one.

according to the most approved mode of the day;
but they were tumbled, rumpled, unhrushed. His
gestures were abrupt and sometimes violent, occa-
sionally even awkward, yet more frequently gen-
tle and graceful. His complexion was delicate,
almost feminine-of the purest red and white;
yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the
sun, having passed, as he said, the autumn in
shooting. His features, his whole face and parti-
cularly his head, were unusually small, yet the
last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair
he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands or passed
was long and bushy. In the agony of declamation
his fingers quickly through his locks unconscious-
ly, so that it was singularly wild and rough. His
features were not symmetrical, the mouth perhaps
excepted-yet was the effect of the whole extreme-

telligence that I never met with in any other coun-
tenance. Nor was the moral expression less
beautiful than the intellectual, for there was a
softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially
(though this will surprise many) that air of pro-
found religious veneration that characterizes the
best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these
they infused their whole souls) of the great mas-
ters of Florence and of Rome. I recognised the
very peculiar expression in these wonderful pro-
mingled with much sorrow, for it was after the
ductions long afterwards, and with a satisfaction
decease of him in whose countenance I had first
observed it.
This is a fine fellow, said
I to myself (we continue to transcribe from Mr.
Hogg's account), but I could never bear his socie-
ty. I shall never be able to endure his voice. It
would kill me. What a pity it is ?”

* * *

In 1810 Shelley was removed to Oxford. He entered University College. Of his short course there his friend Mr. Hogg has fortunately given us a distinct record. His account was published about twenty years after Shelley's death, in the New Monthly Magazine; and while his magazine papers have some of the faults of that kind of writing, we think that with some little condensation they would form a very interest-ly powerful. They breathed enthusiasm and ining supplement to any future edition that may be published of Shelley's works. The acquaintanceship of Mr. Hogg and the poet commenced at their college commons, where they dined at the same table. It was Shelley's first appearance in the hall. His figure was slight; his aspect, even among young men, was remarkably youthful. He was thoughtful and absent in manner, and seemed to have no acquaintance with any Some accident led him and Mr. Hogg into conversation. Shelley praised the originality of the German writers. Hogg asserted their want of nature. "What modern literature will you compare with them?" said Shelley, with a discordant scream that excoriated the ears of his opThe voice of the stranger was excruciatponent. The Italian was named. Shelley ing. "It was intolerably shrill, harsh, and waxed angry and argumentative. The dia- discordant; of the most cruel intension; it logue had little interest for any but the was perpetual and without any remission; disputants, who soon found themselves alone it excoriated the ears." In the evening in the hall. The servants now came in to Shelley went to a lecture on mineralogy, clear the tables. Hogg invited the stranger and returned to tea. He burst into the to continue the discussion at his rooms. room, threw down his cap, and stood shiHe eagerly assented. The dialogue, how-vering and chafing his hand over the fire. ever, did not continue; for when the young He had come away before the lecture was men became better acquainted, they ac- concluded. knowledged that they knew nothing whatever of either German or Italian; and Shelley said that the study of languages, ancient or modern, was but waste of time--learning the names of things instead of things themselves. Physical science, and especially chemistry, should rather be the objects of pursuit. Hogg began to feel his new friend something of a bore, and took to looking at the features and figure of the stranger.

"What did the man talk about?" said Hogg. About stones! about stones! he answered; ' about stones, stones, stones! nothing but stones, and so drily! It was wonderfully tiresome; and stones are not interesting things in themselves.””

In the course of the evening Shelley dwelt on the advantages which the future generations of men may derive from the cultivation of science, and especially chemistry. He anticipated from the triumphs of science the

"It was a sum of many contradictions. His head was a puzzle for the phrenologists, being re*Leigh Hunt, speaking of Keats, says, "His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones markably small in the skull: a singularity which and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he had in common with Lord Byron and Mr. Shelyet he stooped so much that he seemed of low ley-none of whose hats I could get on."-HUNT'S stature. His clothes were expensive, and made | Byron, &c. Vol. i., p. 406.

