Chivalry being the last quality I should think of attributing to Shelley, it is not for me to show how his action in writing thus grossly on so delicate a subject is compatible with the chivalric delicacy and generosity for which he is so extravagantly applauded by his idolaters. It is for them to explain how so chivalric a creature wrote thus coarsely to the Sussex schoolmistress, whom he had known for only a few months. Chivalry influences a man’s demeanour to men as well as to women,—to his enemies and friends of the sterner sex as well as to the women whom he reverences, and the women whom he holds in disesteem. It is also a self-respecting quality, disposing a man to be thoughtful for his own honour. People’s notions differ, of course, about chivalry, as well as everything else; but most readers will concur with the present writer in thinking that, on discovering in his familiar friend such guilt and baseness as Shelley imagined himself to have discovered in Hogg, a chivalric man would punish the traitor in accordance with prevailing laws of honour, or decide to leave him to the punishment of his own conscience, and then be silent for ever of him and his infamy. Living in the days of duelling, it was open to Shelley, if not incumbent on him, to do his best to slay the man, whom he believed to have meditated and essayed his wife’s seduction. It was open to him to refrain from this vindictive course on conscientious grounds; but it was not open to him, as a man of honour and chivalry, to tattle and gossip of such an affair to any sempstress of his acquaintance. Whether he fought Hogg, or left him to go his own way to perdition, he should, out of tragic regard for their former friendship, and sublime pity for the once-loved friend, have committed the ghastly business to altum silentium. Had he been a chivalrous man, he could not have written about a matter, implicating his wife’s honour and delicacy in so hideous a way, to a young woman of Miss Hitchener’s social degree.
Writing to Miss Hitchener letters on this subject, about which he should have told her nothing, Shelley, of course, wrote to other persons, on the same unsavoury business. As the monstrous story came to Southey’s ears from Shelley’s own lips, whilst ‘the trio’ were at Keswick, it is not unfair to assume that Harriett’s husband was no less communicative on the revolting topic, by word of mouth, to divers persons, who, knowing little of him, had no personal knowledge whatever of Hogg. There is rumour in the air that other letters by Shelley, in addition to those he is known to have sent Miss Hitchener, will be produced, sooner or later, in evidence of Hogg’s criminality. But instead of being evidence that Hogg felt and acted vilely, such letters will only be so much additional evidence that Shelley thought unjustly and ignobly of his old college-friend, who at no point of his career was any more guilty of trying to seduce his friend’s wife, than the Squire of Field Place was guilty of wishing to lock his son up in a madhouse. At the most, such letters, even though numbering several hundreds, can only afford additional evidence respecting the strength of Shelley’s unreasonable conviction, and the number of the persons to whom he wrote about the unreasonable conviction.
Why is it so certain that in thinking thus ill of Hogg, Shelley was only labouring under an hallucination,—the wildest and most grotesque, though not the most obstinate, of the several hallucinations that possessed him at different times of his career?
(1.) Though the primâ facie improbable often happens in this strange world, the charge against Hogg is discredited by its egregious improbability. No one has ever questioned the force and sincerity of Hogg’s affection for Shelley up to the time of the poet’s first marriage. Nothing has ever been proved against Hogg to countenance even a suspicion that he had in early life any strong propensity for vicious ways,—unless freedom in philosophic speculation is to be designated a vice. A young gentleman by birth and culture, he had the tastes and habits of a gentleman. His moral influence over Shelley had been in some particulars distinctly beneficial. It was due to him that, instead of making Harriett a mere mistress, Shelley made her his wife. There was a vein of poetry, a strong vein of romance, in Hogg’s comparatively cold nature. In 1811, he and Shelley were both at a time of life when well-born and well-bred youngsters are influenced most strongly by generous sentiments. They had been close friends at College; and it is no exaggeration to say, that the mutual affection of two such college friends surpasses the love of brothers. Their romantic love of one another having continued without abatement until the September of 1811, Shelley married a charming girl,—marrying her lawfully (instead of taking her without a marriage-rite), only because Hogg argued him into doing so. Hastening to Edinburgh to rejoice in his friend’s happiness, Hogg there sees his friend’s wife for the first time, almost, if not actually, on the morrow of her marriage. He is charged with pursuing her wickedly from so early a date of their acquaintance; that he (ætat. 19) tried to seduce her before he had known her more than eight weeks. Is it probable that he did any such thing?
(2.) Only eight weeks elapsed between Hogg’s first introduction to Harriett, at Edinburgh, and her departure from York. It is curious that the persons who insist most strongly on the truth of the accusation are the persons who insist most strongly that, instead of passing all this short time in Hogg’s society, Harriett spent some ten days of it in journeying with her husband fro and to, between York and Sussex. The story, which Southey heard, was that the attempt on Mrs. Shelley’s virtue was made during the journey from Scotland. But let no deduction be made from the eight weeks. Is it conceivable that in so short a time Hogg did that of which he is accused?
(3.) Certainly nothing took place either at Edinburgh or York under Shelley’s observation, to induce him at either of those places to believe his friend so wicked. This is proved by the fact that he wrote to Hogg from Keswick a series of vehemently affectionate letters,—letters he could not have written whilst believing Hogg guilty of the most revolting offence a man can commit against his friend. It is certain that before she left York nothing had occurred to make Harriett imagine herself so injured and outraged as the accusation represents her to have been. For otherwise, it is inconceivable she would at Keswick have corresponded with him through the post. No less certain is it that nothing occurred at York under her observation, which Miss Westbrook could venture to report to Shelley, as certain evidence of the crime charged against Hogg a few weeks later; for had any such thing occurred, she would not have failed to report it to Shelley at once, and forthwith put his guilt beyond question.
