With a wealth of arguments and the subtleties of a K.C., Hogg pointed out the absurdity of the question, and the injustice of punishing Shelley for having refused to answer it, the obligation lying on every man conscious of his rights. . . .
“That’s enough!” shouted the Master in a furious voice. “You’re expelled too!” . . . He seemed in a mood to have expelled every man in the college. Hogg was handed the sealed envelope in his turn.
In the course of the day a large official paper was affixed to the door of hall. It was signed by the Master and Dean, bore the college seal, and declared that Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Percy Bysshe Shelley were publicly expelled for refusing to answer certain questions put to them.
CHAPTER VI
TIMOTHY SHELLEY’S VIGOROUS DIALECTICS
The exiles set off bag and baggage in the Oxford coach. Shelley had borrowed £20 from his booksellers, in order to pay his way in London while waiting news from his father.
Every lodging which he visited with Hogg appeared to him impossible, either the street was too noisy, the district too dirty, the maid-servant too plain. Finally, the name of Poland Street reminded him of Warsaw . . . of Freedom . . . he was certain that in Poland Street any one of the rooms must be worthy of a free man’s choice, and the very first which he visited, where there was a trellised paper, vine leaves, and huge bunches of green and purple grapes, seemed to him the most beautiful room in the world.
“Here we will settle down,” said he, “and begin our Oxford days over again, our readings by the fireside, our rambles, our delightful experiences. Here we will live for ever.”
Nothing was wanting to his programme but the consent of the two fathers, Mr. Shelley and Mr. Hogg.
⁂
When Timothy Shelley heard of the events at Oxford, he was enraged beyond measure. Evidently, for a wealthy landowner, a Member of Parliament, and a J.P. for his county, it was a most disagreeable occurrence. The accusation of atheism annoyed him most, because he himself was known as a Liberal, and such advanced thought in politics required to balance it orthodoxy in religion.