The self-sufficient young gentleman, who quickened Shelley’s steps to his final academic disaster, was the veritable father of the man who wrote thus lightly of what Tories (provided they were highly-educated gentlemen) might do within the lines of Free Thought. From strong, but not conclusive evidence, I think that in his Oxford days he might have summarized his creed by saying: ‘There’s nothing new, and there is nothing true; and it don’t much sinnify, provided we don’t let vulgar people find it out.’ Whatever his belief on sacred questions, he never allowed so immaterial a consideration to affect his course in discussion. Speaking first on one side of a question, and then on the other side, and then for a third time just to show he had been equally and utterly wrong in his arguments on both sides, Hogg always played the part Shelley wished him to play. What Shelley said, Hogg contradicted—never angrily (for his temper was imperturbable), never impatiently (for his patience was adamantine), never discourteously (for he was courteous by nature, and on principle), often lightly and with fine raillery (for he was a born humourist), always considerately (for the reading man delighted in his play-fellow). It was thus the two young men wrangled together amiably, keeping the ball of doubt flying to and fro between them till the one or the other sent it flying out of bounds. A game often congenial to clever youngsters, it was a game especially congenial to these two undergraduates; all the more so, because Shelley was altogether in earnest, Hogg altogether at play.
If the reading-man had reason to congratulate himself on finding so good a playmate for his hours of relaxation, the freshman may well have been flattered by the attention of a fellow-student, so considerably his senior in academic status and worldly wisdom. With all his imperfections, Hogg had no vice or fault to repel his young friend. Shelley, who would have held aloof from an undergraduate with a propensity to any kind of dissoluteness, found in Hogg a man no less temperate in eating and drinking than himself, no less incapable of uttering or relishing an obscene jest, no less averse to gambling with dice and cards, no less disdainful of the ordinary dissipations of academic idlers. On the other hand, Hogg’s natural endowments and intellectual attainments were especially calculated to commend him to Shelley’s confidence, and render him the object of Shelley’s admiration. Shelley had enough of classical taste and culture to respect the reading-man for being so greatly his superior in Latin and Greek, and to be delighted at the moderate praise accorded by so considerable a scholar to his performances in Latin prose and Latin verse. But classical studies were not the only studies to interest Hogg. The reading-man delighted in English literature, amused himself occasionally by writing English verse, and had some thought of writing a book of poetry or romantic fiction, when he should have taken his ‘first class.’ Instead of being indifferent to his young friend’s literary ambition, Hogg participated in it. The youngster who had already published a novel (what a novel it was!), and the young man who was thinking of writing a novel, were, in their simple, boyish way of regarding the matter, kindred spirits and men of letters. Their association at college would prove the first stage of a life-long friendship!
The relation in which Steerforth and Copperfield stand to one another in the earlier stages of their friendship is comparable with the relation in which Hogg and Shelley stood to one another at University College. Hogg patronized Shelley very much as Steerforth patronizes Copperfield; and just as Copperfield idolizes Steerforth, Shelley idolized Hogg. At the present time one may well smile at these relations between the humorous north-countryman, who never became anything more than a successful chamber-barrister, and the poet, whose name will never perish from the story of his race. But it is no unusual thing for time and the development of mental forces to reverse the relations of ancient comrades; placing the former idolater on the idol’s pedestal, and converting the receiver of homage into the worshiper. Whilst the Hogg of University College gave promise of being a very remarkable personage, Shelley had given no promise of becoming a supremely great poet—on the contrary, had raised expectations that he would be a very contemptible poetaster. In 1810-11 Shelley was the one of these two friends to render worship, Hogg the one to receive it.
In the earlier weeks of their friendship, Hogg and Shelley used to exchange visits; but soon Shelley’s room was the usual meeting-place of the two friends—the choice of the room being made partly (Hogg says wholly) because Shelley, still delighting in his scientific toys, liked ‘to start from his seat at any moment’ and play with his air-pump and electrical machine; and partly (we may surmise) because the hard reader wished to guard his severely studious hours from the intrusion of his choicest and most particular friend. But though they never met before luncheon, save when they passed one another at morning chapel, or on their ways to and from different lectures, Shelley and Hogg lived together as completely as they would have done, had they been ‘chums’ sharing a single set of rooms, like the ‘chums’ of older academic time.
