An Examination of Hogg's "Life of Shelley"

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AN

EXAMINATION OF HOGG'S

" LIFE OF SHELLE F."

Of this Book
Twenty-five Copies only have been printed.

Of this Book
Twenty-five Copies only have been printed.

AN

EXAMINATION OF

HOGG'S "LIFE OF SHELLEY."

BY

H. S. SALT,

Author of Pircy Bysshe Shelley: a Monograph^

Etc., Etc.

:^

PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY.

1889.

1

I

1 327951B

• . -.T ■ ; H

- .J ■ . —

HOGG'S "LIFE OF SHELLEY."

" That such a man should have written one of the
best books in the world," says Lord Macaulay, in speak-
ing of Boswell, " is strange enough. But this is not all.
Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly
in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no
superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. . . .
But these men attained literary eminence in spite of
their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his
weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would
never have been a great writer." Macaulay has been
justly taken to task by Carlyle for allowing his love of
paradox to lead him into this strange assertion, that a
writer's excellence was consequent upon his fo'ly ; yet I
think that, in one sense at least, there is some truth in
the remark. In a certain class of biography, of which
BoswelFs Life of Johnson and Hogg's Life of Shelley are
conspicuous examples, part of the charm exercised on
the mind of the reader is due to the striking contrast of
character between the biographer and his subject. When
a philosopher is presented to us by a fool, an idealist by
a worldling, a poet by a Philistine, the very incongruity
of the medium imparts an additional zest to an intro-
k duction that would anyhow be delightful ; and the
biographer thus profits, in a manner, by his own short-
comings ; while his very consciousness of the gulf that
divides him from the object of his hero-worship of itself
gives a relish to his narrative. Provided, therefore, that

8 HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEY:'

the writer is fully imbued with a genuine feeling of
interest and admiration — for this is certainly indispens-
able — it is possible for a notable biography to be written
even with an absence of tact, delicacy, judgment, critical
power, and good taste. Such was the case with Boswell's
Life of fohnson^ and to a minor extent such is the case
also with Hogg's Life of Shelley, Hogg was indeed
greatly inferior to Boswell as a biographer, and not
quite so foolish as a man ; yet in reading Hogg, as in
reading Boswell, we feel inclined at times to like him
for his very absurdity, and to admire him for that
Boswellian quality which Macaulay has described as '^ a
perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of
himself."

Thomas Jefferson Hogg, whose intimacy with Shelley
commenced at Oxford in 1810, was essentially what is
known as "a rough diamond" — "a pearl within an
oyster shell," is the expression applied to him by Shelley.
The cynical, mordant, worldly disposition of his maturer
years could have been only partially developed in his
youth ; otherwise he could have had little in common
with Shelley. But although he took an interest in
literature during his residence at Oxford, even to the
extent of attempting poetry and fiction, and although
the promptings of good comradeship led him to share
his friend's dismissal from the University, it is obvious
enough that his heart was already set on something very
different from literature or freethought. To get on in
the world, to have a comfortable berth, from which he
could regard the foibles and follies of mankind with an
air of cynical amusement — this was the true end and
aim of Hogg's ambition. Yet blunt and crabbed as he
was, priding himself on his Tory exclusiveness and his
contempt for crotchet-mongers and enthusiasts, he never-
theless saw in Shelley " the divine poet " side by side
with " the poor fellow ; " and in this whimsical mixture
of pity and admiration lies, as Professor Dowden has
remarked, the " peculiar piquancy" of Hogg's relations
with Shelley. It was Hogg's destiny to play the Caliban
to Shelley's Ariel.

