If a few gentlemen were admitted to fellowships, they were always absent; they were not persons of literary pretensions, or distinguished by scholarship, and they had no more share in the government of the college than the overgrown guardsmen, who, in long white gaiters, bravely protect the precious life of the sovereign against such assailants as the tenth Muse, our good friend Mrs Nicholson.
As the term was drawing to a close, and a great part of the books we were reading together still remained unfinished, we had agreed to increase our exertions, and to meet at an early hour.
It was a fine spring morning on Lady Day, in the year 1811, when I went to Shelley’s rooms; he was absent, but before I had collected our books he rushed in. He was terribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened.
“I am expelled,” he said, as soon as he had recovered himself a little. “I am expelled! I was sent for suddenly a few minutes ago; I went to the common room, where I found our master and two or three of the fellows. The master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and asked me if I were the author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt and insolent tone. I begged to be informed for what purpose he put the question. No answer was given; but the master loudly and angrily repeated, ‘Are you the author of this book?’ ‘If I can judge from your manner,’ I said, ‘you are resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your evidence; it is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such a purpose. Such proceedings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country.’ ‘Do you choose to deny that this is your composition?’ the master reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.”
Shelley complained much of his violent and ungentlemanlike deportment, saying, “I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what vulgar violence is; but I never met with such unworthy treatment. I told him calmly and firmly, that I was determined not to answer any questions respecting the publication on the table. He immediately repeated his demand. I persisted in my refusal, and he said furiously, ‘Then you are expelled, and I desire you will quit the college early to-morrow morning at the latest.’ One of the fellows took up two papers and handed one of them to me; here it is.” He produced a regular sentence of expulsion, drawn up in due form, under the seal of the college.
Shelley was full of spirit and courage, frank and fearless; but he was likewise shy, unpresuming and eminently sensitive. I have been with him in many trying situations of his after-life, but I never saw him so deeply shocked and so cruelly agitated as on this occasion. A nice sense of honour shrinks from the most distant touch of disgrace, even from the insults of those men whose contumely can bring no shame. He sat on the sofa, repeating with convulsive vehemence the words “Expelled, expelled!” his head shaking with emotion, and his whole frame quivering. The atrocious injustice and its cruel consequences roused the indignation and moved the compassion of a friend who then stood by Shelley. He has given the following account of his interference:—
“So monstrous and so illegal did the outrage seem, that I held it to be impossible that any man, or any body of men, would dare to adhere to it; but, whatever the issue might be, it was a duty to endeavour to the utmost to assist him. I at once stepped forward, therefore, as the advocate of Shelley: such an advocate, perhaps, with respect to judgment, as might be expected at the age of eighteen, but certainly not inferior to the most practised defenders in good will and devotion. I wrote a short note to the masters and fellows, in which, as far as I can remember a very hasty composition after a long interval, I briefly expressed my sorrow at the treatment my friend had experienced, and my hope that they would reconsider their sentence since, by the same course of proceeding, myself, or any other person, might be subjected to the same penalty, and to the imputation of equal guilt. The note was despatched; the conclave was still sitting, and in an instant the porter came to summon me to attend, bearing in his countenance a promise of the reception which I was about to find. The angry and troubled air of men assembled to commit injustice according to established forms was then new to me, but a native instinct told me, as soon as I had entered the room, that it was an affair of party; that whatever could conciliate the favour of patrons was to be done without scruple, and whatever could tend to impede preferment was to be brushed away without remorse. The glowing master produced my poor note. I acknowledged it, and he forthwith put into my hand, not less abruptly, the little syllabus. ‘Did you write this?’ he asked, as fiercely as if I alone stood between him and the rich see of Durham. I attempted, submissively, to point out to him the extreme unfairness of the question, the injustice of punishing Shelley for refusing to answer it; that if it were urged upon me I must offer the like refusal, as I had no doubt every man in college would, every gentleman, indeed, in the University, which, if such a course were adopted with all, and there could not be any reason why it should be used with one and not with the rest, would thus be stripped of every member. I soon perceived that arguments were thrown away upon a man possessing no more intellect or erudition, and far less renown, than that famous ram, since translated to the stars, through grasping whose tail less firmly than was expedient, the sister of Phryxus formerly found a watery grave, and gave her name to the broad Hellespont.
