford without finding himself under 'the necessity' of repudiating God; and, though he would probably have come to this conclusion by himself somewhat later in his career, it is certain he came to it the sooner for Hogg's assistance and encouragement.

It is uncertain what Hogg's real sentiments on matters pertaining to religion were at the close of 1810 and 1811. In later time he was one of those Tories who reflected with pride on the support their party had given Bolingbroke, and on the protection it had afforded Hume:--one of those Tories, of gentle birth and culture, who deemed it their peculiar privilege to think and say amongst themselves whatever they pleased on ecclesiastical polemics, provided they did nothing to weaken the popular belief in the doctrines of the Church of England, as by law established--doctrines that were so eminently conducive to social order, by disposing persons of the less fortunate classes to do their duty submissively in that state of life to which God had been pleased to call them. Whilst commiserating Shelley for being, by education and familiar conditions, one of those 'buff-and-blue folks' who naturally could not speak their own minds freely lest their words should be misconstrued into treason and infidelity, and could not, therefore, carry the poet safe through the difficulties arising out of his ill-advised publications, Mr. Hogg, the mature biographer, observed:--

'As to my own family, and my immediate connexions, we were all persons
whose first toast after dinner was invariably "Church and State!" warm
partisans of William Pitt, of the highest Church, and of the high Tory
party; consequently we were anything but intolerant, we were above
suspicion and ordinances.... My relatives felt that they had margin
enough, plenty of sea-room, that whatever might be said or done, their
good principles could not be doubted, but would always carry them
through.... If the _Age of Reason_ had been republished by myself or
one of my earliest friends, the world would have supposed that it was
put forth merely to show the utter futility and impotence and vanity
of the author's arguments.'

The self-sufficient young gentleman, who quickened Shelley's steps to his final academic disaster, was the veritable father of the man who wrote thus lightly of what Tories (provided they were highly-educated gentlemen) might do within the lines of Free Thought. From strong, but not conclusive evidence, I think that in his Oxford days he might have summarized his creed by saying: 'There's nothing new, and there is nothing true; and it don't much sinnify, provided we don't let vulgar people find it out.' Whatever his belief on sacred questions, he never allowed so immaterial a consideration to affect his course in discussion. Speaking first on one side of a question, and then on the other side, and then for a third time just to show he had been equally and utterly wrong in his arguments on both sides, Hogg always played the part Shelley wished him to play. What Shelley said, Hogg contradicted--never angrily (for his temper was imperturbable), never impatiently (for his patience was adamantine), never discourteously (for he was courteous by nature, and on principle), often lightly and with fine raillery (for he was a born humourist), always considerately (for the reading man delighted in his play-fellow). It was thus the two young men wrangled together amiably, keeping the ball of doubt flying to and fro between them till the one or the other sent it flying out of bounds. A game often congenial to clever youngsters, it was a game especially congenial to these two undergraduates; all the more so, because Shelley was altogether in earnest, Hogg altogether at play.

If the reading-man had reason to congratulate himself on finding so good a playmate for his hours of relaxation, the freshman may well have been flattered by the attention of a fellow-student, so considerably his senior in academic status and worldly wisdom. With all his imperfections, Hogg had no vice or fault to repel his young friend. Shelley, who would have held aloof from an undergraduate with a propensity to any kind of dissoluteness, found in Hogg a man no less temperate in eating and drinking than himself, no less incapable of uttering or relishing an obscene jest, no less averse to gambling with dice and cards, no less disdainful of the ordinary dissipations of academic idlers. On the other hand, Hogg's natural endowments and intellectual attainments were especially calculated to commend him to Shelley's confidence, and render him the object of Shelley's admiration. Shelley had enough of classical taste and culture to respect the reading-man for being so greatly his superior in Latin and Greek, and to be delighted at the moderate praise accorded by so considerable a scholar to his performances in Latin prose and Latin verse. But classical studies were not the only studies to interest Hogg. The reading-man delighted in English literature, amused himself occasionally by writing English verse, and had some thought of writing a book of poetry or romantic fiction, when he should have taken his 'first class.' Instead of being indifferent to his young friend's literary ambition, Hogg participated in it. The youngster who had already published a novel (what a novel it was!), and the young man who was thinking of writing a novel, were, in their simple, boyish way of regarding the matter, kindred spirits and men of letters. Their association at college would prove the first stage of a life-long friendship!