After Shelley's marriage with Harriet Westbrook in
i8li, Hogg, who was now studying for the legal pro-

HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEY:' 9

fession, still continued to be his intimate companion or
correspondent, until Shelley's eyes were opened to the
infiperfections of his friend's character by the incident at
York, when Hogg's conduct to Harriet led to a temporary
estrangement. A year later, however, the friendship was
renewed ; and though the old intimacy could never be
fully re-established, Hogg remained on pleasant terms
with Shelley during the time spent in Bracknell, Marlow,
and London. After the departure to Italy in 18 18 he
did not again see Shelley, but received friendly messages
and invitations on more than one occasion. In 1826, four
years after Shelley's death, Hogg married the widow of
Edward Williams — the "Jane" to whom so many of
Shelley's later lyrics had been dedicated. He was on
friendly terms with Mary Shelley, who had now returned
to England : and it was through her introduction that
he became acquainted, a few years later, with Bulwer
Lytton, then editor of the New Monthly Magazine^ to
which periodical he contributed, in 1832 and 1833, the
series of articles on " Shelley at Oxford," which were
afterwards incorporated in the " Life."

It is on this portion of his work that Hogg's fame as
a biographer must practically rest. He was here treating
of that part of Shelley's life of which alone he was
really competent to speak with indubitable authority ;
and in spite of the want of accuracy and veracity which
may be detected here and there, even in this Oxford
narrative, the portrait as a whole is drawn with admir-
able force and vivacity. Hogg's Shelley at Oxford is so
well known, and has been so fully appreciated, and so
often quoted, by later Shelley students, that there is no
need here to do more than briefly allude to its merits,
and to emphasize the point that, but for the reproduction
of these famous articles, the Life of Shelley ^ published by
Hogg a quarter of a century later, would have cut a
very sorry figure indeed. Professor Dowden has pointed
out that Hogg the Oxford student, was a very different
person from Hogg the biographer of Shelley. I would
add yet another distinction, and say that Hogg the writer
of Shelley at Oxford^ is by no means to be confounded with
the author of the two volumes issued in 1858. In 1832
he was writing of what he knew well, and with a certain

C

lo HOGG'S ""LIFE OF SHELLEYP

command of literary style and judgment ; in 1858, he
wrote of matters about which he had not troubled to
inform himself, while in style and tone he was — ^well, not
exactly what one would desire in a biographer of Shelley.
It is worth remarking, however, that the excellence of
the earlier articles may have been partly due to the inter-
position of the edited* of the New Monthly Magazine^
who, much to Hogg's disgust, as we learn from his
Preface, insisted on the exercise of his editorial prero-
gative, and struck out certain passages which he judged
superfluous or indiscreet It is much to be regretted
that the later chapters of the Life of Shelley did not pas5
under similar editorial censor^ip.

The articles on Shelly at Oxford were published, as I
have said, in 1832 and 1833. It had long been Mary
Shelley's desire to write the life of her husband, but this
intention was thwarted by the ill-will of the implacable
Sir Timothy, who, as Mrs. Shelley stated in a letter of
1838, '' forbade biography under^a threat of stopping the
supplies." In 1844, the death of Sir Timothy relieved
her of this prohibition ; but a still more fatal obstacle
now arose in the form of a serious illness, from which
she never wholly recovered. She died in 185 1 ; and a
few years after her death. Sir Percy and Lady Shelley
entrusted thebic^raphical materials to the charge of Hog^
" a gentlemen " (to quote Lady Shelley's words) •* whose
literary habits and early knowledge of the poet seemed
to point him out as the most fitting person for bringing
them to the notice of the public." Unfortunately the
Shelley family, in their guileless confidence in Hogg's
biographical qualities, neglected to stipulate that the
proof sheets should be submitted for their approval.

When the first two volumes of Hogg's biography —
that is, half the book — ^were published in 1858, 3iey were
found to be a most unexpected and startling performance.
**It was impossible," says Lady Shelley in the Preface
to the Shelley Memorials^ *' to imagine beforehand that
from such materials a book could have been produced
which has astonished and shocked those who have the
greatest right to form an opinion on the character of
Shelley. . . . Our feelings of duty to the memory of
Shelley left us no other alternative than to withdraw the

HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEVr ii

materials which we had originally entrusted to his early
friend." Accordingly the third and fourth volumes
(which are sometimes said to exist in manuscript)
never saw the light ; and Hogg's Life of Shelley remains
to this day a fragment, like some strange half-finished
structure — a " Folly," the country people would call it, —
which has been reared and dien deserted by some
eccentric architect Mr. Rossetti has remarked that the
suppression of the concluding pcxtions of this book
^ defrauds the admirers of Shelley of their just perqui-
sites." I cannot say th^t I think we have lost much by
the withdrawal ; on the contrary, I believe that the step
taken by |he Shelley family was, under the circum-
stances, a wise one for all parties ; not so much because
Hogg's portrait of the poet was, as Lady Shelley com-
plains, "a fantastic caricature," or in Thornton Hunt's
words, ''a figure seen through fantastically distorting
panes of glass" (for I am not sure that this objection can
be altogether maintained), but rather because of the
insufferable vulgarity of tone which pervades all the
new portion of the book, and the utter inability of the
author to realize the primary functions of a biographer.
The inclusion of the articles on Shelley at Oxford^ which
form about one-sixth of the whole, of course lent a
great value to the work ; so, too, did the publication of
Shelley's letters to Godwin and Hogg ; there is also, it
must be admitted, a certain amount of the old raciness
in a few of the stories told about Shelley's life at
Edinburgh, Bracknell, and other places. But, on the
whole, I do not think it is exaggeration to say that Hogg
did his work, not only in a most egotistical spirit, but also
in a most recklessly stupid and slovenly fashion ; and
that, with the exception of the letters, at least one half
of tiie later narrative is downright rubbish — pointless,
silly, and grotesque. This is an assertion which needs
to be corroborated by proof; if therefore, in the rest of
this paper, I dwell on Hogg's failings, rather than on his
merits, it will be understood that I do so simply because
this aspect of his writings has been somewhat overlooked
by Shelley students, who, as it seems to me, are inclined
to take him much too seriously in his capacity of
biographer.

12 HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEV."

The most notable feature of Hogg's book is, perhaps,
the extraordinary egotism of its author. It is amusing
to find him reminding us in one passage that he was not
writing the history of his own life and times, " but the
biography of a Divine Poet, to the illustration of whose
remarkable character alone every word should tend."
This admirable theory was unfortunately not carried into
practice ; for he devotes page after page to a full record
of his own circumstances and adventures, gravely
supplying his readers with the most ample information
concerning his family affairs, his legal studies, his holiday
tours, his attempts in literature, his witty sayings, and,
above all, his dinners. We have all heard of the wish
expressed by the exasperated housekeeper, that the
milkman would allow her to receive the milk in one can,
and the water in another ; in the same way the reader
of Hogg's volumes often wishes that a more distinct
line of demarcation had been drawn between the life of
Shelley and the life of Hogg. " It is sometimes in my
power," says Hogg, " to illustrate the life of Shelley by
parallel passages drawn from my own ; " and armed with
this ingenious plea of "illustration," he proceeds to
write what might really be fairly entitled " The Auto-
biography of Thomas Jefferson Hogg, with records of
his dietetic experiences." For Hogg's memory, however
unreliable it may have been in some matters, was preter-
naturally retentive of everything that related to the
table : so much so, that one is tempted to apply to him
the description given by Nathaniel Hawthorne of an
old gentleman of his acquaintance. " His reminiscences
of good cheer," writes Hawthorne, ** however ancient the
date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savour
of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. There were
flavours on his palate that had lingered there not less
than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as
fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just
devoured for his breakfast. The chief tragic event of
the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was his mishap
with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty
or forty years ago — a goose of most promising figure, but
which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the
carving-knife would make no impression on its carcase,

HOGG 'S " LIFE OF SHELLE V." 1 3

and it could only be divided with an axe and hand-saw."
Many not less grievous dietetic mishaps are recorded by
Hogg, in his lengthy accounts of the tours made by
himself in his holidays, and at other times when he was
separated from Shelley. Here are a few instances.