release of the labouring classes from the un-rious hues, proclaimed that the young ceasing toil now required to earn a mere chemist had been busy with his manipulasubsistence. We are now unable to deter- tions. Books lay open on a table-a bunmine in what part of the substances we dle of pens and a razor, that had been emconsume as food the nutritive property ex-ployed as a knife-soda-water, sugar, and ists; this Analysis may yet detect. The pieces of lemon were there, and, resting on cause which occasions the fertility of some a double pile of books, the tongs supported soils, and the hopeless sterility of others, a glass retort above an argand lamp. The is now unknown. The difference probably liquor boiled over-adding fresh stains to consists in something very slight. By chemi- the table, and rising in fumes with a most cal agency the philosopher may create a to- fiendish smell. Then followed some tricks tal change, and transmute an unfruitful with the galvanic battery. Hogg was made to region into one of exuberant plenty. Water work the machine till Shelley was filled with is, like air, composed of certain gases; why the fluid, and his long wild locks bristled not expect to be able, by some scientific and stood on end. process, to manufacture it, and then transHogg passed the evening with him, and form the deserts of Africa into rich mea- during their short stay at Oxford they were dows? The generation of heat is unknown; very much together. Both were early but a time may come when we may commu- risers-both attended College Chapel in the nicate warmth to the coldest and most un-mornings; but they did not afterwards genial climate, with as much ease and cer- meet till about one o'clock in the aftertainty as we now vary the temperature of a noon, when Mr. Hogg generally went to sitting-room. What a mighty instrument Shelley's rooms. They dined in the Colwould electricity be!--what wonders has lege Hall, and passed their evenings together. not the galvanic-battery already effected! Hogg's studies were little interrupted by -and the balloon,-"why not despatch this arrangement. Shelley was fatigued aeronauts to cross Africa in every direction, with his morning's readings, and was geneand to survey the whole Peninsula in a few, rally overcome with drowsiness. He used weeks? The shadow of the first balloon, to stretch on the rug before a large fire like which a vertical sun would project precisely a cat, exposing his little round head to such under it as it glided silently over that hitherto unhappy country, would virtually emancipate every slave, and would annihilate slavery for ever!"

a heat, that his friend wondered how he could bear it. Hogg tried often to interpose some shelter, but in vain; for he would turn round in his sleep, and roll They spoke of mathematics. Of mathe- himself to the warmest place. In the midst matics, Shelley said he knew nothing. Of of the most earnest conversation he would metaphysics" aye, metaphysics-the ana- suddenly take to his rug, sleep for several lysis of mind-not of mere matter;" and hours-then, towards ten o'clock, start up, he rose from his chair and declaimed with rub his eyes with violence, and passing his animation of a future state, and a former fingers through the tangles of his long wild state. He heard of Plato's doctrine of pre- hair, enter into argument, recite verses, his existence and suspended consciousness. But own or others', with an energy that was the candles were now burned out-the fire quite painful. Hogg read, while Shelley had sunk into ashes-and he started to find was thus hid in his vacant interlunar cave, how long into the night he and his com- and even when he was quite awake the panion had sat. They arranged to meet studies of the friends were often separately the next day at Shelley's rooms; and at pursued. They, however, read many books parting Mr. Hogg, for the first time, heard together, and their walks in the open air the name of the stranger, who had interest-were frequent. Shelley's preparation for a ed him so much. walk was often ominous. He would take Hogg returned the visit the next day. out with him a pair of duelling-pistols, and The same contradictions that Shelley's amuse himself with firing at marks. His dress exhibited struck him in the appear-friend contrived to disappoint this dangerance of his rooms and furniture. Every-ous pastime, by often taking care that powthing new and of an expensive kind, but der or flints should be left behind. When thrown about in indescribable confusion. they came to a stream or pond, Shelley Books, boots, philosophical instruments, loved to linger, making paper boats, and pistols, money, clothes, were scattered here watching their course upon the water. and there. The carpet, with stains of va- of his admirers tells of his having hazarded,

One

" I

in the absence of any less valuable scrap of peony, but his botanical knowledge was more paper, a fifty-pound-note in this amuse-limited than that of the least skilful and common ment, but Hogg treats this as a mythic le- observers for he was neglectful of flowers. He gend. Fable, however, soon passes into tinctions of structure which form the basis of the was incapable of apprehending the delicate dishistory, and Medwin tells us of a ten-pound-beautiful classification of modern botanists."** note thus ventured-reducing the amount never was able," adds Mr. Hogg, "to impart even of the note to increase, we suppose, the pro- a glimpse of the merits of Ray or Linnæus, or to bability of the incident. encourage a hope that he would ever be able to Hogg gives an account of one of their see the visible analogies that constitute the marked, evenings, in which the conversation turned yet mutually approaching genera, into which the on the advantages to society of the Univer-productions of nature, and especially vegetables, are divided." sities, and the old foundations for education. Even in the very lowest estimate of these advantages, they secured to the student an exemption from the interruption of secular cares. The regularity of academical hours cut off that dissipation of time and thought which prevails when the daily course is pre-arranged. We gather, too, that they agreed in thinking that the salutary attendance in chapel imposed duties conducive to habits of industry :

"It was requisite not merely to rise, but to leave our rooms, to appear in public, and to remain long enough to destroy the disposition to indolence, which might still linger, if we were permitted to remain by the fireside."