Meeting at one or two p.m., they seldom separated before one or two a.m. In foul weather they read, talked, wrote letters in each other’s company, without going out of college. They read together Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, Hume’s Essays, several of Plato’s Dialogues (by means of Dacier’s translations), several of the works of Scotch metaphysicians, not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with Hume, treatises of Logic, and divers English poets and Latin poets. But Plato, Locke, and Hume were the authors who held their attention most often, stirred their minds most deeply, provoking them at every turn to pass from study to talk, and argue out the questions raised by printed text. Of Locke’s and Hume’s writings they made careful notes, that in some cases were precise abstracts of the author’s several arguments on a question of supreme importance. That Hume whetted Shelley’s appetite for sceptical literature may be inferred from the note, in which (on November 11th, 1810, Sunday) he begged Stockdale to look out for a translation into Greek, Latin, or any of the European languages, of a certain ‘Hebrew essay, demonstrating that the Christian religion is false, that was mentioned in one of the numbers of the Christian Observer, last spring, by a clergyman, as an unanswerable, yet sophistical argument.’
When the weather was fair, or not so foul as absolutely to prohibit exercise in the open air, the two friends went for walks in the country,—sometimes for very long walks, that kept them for four, or even six hours, in the open air. Excellent pedestrians, they delighted in walking; and Shelley was never happier than when he and his peculiar comrade started out for the country in the early afternoon for an unusally long walk, with the intention of ‘cutting hall’ (the hour for the college-dinner in those days was 4 p.m.), and returning in the evening, for the equally welcome and needful supper, ordered to be ready for them on their return to the poet’s first-floor rooms,[4] in the principal quadrangle of their college. In these long walks it was that the two inseparable undergraduates walked repeatedly over and about Shotover Hill; threaded meandering ways through Bagley Wood; traversed the farmstead in which the furious dog seized with his teeth, and almost tore off, the tail of the poet’s brand-new blue coat; and leaped through the gap of an aged fence into the trim garden,—leafless on that mid-winter day, had it not been for the evergreen shrubs; flowerless, had it not been for the brumal flowers here and there faintly visible; but still trim, daintily kept, and eloquent of peacefulness, seclusion, and human care,—the garden where the poet gathered the first of those seeds of pathos and delicate sentiment, that slowly germinating in his fancy, bore fruit long years afterwards in The Sensitive Plant.
It was in Hogg’s memory, when he wrote the New Monthly sketches, how, after retreating from this tranquil spot as suddenly as he had entered it, Shelley spoke of the sacredness of the spot, that of course owed its attractiveness to the ministrations of feminine goodness and beauty; and how, after making it the haunt of a single enchantress, he changed the picture so far as to give her a sister, fair and sensitive as herself, for the sharer of her gentle toil and pure enjoyment of the garden in brighter seasons.
In another of these walks, the inseparable undergraduates came, in a desolate part of the country, on a little girl, so young and small that she might almost be called a nursling, who had been placed there in her weariness to await the return of her mother and some other women. Having waited till she imagined herself deserted, the cold, hungry, miserable child was weeping and wailing piteously, when Shelley accosted her (ugly little brat though she was), won something of her confidence, and induced her to accompany him to the nearest dwelling, where he restored her to comparative contentment with a bowl of warm bread and milk.
‘It was,’ says Hogg, ‘a strange spectacle to watch the young poet, whilst ... holding the wooden bowl in one hand, and the wooden spoon in the other, and kneeling on his left knee, that he might more certainly attain to her mouth, he urged and encouraged the torpid and timid child to eat. The hot milk was agreeable to the girl, and its effects were salutary; but she was obviously uneasy at the detention. Her uneasiness increased, and ultimately prevailed; we returned with her to the place where we had found her, Shelley bearing the bowl of milk in his hand, even to the spot where the child was already being sought for by her mother and friends.’
To discredit this story, and press it into evidence that Hogg was an egregious liar, your true Shelleyan enthusiast does not hesitate in crying triumphantly, ‘Is it possible for any man, after a lapse of two-and-twenty years, to remember whether his friend on a particular occasion knelt on his right knee or his left knee?’ Yet I conceive no judicial reader will deny that the story bears the brand of substantial truthfulness; that the incident was just the incident to live in the spectator’s memory; that the story accords with what has come to us from other sources of information respecting Shelley’s womanly concern for children,—the feminine tenderness with which he nursed little Allegra in her infancy, and his own babes in their times of sickness.