The relation in which Steerforth and Copperfield stand to one another in the earlier stages of their friendship is comparable with the relation in which Hogg and Shelley stood to one another at University College. Hogg patronized Shelley very much as Steerforth patronizes Copperfield; and just as Copperfield idolizes Steerforth, Shelley idolized Hogg. At the present time one may well smile at these relations between the humorous north-countryman, who never became anything more than a successful chamber-barrister, and the poet, whose name will never perish from the story of his race. But it is no unusual thing for time and the development of mental forces to reverse the relations of ancient comrades; placing the former idolater on the idol's pedestal, and converting the receiver of homage into the worshiper. Whilst the Hogg of University College gave promise of being a very remarkable personage, Shelley had given no promise of becoming a supremely great poet--on the contrary, had raised expectations that he would be a very contemptible poetaster. In 1810-11 Shelley was the one of these two friends to render worship, Hogg the one to receive it.

In the earlier weeks of their friendship, Hogg and Shelley used to exchange visits; but soon Shelley's room was the usual meeting-place of the two friends--the choice of the room being made partly (Hogg says wholly) because Shelley, still delighting in his scientific toys, liked 'to start from his seat at any moment' and play with his air-pump and electrical machine; and partly (we may surmise) because the hard reader wished to guard his severely studious hours from the intrusion of his choicest and most particular friend. But though they never met before luncheon, save when they passed one another at morning chapel, or on their ways to and from different lectures, Shelley and Hogg lived together as completely as they would have done, had they been 'chums' sharing a single set of rooms, like the 'chums' of older academic time.

Meeting at one or two p.m., they seldom separated before one or two a.m. In foul weather they read, talked, wrote letters in each other's company, without going out of college. They read together Locke's _Essay concerning Human Understanding_, Hume's _Essays_, several of Plato's Dialogues (by means of Dacier's translations), several of the works of Scotch metaphysicians, not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with Hume, treatises of Logic, and divers English poets and Latin poets. But Plato, Locke, and Hume were the authors who held their attention most often, stirred their minds most deeply, provoking them at every turn to pass from study to talk, and argue out the questions raised by printed text. Of Locke's and Hume's writings they made careful notes, that in some cases were precise abstracts of the author's several arguments on a question of supreme importance. That Hume whetted Shelley's appetite for sceptical literature may be inferred from the note, in which (on November 11th, 1810, _Sunday_) he begged Stockdale to look out for a translation into Greek, Latin, or any of the European languages, of a certain 'Hebrew essay, demonstrating that the Christian religion is false, that was mentioned in one of the numbers of the _Christian Observer_, last spring, by a clergyman, as an unanswerable, yet sophistical argument.'

When the weather was fair, or not so foul as absolutely to prohibit exercise in the open air, the two friends went for walks in the country,--sometimes for very long walks, that kept them for four, or even six hours, in the open air. Excellent pedestrians, they delighted in walking; and Shelley was never happier than when he and his peculiar comrade started out for the country in the early afternoon for an unusally long walk, with the intention of 'cutting hall' (the hour for the college-dinner in those days was 4 p.m.), and returning in the evening, for the equally welcome and needful supper, ordered to be ready for them on their return to the poet's first-floor rooms,[4] in the principal quadrangle of their college. In these long walks it was that the two inseparable undergraduates walked repeatedly over and about Shotover Hill; threaded meandering ways through Bagley Wood; traversed the farmstead in which the furious dog seized with his teeth, and almost tore off, the tail of the poet's brand-new blue coat; and leaped through the gap of an aged fence into the trim garden,--leafless on that mid-winter day, had it not been for the evergreen shrubs; flowerless, had it not been for the brumal flowers here and there faintly visible; but still trim, daintily kept, and eloquent of peacefulness, seclusion, and human care,--the garden where the poet gathered the first of those seeds of pathos and delicate sentiment, that slowly germinating in his fancy, bore fruit long years afterwards in _The Sensitive Plant_.

It was in Hogg's memory, when he wrote the _New Monthly_ sketches, how, after retreating from this tranquil spot as suddenly as he had entered it, Shelley spoke of the sacredness of the spot, that of course owed its attractiveness to the ministrations of feminine goodness and beauty; and how, after making it the haunt of a single enchantress, he changed the picture so far as to give her a sister, fair and sensitive as herself, for the sharer of her gentle toil and pure enjoyment of the garden in brighter seasons.

