He searched in all his pockets, pulling out various bills and letters, producing finally a half-sheet of note-paper, which he began to read. Bysshe, leaning forward, listened with profound attention.
“I have heard this argument before,” said he, at the end of a few minutes, and turning to Hogg, “Where have I heard that?”
“They are Paley’s arguments.”
“Yes,” the reader observed with much complacency. “They are Paley’s arguments. I copied them out of Paley’s book this morning, but Paley had them originally from me; everything in Paley’s book he had from me.”
On this he folded up the paper, and returned it to his pocket. His son watched him with more disdain than ever, and the dinner terminated without having brought about a reconciliation. Shelley refused to go with his father. His father refused to give him a penny. The only two who seemed satisfied with one another were Hogg and his host. Timothy Shelley had found his son’s friend to be far more human than his son. He was not like Percy, always with bristling quills, always on the strain, always dug in behind principles which one could not attack without wounding his infernal pride. Young as he was, Hogg understood life. His notions on marriage were sensible. Hogg, on his side, declared that though the oratorical eloquence of the member for New Shoreham was certainly a bit foggy, nevertheless he was very hospitable and a good sort.
A few days later he gave another proof that he understood life by making up his quarrel with his own father, who, head of a True Blue Tory family, well known for its orthodoxy, had no need to display the same horror at the actions of his “young man” as had the Whig owner of Field Place.
Hogg senior advised his son to read for the Bar and got him into a conveyancer’s chambers at York. Hogg was, therefore, obliged to abandon Shelley in the Poland Street lodgings, a wistful, bright-eyed fox in the midst of the green and purple bunches of grapes.
CHAPTER VII
AN ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES
Alone in London, without friends, work, or money, Shelley fell into despair. He passed his time in writing melancholy poems, or letters to Hogg. Not knowing what to do with his evenings he went to bed at eight o’clock. Sleep alone stopped him from going over and over the story of his woes. The moment he let himself think, the image of his beautiful and shallow-hearted cousin rose to torture him. He tried to steel his heart against the painful vision by syllogisms.
“I loved a being,” he told himself. “The being whom I loved is not what she was: consequently, as love appertains to mind and not to body, she exists no longer. . . . I might as well court the worms, which the soulless body of a beloved being generates in the damp unintelligent vaults of a charnel-house.”