This was no doubt a low view of a very important subject; but there must have been great faults in the actual government of the College to which these young men belonged, to have rendered it necessary to deprive them of advantages which they were disposed to view in such a favourable aspect. "It would be a cruel thing," said Shelley; "to be compelled to quit our calm and agreeable retreat ;" and he then expressed regret that the period of college residence was limited to four years, and those years interrupted and broken by frequent vacations. The seclusion of college life was felt by him as its great charm: "and then," said he, "the OAK-the OAK is such a blessing!" The oak, in the dialect of Oxford, is the outer door, against which the bore may knock and kick, and call in vain. "Who invented the oak?""Who but the monks, the inventors of the science of living in chambers?" It is a sad thing to think that poor Shelley's quiet was so soon interrupted; but before we record this, we must first state, from Mr. Hogg's account, something of their country excursions. Shelley was entirely unobservant of flow

ers:

"He was able, like the many, to distinguish a violet from a sunflower, and a cauliflower from a

Shelley must have known something more of these things a few years after, for Mrs. Shelley tells us

"That he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he with the history and the habits of every producknew every plant by its name, and was familiar tion of the earth.”

Hogg's record of Shelley's college life, and their studious evenings, brings back to us Cowley's lines

66

Say, for ye saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledæan stars, so famed for love,
Wonder'd at us from above!

We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry

Arts which I loved-for they, my friend, were
thine."t

single-minded man.
Shelley was a singularly pure-hearted,
with intense affection; and it was not with-
Of home he thought
letter from his mother or his sisters. Still,
out manifest delight that he received a
we can easily learn that at home there was
some feeling of disappointment about the
His removal from Eton
young student.
was earlier than usual; and it is plain that
his conduct there did not satisfy either the-
whose dreams for him were of political ad-
authorities of the place or his father-
vancement. Shelley, while an Oxford stu-
dent, read at all times-at table, in bed,
the streets of Oxford, but in the most
and while walking. He read not only in
crowded thoroughfares of London. Out of
the twenty-four hours he frequently read

sixteen.

His food was simple as that of a hermit. He already preached, and soon began-irregularly, however-to practise abstinenco

This our readers must remember was written + Ode on the Death of Harvey.

in 1832.

from animal food. Bread was his chief Plato or from Dacier, Shelley learned the food, to which he sometimes added raisins. doctrine of pre-existence, and it was a faHe had a school-boy's taste for fruit, gin-vourite topic with him. One day he and gerbread, and sugar. Honey was a deli- Hogg met a young gipsy girl, a child of six cacy he relished. This abstemiousness in-years of age-slight, bareheaded, barefootcreased in after life, but was probably unwise, as his friends appear to have observed an improvement in his health whenever accident led him to adopt for a few days a more generous diet.

ed, and in rags. She was gathering snailshells. "How much intellect is here!" said Shelley, "and what an occupation for one who once knew the whole circle of the sciences; who has forgotten them all, it is true, but who could certainly recollect them-though it is most probable she never will!" A brother of the child's was near, and Shelley wanted Hogg to propose to him some mathematical questions: "Your geometry, you know, is so plain and certain, that if it be once thoroughly understood, it can never be forgotten."

Shelley's detestation of the plans of life proposed for him by his family was almost unbounded. The Duke of Norfolk had recommended the study of politics to him as his business in life-that to which he was naturally called by the circumstances and position of his family, and that in which he would have to expect less competition than in any other occupation of his The young gipsies did not return any talents. The Duke failed to persuade him. answers to Shelley's questions. They un"How often," said Shelley, "have I gone derstood him better when he drew an with my father to the House of Commons, orange from his pocket, and rolled it along and what creatures did I see there! What the grass before the retreating children. faces! what an expression of countenance!" Every true Platonist," he said, "must what wretched beings! And what men be fond of children; for they are our masdid we meet about the House-in the lob-ters in philosophy. The mind of a newbies and passages! and my father was so born child is not, as Locke says, a sheet of civil to all of them-to animals that I re- blank paper-on the contrary, it is an Elgarded with unmitigated disgust!" zevir Plato-say rather an Encyclopædia, comprising all that ever was or all that ever will be discovered."

Shelley had brought with him from Eton the habit of composition in Latin verse; and Mr. Hogg tells us that he took great pains in the study of everything connected with metre. There is evidence in his English poetry of the mysteries of versification having been more the subject of study with him than we have any right to infer from the statements of his friends. They seem anxious to represent his power as if it were purely a gift, and owing nothing to assiduous cultivation.

On Magdalen Bridge, one day, Shelley met a woman with a child in her arms. He caught the child; the mother, not knowing whether the young maniac-for such she thought him-might not throw the child into the river, held it fast. "Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, madam?" In spite of the strange screaming voice in which the question was asked -in spite of its being repeated with more torturing distinctness-the poor woman saw that the inquirer was very harmless, and she replied, "He cannot speak, sir."

Worse and worse," cried Shelley; "but surely the babe can speak if he will, for he is only a few weeks old. He may perhaps fancy that he cannot; but that is a silly whim. He cannot have entirely forgotten the use of speech in so short a time. The thing is impossible !"