“The other persons present took no part in the conversation; they presumed not to speak, scarcely to breathe, but looked mute subserviency. The few resident fellows, indeed, were but so many incarnations of the spirit of the master, whatever that spirit might be. When I was silent, the master told me to retire, and to consider whether I was resolved to persist in my refusal. The proposal was fair enough. The next day or the next week, I might have given my final answer—a deliberate answer; having in the meantime consulted with older and more experienced persons, as to what course was best for myself and for others. I had scarcely passed the door, however, when I was recalled. The master again showed me the book, and hastily demanded whether I admitted or denied that I was the author of it. I answered that I was fully sensible of the many and great inconveniences of being dismissed with disgrace from the University, and I specified some of them, and expressed a humble hope that they would not impose such a mark of discredit upon me without any cause. I lamented that it was impossible either to admit or to deny the publication—no man of spirit could submit to do so—and that a sense of duty compelled me respectfully to refuse to answer the question which had been proposed. ‘Then you are expelled,’ said the master, angrily, in a loud, great voice. A formal sentence, duly signed and sealed, was instantly put into my hand: in what interval the instrument had been drawn up I cannot imagine. The alleged offence was contumacious refusal to disavow the imputed publication. My eye glanced over it, and observing the word contumaciously, I said calmly that I did not think that term was justified by my behaviour. Before I had concluded the remark, the master, lifting up the little syllabus, and then dashing it on the table and looking sternly at me, said, ‘Am I to understand, sir, that you adopt the principles contained in this work?’ or some such words; for like one red with the suffusion of college port and college ale, the intense heat of anger seemed to deprive him of the power of articulation, by reason of a rude provincial dialect and thickness of utterance, his speech being at all times indistinct. ‘The last question is still more improper than the former,’ I replied, for I felt that the imputation was an insult; ‘and since, by your own act, you have renounced all authority over me, our communication is at an end.’ ‘I command you to quit my college to-morrow at an early hour.’ I bowed and withdrew. I thank God I have never seen that man since; he is gone to his bed, and there let him sleep. Whilst he lived, he ate freely of the scholar’s bread and drank from his cup, and he was sustained, throughout the whole term of his existence, wholly and most nobly, by those sacred funds that were consecrated by our pious forefathers to the advancement of learning. If the vengeance of the all-patient and long-contemned gods can ever be roused, it will surely be by some such sacrilege! The favour which he showed to scholars and his gratitude have been made manifest. If he were still alive, he would doubtless be as little desirous that his zeal should now be remembered as those bigots who had been most active in burning Archbishop Cranmer could have been to publish their officiousness during the reign of Elizabeth.”
Busy rumour has ascribed, on what foundation I know not, since an active and searching inquiry has not hitherto been made, the infamy of having denounced Shelley to the pert, meddling tutor of a college of inferior note, a man of an insalubrious and inauspicious aspect. Any paltry fellow can whisper a secret accusation; but a certain courage, as well as malignity, is required by him who undertakes to give evidence openly against another; to provoke thereby the displeasure of the accused, of his family and friends, and to submit his own veracity and his motives to public scrutiny. Hence the illegal and inquisitorial mode of proceeding by interrogation, instead of the lawful and recognised course by the production of witnesses. The disposal of ecclesiastical preferment has long been so reprehensible, the practice of desecrating institutions that every good man desires to esteem most holy is so inveterate, that it is needless to add that the secret accuser was rapidly enriched with the most splendid benefices, and finally became a dignitary of the Church. The modest prelate did not seek publicity in the charitable and dignified act of deserving; it is not probable, therefore, that he is anxious at present to invite an examination of the precise nature of his deserts.
The next morning at eight o’clock Shelley and his friend set out together for London on the top of a coach; and with his final departure from the University these reminiscences of his life at Oxford terminate. The narrative of the injurious effects of this cruel, precipitate, unjust and illegal expulsion upon the entire course of his subsequent life would not be wanting in interest or instruction, when the scene was changed from the quiet seclusion of academic groves and gardens, and the calm valley of our silvery Isis, to the stormy ocean of that vast and shoreless world, to the utmost violence of which he was, at an early age, suddenly and unnaturally abandoned.