(8.) Having thus returned at a late hour of the evening to Hogg’s heart, Shelley insisted the next day on taking him to an hotel near St. James’ Palace, in order that he should there be re-introduced to Harriett, and once again brought into close and affectionate intimacy with her. Can I be wrong in saying that, in thus re-introducing Hogg to his wife, Shelley declared his previous conviction of his friend’s guilty purpose to have been pure misconception?—that Shelley could not have been so careless of his wife’s honour, her virtue, his own honour, as to have thus restored Hogg in the November of 1812 to his previous intimacy with Mrs. Shelley, whilst still believing he tried to seduce her in the October of 1811? The Shelleyan zealots declare me altogether wrong. They maintain that in the November of 1812 Shelley still believed Hogg made an attempt on Harriett’s virtue in October, 1811, still believed him capable of so dark a crime. They admit it was strange and remarkable that, under these circumstances, Shelley should have again invited Hogg to live, and made him live, in close intimacy with Harriett—still in her eighteenth year. But they insist that a sufficient explanation of conduct so strange and remarkable is afforded by Shelley’s superhuman generosity and divine faculty of forgiving.
(9.) Having thus returned to friendship with Hogg, Shelley lived in friendship with him to the last;—so living in friendship with him (the Shelleyan zealots insist) whilst he all the while believed him to have tried to seduce Harriett within eight weeks of her marriage.
(10.) After breaking with Harriett, and joining hands in Free Love with Mary Godwin, Shelley took an early occasion for inviting Hogg to live as intimately with Mary, as he had in former time lived with Harriett. Is it conceivable that Shelley would have invited to this intimacy with his second spouse the man whom he still believed guilty of trying to corrupt his first spouse?
(11.) By his will (dated 18th February, 1817, when he, Hogg, and Mary Godwin were living in affectionate intimacy: and proved more than twenty-two years after his death, i.e. on 1st November, 1844), Shelley left Hogg a legacy of 2000l.—a substantial proof of the affectionate regard in which Shelley to his last hour held his old college friend. It is unusual for a testator to bequeath 2000l. to a man whom he believes to have tried to seduce his wife.
(12.) Declaring by acts, and by steady persistence in the friendship never again to be broken or shaken, that he had misjudged Hogg and quarrelled with him through misconception, Shelley by his pen put it upon record that he had wronged his early friend in thinking him vile and treacherous. Of all the egotisms of Laon and Cythna, few are of greater biographic value than the stanzas in which the author, speaking of himself in the character of Laon, records how in his youth he was so far misled by envious and deceitful tongues as to bewail the falsehood of his heart’s dearest friend, and in due course discovered that, instead of having been really found false, his comrade had only seemed so. In the second canto of the poem it is written:—
‘Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth
Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,
Did Laon and his friend on one grey plinth,
Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,
Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:
And that his friend was false, may now be said
Calmly—that he like other men could weep
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spreadSnares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.’
It is not till he has been torn from Cythna, confined on the column’s dizzy height, freed from bondage, cured of madness, and despatched to lead the revolutionary patriots of the Golden City, that Laon encounters again the friend from whom he parted in grief and misconception, and discovers how wrong he was to think evil of him. Recounting in the poem’s fifth canto the incidents of his first night and morning in the patriots’ camp, Laon says:—
‘And now the Power of Good held victory,
So, thro’ the labyrinth of many a tent,
Among the silent millions who did lie
In innocent sleep, exultingly I went;
The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent
From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed
An armèd youth—over his spear he bent
His downward face.—“A friend!” I cried aloud;
And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.
I sate beside him while the morning beam
Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him
Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!
Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:
And all the while, methought, his voice did swim,
As if it drownèd in remembrance were
Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:
At last, when daylight ’gan to fill the air,
He looked on me, and cried in wonder—“Thou art here!”
Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded;
The truth now came upon me, on the ground
Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,
Fell fast, and o’er its peace our mingled spirits brooded.’
Thus it was that, in the poem written during the six brightest months of 1817 (i.e. of the summer following the execution of his will), Shelley gave a penitential account of his quarrel with, and transient severance from, his heart’s best friend, taking all the error and shame of the miserable affair to himself; acknowledging he did his friend black injustice in thinking him false, confessing his weak submissiveness to the false and envious tongues that misled him; declaring himself altogether deluded, and Hogg altogether innocent of the offences charged against him—altogether blameless in the whole wretched business, unless it was that he had been silent from a proud sense of injury, when by free and candid speech he might have utterly discredited the ‘envious tongues,’ and dispelled the misconceptions and delusions resulting from their slanderous activity. In the way of poetry, what fuller acquittal, what larger acknowledgment of the wrong done him, could Hogg require than the single line: ‘Whilst he was innocent and I deluded?’
(13.) Some readers may think the acknowledgment would have been more effective in simple prose,—may think the avowal suffers in force from the artificiality of its terms,—may think it a pity Shelley did not say in less artful language what he put so gracefully in verse. One may be sure the impetuous Shelley poured the same confession in half a hundred forms of vehement speech into Hogg’s private ear. Moreover, he did not pass from the world without putting the same pathetic confession and prayer in less than forty words of strenuous prose. When Hogg, some thirty-five long years after the poet’s death, came for the first time on the MS. of An Essay on Friendship—the essay mentioned in a previous chapter of this work—he found these dedicatory words on the paper: ‘I once had a friend, whom an inextricable multitude of circumstances has forced me to treat with apparent neglect. To him I dedicate this essay. If he finds my own words condemn me, will he not forgive?’ In Shelley’s hand-writing, these words may well have affected Hogg acutely and profoundly! Penned for his eye, they penetrated his heart! No writer (that I am aware of) has ventured to deny boldly and honestly that this dedicatory note was meant for Hogg, or even to question seriously whether it was not intended for some one else; but petty scribblers by the score have sneered at Hogg’s egotism and impudence in taking to himself the dedicatory note, that certainly was meant for no one else.