Shelley, we have said, was disputative. Logic-the Aristotelic logic-is one of the great studies of Oxford, and the poet was a logician, according to mode and figure. He seems to have teased his friends by his disputativeness. His text-book for a while was Hume's Essays. He had reasoned himself into all the conclusions of the sceptical philosophy. Hogg indoctrinated him with Plato, and Shelley appears to have believed both systems-however irreconcila- Never was there a student who could ble they may seem. Of Plato, the know- have lived with more entire happiness in ledge of our young philosophers was then the seclusion of his College than Shelley; derived from an English translation of but to live at all in England, implies, in the Dacier's French translation; but this did case of the higher classes, living in the vaits business, when the business after all was pour of politics. Politics made their way little more than exercising the opening to Shelley's quiet chambers in University faculties of young men's minds. From College, almost as soon as he had found

murders and storms.

letters of admiration. Prudence was, however, recommended by some sager spirits, as the country was not yet ripe for the doctrines inculcated; but better times were Among the younger fast approaching. sup

students at Oxford, the book was decidedly popular.

himself fixed there. Lord Grenville's elec-| tion as Chancellor took place just at the time. The unsuccessful candidate was unluckily a member of Shelley's Collegeand one whom the Heads of the House ported by every means in their power. Shelley was enthusiastic for Lord Grenville. This was what might be expected from him, Its success stimulated Shelley to a more He was, we have as participating in the feeling of all the dangerous adventure. younger men in the University; but, in said, fond of practical jokes-jokes the addition to this, Liberal politics were entire humour of which consisted in imposing in the shape of aristocratic Whiggery-on grave and well-intentioned people. It the line in which his father and his grand- seems, that some half-century ago it was father traded so that there was in reality not thought improper for a person engaged little cause of offence with the boy of six- in any particular pursuit to write to men teen, when he declaimed everywhere against distinguished in kindred subjects of study, An old the candidate whom the Governors of Uni- without any formal introduction. versity College sought to have elected. physician, from whom Shelley had, before Shelley was, however, after this regarded he came to Oxford, taken lessons in chemiswith some dislike by the governing part of try, was in the habit of corresponding with the body; and their power in the Collegiate strangers on scientific subjects. Shelley institutions of old foundation is all but un- imitated this vile habit, and now and then limited. As to politics in the ordinary received answers written in unsuspecting meaning of the word, they were regarded seriousness-some in downright anger; one by Shelley with utter antipathy: a news-gentleman, irritated by his tone, when he paper never found its way to his rooms; had entrapped him into a correspondence, and if he opened one accidentally in a and tormented him with rejoinder after recoffee-house his reading was confined to joinder, said that he would write to his master, and get him well-flogged. It does Hogg was one day surprised by finding not appear whether he thought his tormentor his friend correcting for the press the proof- was an ill-conditioned school-boy or an sheets of some poems. He looked at them, impudent apothecary's apprentice. and dissuaded him from publication. either case, the suggestion was not unrea"They will not do as serious poems," said sonable. At Eton, Shelley pursued this Hogg archly; "but try them as burlesque," habit of correspondence with strangers, to -and he read a few lines out with some whom he did not communicate his name At Oxford he recomic effect. Shelley was not without during his whole stay. some fun in him, though it in general lay sumed it, and it led to his expulsion. too deep for a hearty laugh. The forgeries He and Hogg had been speaking of of Chatterton and Ireland had amused mathematics. "The mathematicians," said him; and after some discussion it was ar- Hogg, "are mere dogmatists, who, when ranged to print the poems as the work of tired of talking in their positive strain, end Mrs. Margaret Nicholson, a lunatic, who the discussion by putting down the letters, had attempted to stab George the Third. Q. E. D." This dullish joke delighted A bookseller undertook to publish it at his Shelley; he would put the letters to eveown expense, and in a few days a cream-rything he wrote-say an invitation to coloured quarto appeared. It opened with dinner-to attain, as he said, to a mathea serious poem against war-the work of an matical certainty. acquaintance of Shelley's, for whose opi- He drew up a syllabus of Hume's docnion the manuscript had been sent, and trines, with some inferences of his own, addHe printed who made this strange use of it. It form-ing these potent characters. ed a curious contrast with the rest of the it and circulated it in every direction, publication, in which was recommended in chiefly for the purpose of assisting him in every mood and tense the plan of stabbing his strange correspondences. "The syllaevery one less enthusiastic in the cause of bus," says Hogg, was a small pill, but it Liberty than the supposed authoress. worked powerfully." The mode of operation was this: Shelley enclosed a copy, with a letter, saying that he had met this little tract accidentally-that it unhappily seemed

proof-was

The joke was successful-presentation copies were sent to poets and philosophers, and poets and philosophers replied with

In