In the Oxford vacation of January 181 1, Hogg made
a solitary pedestrian tour to Stonehenge, to an account
of which he devotes fifteen pages of his Life of Shelley.
He was soon in trouble at a wayside inn near Abingdon.
His dinner consisted of "raw potatoes, muddy beer,
stinking cheese, and wine that might be paid for, but not
drunken." "The hope of tea," he says, "was the sole
remaining consolation ; " but the tea proved to be like
chopped straw ; no milk could be had ; only " a huge
indurated loaf and salt butter." At Winchester his
experiences were equally unfortunate ; and at Abingdon,
on the return journey, he had " a scurvy meal," for there
" a nasty little girl gave him some nasty tea in a nasty
cold room." When Shelley and " his future," as Hogg
elegantly calls Harriet, eloped to Scotland in the summer
of the same year, Hogg, who was then at York, went
northward to join them in Edinburgh ; and, forty-seven
years later, when writing his Life of Shelley ^ he thought
fit to commemorate the most trivial incidents of this
very trivial journey, even to the mention of "a filthy
and utterly useless breakfast " which was served to him
at " an odious little inn in a very narrow street." But
the most calamitous of all his voyages was that which
he undertook to Ireland in 18 13. "I have travelled
much," he says, " by coaches ; and therefore I know as
well as any man, and to my sorrow, what a bad breakfast
is, and I assert that the breakfast at Conway was never
surpassed — vile bread, vile butter, and the vilest tea."
At last, at Holyhead, he was on the point of obtaining
consolation. "The provisions" he says, "looked welL
There was a nice roast leg of mutton, mealy potatoes,
and other things — all very tempting." But now, at this
supreme moment, the fate of Tantalus befell him, for
just as he was sitting down to dinner, it was announced
that the packet was about to sail, and there was no time
to dine. Even then, he made a last effort, and by the
advice of a crafty waiter, purchased, at an exorbitant

D

14 HOGG'S « UFE OF SHELLEY.'

price, the whole leg of mutton in question ; but ^en he
got on board the vessel he found he had been tricked,
for the I^ of mutton was nowhere to be seen. ^ How I
should have enjoyed a little breakfast,** he cries, ** how-
ever homely ; a crust of brown bread and milk, skim milk,
oatmeal porridge, cold cabbage, anything ; but no man
grave unto me." The crowning sorrow was when, him-
self unfed, he saw a bishop on deck, ** sipping hot
chocolate out of a large china cup." But we have had
enough of this protracted agony. Let us draw a curtain
over the remainder of Hc^^s dietetic misfortunes.

It is certainly a singular and remarkable fact, that
Shelley, one of the foremost apostles of " plain living and
high thinking," should have found for his chief exponent
and biographer a gourmand who was so decidedly ad-
dicted to the contrary formula. Yet let us give Hc^^g
his due ; for, epicure though he was, he seems to have
been willing to make what was to him a heavy sacrifice
for the sake of Shelley's society. " It is a strong proof,"
he says (and here we are inclined to agree with him),
" of the extraordinary fascination of the society of the
Divine Poet, that to purchase it — and it was absolutely
requisite to pay a price — I submitted cheerfully so often^
and for such a long period, to so many inconveniences
and privations. I was never indifferent to the amenities
of life; I had always been accustomed to comfort — to a
certain elegance, indeed: at college, in preparing for
college, and more especially at home ; for in a district
where the creature comforts were well cared for, my own
family were always conspicuous for an exact and
exquisite nicety. In this respect, as in some others,
there was something contradictory in Shelley." It is
amusing to find Hogg, the votary of creature comforts,
actually introduced by Shelley into the vegetarian circle
of the Newtons and Boinvilles ; nay more, the plunge
once made, he seems not only to have tolerated, but to a
certain limited extent, and always with the confident
hope of a something better hereafter, to have even
enjoyed the Pythagorean fare. " I also," he tells us,
" followed exactly the canonical observances of the
vegetable church of Nature ; and I found them far from
disagreeable, in the country, and during the summer and

HOGG'S " LIFE OF SHELLE V." 1 5

autumn.'' "An epicure," he elsewhere remarks, "fond
of variety, would do well to adopt vegetable diet, now
and then, for a day or two, as a change, for the mere
gratification."