(4.) It follows that Shelley’s conviction of Hogg’s guilt cannot have resulted immediately from observations, made either by him or by Harriett, before they left York. At best it was due to his recollections of matters which at Keswick he imagined to have taken place several weeks since at Edinburgh or York, or between the two places; to similar recollections by Harriett; to Miss Westbrook’s statements, and to Shelley’s inferences from those recollections and statements. Hogg during his absence was, in fact, arraigned and tried at Keswick for flagrant treason against his friend, and his friend’s wife, in a court where Shelley sat as judge and acted at the same time as witness; where Miss Westbrook acted in the threefold capacity of accuser, judicial-assessor, and witness; and where Harriett was a witness,—perhaps, only a subordinate witness. Shelley’s evidence for the prosecution consisted of his recollections of matters that, at the time of their occurrence, cannot have made him think Hogg seriously at fault. Mrs. Shelley’s evidence consisted of her recollections of matters, that did not prevent her from corresponding with Hogg after her arrival at Keswick. Miss Westbrook’s statements consisted in equal parts of recollection and invention, and of inference from her own recollections and inventions, and from the recollections of the other two witnesses. No defence was offered for the absent Hogg. What was the evidential value of Shelley’s recollection,—the reminiscences of the man who could not at any time of his life be trusted to give an accurate account of any business in which he was strongly interested? What was the evidential value of Mrs. Shelley’s recollections,—the recollections of the sixteen-years-old girl, who wrote friendly letters from Keswick to the man, soon to be declared guilty of having attempted to seduce her before she left York? What evidential value may be assigned to Miss Westbrook’s statements? How about the judicial faculty of the judge? What witnesses! What evidence! What a tribunal!
(5.) But the strongest evidence that Shelley’s conviction of his friend’s guilt was mere hallucination remains to be stated. In a few months, certainly less than twelve months, he had got the better of the morbid fancy that caused him to break for a while with Hogg, and, having come out of the delusion and returned to his right mind, he at once declared in the most impressive manner that he had thought and spoken of Hogg with injustice. And having so declared in the most impressive manner his own error and his friend’s innocence, Shelley held steadily to this declaration to his last hour. How was the declaration made? By deeds as well as by words.
(6.) Migrating from York to London, when he had passed twelve months in the chambers of his first legal instructor, Hogg became a Middle Temple law-student in the late spring, or early summer, of 1812. Eating his dinners in the hall of his Inn, and spending his days in the chambers of the Special Pleader with whom he was reading, the hard-working student usually passed his evenings in rooms he occupied in a lodging-house, at some distance from the Inns of Court. Having recently returned from the country, at the close of the Long Vacation of 1812, Hogg was sitting in his quiet lodgings late one evening at the beginning of November, with a book under his eyes and a tea-pot near at hand, when he heard a violent knocking at the street-door. Another minute and some one ran furiously upstairs. Another instant, and Percy Bysshe Shelley rushed into the student’s room. Certainly for more than nine months, possibly for eleven months, Hogg had received no letter from his friend, had heard nothing of his movements. For so long a period—a long period in the life of the young—there had been a total severance of the two friends. How much Hogg knew then of Shelley’s reasons for ceasing to write to him does not appear. But he knew Shelley was deeply offended with him, and knew the displeasure was connected with his attentions to Harriett. Though, from concern for his friend’s honour, he could not tell the ludicrous and painful story outright in pages designed to commemorate the poet’s finer and nobler qualities, Hogg indicates thus much in the Life with sufficient clearness to all readers capable of reading ‘between the lines’ of a printed record. For more than nine months, possibly for eleven months, the friends had lived asunder; and now they were together again, by the act of the one who had caused the severance. Having got the better of his hallucination, and come to London in his right mind, Shelley had hunted for Hogg at Lincoln’s Inn; hunted for him at the Temple; discovered the chambers where he was a student; declined to wait till the morning for the much-desired interview with his old college chum; constrained ‘the clerk at chambers’ to give him Hogg’s address; and gone off impetuously in quest of the incomparable Hogg at his lodgings, though it was already near the hour when quiet lodging-houses were usually closed for the night. Thus it was that Shelley returned to the friend whom he had charged with trying to seduce his wife. Surely, this return to friendly relations with the man whom he had imagined capable of such iniquity should be regarded as a declaration of Hogg’s innocence, as an avowal by Shelley that he had misjudged his friend, and in consequence of monstrous misconception had calumniated him.
(7.) Shelley’s merciless, slanderous idolaters say otherwise. These ‘friends’ (may heaven preserve all future poets from such friends!) insist that, when he thus threw himself into his friend’s arms, Shelley still believed Hogg had tried to seduce his wife; still believed him capable of trying to seduce her, and was only showing his superhuman generosity and his divine faculty of forgiving, when he thus forgave the man who, twelve months since, had tried to perpetrate so foul and revolting a crime. Not by the men who are mindful of his human infirmities, but by the men who declare his virtuous nature had no alloy of evil, is it asserted that Shelley rushed into Hogg’s arms with these words on his lips: ‘It is true you strove to corrupt my bride twelve months since; but I forgive you that little error; so let by-gones be by-gones, and once again let us be “friends for ever!”’ Superhuman generosity! divine faculty of forgiveness! If this is divine forgiveness, I can only say that, so far as I am concerned, divine beings are welcome to their monopoly of so vicious a virtue. It is a matter for congratulation that human nature is seldom capable of such generosity. I am alive to Shelley’s failings, but I decline to join with his idolaters in crediting him with so peculiar a generosity—a generosity only to be possessed by the meanest of mankind.