In another of these walks, the inseparable undergraduates came, in a desolate part of the country, on a little girl, so young and small that she might almost be called a nursling, who had been placed there in her weariness to await the return of her mother and some other women. Having waited till she imagined herself deserted, the cold, hungry, miserable child was weeping and wailing piteously, when Shelley accosted her (ugly little brat though she was), won something of her confidence, and induced her to accompany him to the nearest dwelling, where he restored her to comparative contentment with a bowl of warm bread and milk.

'It was,' says Hogg, 'a strange spectacle to watch the young poet,
whilst ... holding the wooden bowl in one hand, and the wooden spoon
in the other, and kneeling on his left knee, that he might more
certainly attain to her mouth, he urged and encouraged the torpid and
timid child to eat. The hot milk was agreeable to the girl, and its
effects were salutary; but she was obviously uneasy at the detention.
Her uneasiness increased, and ultimately prevailed; we returned with
her to the place where we had found her, Shelley bearing the bowl of
milk in his hand, even to the spot where the child was already being
sought for by her mother and friends.'

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.

'I have,' (Shelley wrote in the _Speculations on Metaphysics_, just
five years after this Michaelmas Term), 'beheld scenes, with the
intimate and unaccountable connexion of which with the obscure parts
of my own nature, I have been irresistibly impressed. I have beheld a
scene which has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts. After the
lapse of many years, I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my
memory, it has haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity
of an object connected with human affections. I have visited this
scene again. Neither the dream could be dissociated from the
landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings, such as
neither singly could have awakened, from both. But the most remarkable
event of this nature, which ever occurred to me, happened five years
ago at Oxford. I was walking with a friend, in the neighbourhood of
that city, engaged in earnest and interesting conversation. We
suddenly turned the corner of a lane, and the view, which its high
banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself. The view consisted
of a windmill, standing in one among many plashy meadows, inclosed
with stone walls; the irregular and broken ground, between the wall
and the road on which we stood; a long low hill behind the windmill,
and a grey covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It
was that season when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and
stunted ash. The scene surely was a common scene; the season and the
hour little calculated to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame
uninteresting assemblage of objects, such as would drive the
imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening
fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which
it produced in me was not such as could have been expected. I suddenly
remembered to have seen that exact scene in some dream of long----

'Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror.'

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:--

'I remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale and agitated,
to seek refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it excited.
No man, as these fragments prove, had such keen sensations as Shelley.
His nervous temperament was wound up by the delicacy of his health to
an intense degree of sensibility, and while his active mind pondered
for ever upon, and drew conclusions from, his sensations, his reveries
increased their vivacity, till they mingled with, and were one with
thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, even to physical
pain.'

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,--

'I went away, indeed, before the lecture was finished. I stole away
for it was so stupid, and I was so cold, that my teeth chattered. The
Professor saw me, and appeared to be displeased. I thought I could
have got out without being observed; but I struck my knee against a
bench, and made a noise, and he looked at me. I am determined that he
shall never see me again.'

'What did the man talk about?' Hogg asked.

'About stones! about stones!' answered the freshman (just then
affecting to be an enthusiastic student of natural science). 'About
stones!--stones, stones, stones!--nothing but stones!--and so drily.
It was wonderfully tiresome--and stones are not interesting in
themselves!'

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.--

'They are very dull people here!' the freshman remarked one evening
soon after he came 'into college.' 'A little man sent for me this
morning, and told me, in an almost inaudible whisper, that I must
read. "You must read," he said many times in his small voice. I
answered that I had no objection. He persisted: so, to satisfy him,
for he did not appear to believe me, I told him I had some books in my
pocket, and I began to take them out. He stared at me, and said that
was not exactly what he meant. "You must read _Prometheus Vinctus_,
and _Demosthenes de Corona_, and _Euclid_!" "Must I read _Euclid_?" I
asked sorrowfully. "Yes, certainly; and when you have read the Greek
works, I have mentioned, you must begin _Aristotle's Ethics_, and then
you may go on to his other treatises. It is of the utmost importance
to be well acquainted with Aristotle." This he repeated so often that
I was quite tired, and at last I said, "Must I care about Aristotle?
What if I do not mind Aristotle?" I then left him, for he seemed to be
in great perplexity.'