But it is time to leave Hogg, the teacher of dietetics,
and to return to him in his capacity of Shelley's bio-
grapher. His egotism, gluttony, and digressive tendency
might in themselves be pardonable enough, if they were
merely a thing apart, that could be passed by and
forgotten ; if we could effect the literary analysis already
hinted at, and separate the milk of Shelley's life from
the water of Hogg's. But unfortunately this is not
possible ; for Hogg is so carried away by the sense of
his own importance, that the whole narrative is thereby
affected ; he persistently minimizes and depreciates the
value of those episodes in Shelley's early life in which
he himself had no part. His account of Shelley's
school-days is most meagre and unsatisfactory. " How
long he remained at Sion House," he says, " I know
not," nor at what age he was removed to Eton " — as if,
forsooth, it was not his duty, as biographer, to inquire
into and elucidate precisely such questions as these.
So, too, with regard to the Dublin episode, which occurred
during the year in which Hogg was not admitted to
Shelley's confidences, and is accordingly relegated to a
position of absolute non-importance. " I never could
discover," he says, " the source of the strange scheme.
He did not communicate his intentions to me at the
time. I never heard of his exploits at Dublin until
after their termination, and but little did I learn at any
period from himself ; in truth he appeared to be heartily
ashamed of the whole proceeding. Whatever can be dis-
covered concerning this Irish dream, — the vision of want
of judgment, — must be made out from his correspondence
with his newly acquired friend" (William Godwin).
How incompetent Hogg was to understand the motives
that prompted Shelley's Irish campaign, may be judged
from his own confession of his interest in the state of
Ireland. " I would not take the trouble to walk across
Chancery Lane in the narrowest part, if by so doing I
could at once redress all the wrongs and grievances of
Ireland." It is very amusing to notice the supreme

1 6 HOGG'S ''UFE OF SHELLEY.''

contempt expressed by Hogg for all the plans under-
taken by Shelley without his sanction ; it is then that he
speaks of him as " the poor fellow " rather than ** the
DiWne Poet" "The truth is," he says» speaking of
Shelley's self-introduction to Leigh Hunt, "my poor
friend knew well that it was quite wrong, because he
never communicated his intentions tot myself or to
any of his friends." And in another passage : ^ When-
ever any act of signal folly, extraordinary indiscretion,
and insane extravagance, was to be perpetrated, I was
never informed of it, and certainly there was no obliga-
tion to tell me." When Shelley and Harriet went widi
Peacock on a tour to Scotland, Hogg confesses that he
was surprised "at the unexpected intelligence of his
sudden and absurd flight, of his second and causeless
visit to the metropolis of Scotland." And so in other
instances ; the bic^aphical importance of the events of
Shelley's life is measured chiefly by the pipminence, in
each case, of the biographer's own perscxiality.

The fact is, that Hc^[g, apart from his consuming
sense of self-importance, had none of the diligence
which is indispensable to a competent biographer.
Boswell, it may be, was a fool ; but he was a fool who
could take an immense amount of trouble in his bio-
graphical labours. Hogg could not, or would not, do
this ; the absurd parade he makes of his preparations
for writing the Life of Shelley is itself suggestive of a
too easy-going view of the biographer's duty. ** When
I undertook," he says, " to write the life of my incom-
parable friend, my first care was to collect materials for
the task. Accordingly, I spent several long and laborious
days in the painful ofHce, painful in every way, of looking
over my ample collections, and selecting from my
several repositories whatever had any reference to the
subject" "I never," he adds, lapsing as usual into a
piece of autobiography, which in this case may be
understood in more senses than one, " I never had such
dirty hands, or went through so filthy a job, as when I
made the retrospect of my past life." In addition to
the contents of his own "repositories," Hogg was en-
trusted, as we know, with certain papers in the possession
of the Shelley family. But he was too lazy, too conceited.

HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEY:' 17

ot too incompetent to arrange and dispose his materials
with any method or accuracy ; his book is accordingly a
mere jumble of letters, anecdotes, and information, pitch-
forked in without any regard to relevancy or chrono-
logical succession.

But Hogg, as a biographer, had a still more serious
failing than his lack of diligence : he is guilty at times
of stating, or suggesting, what is directly contrary to the
truth. His portrait of Shelley at Oxford is in the main
so vivid and impressive, that the reader is disinclined to
criticize too minutely the treatment of details ; otherwise
there are probably few of Hoggf's anecdotes that would
stand the test of a critical examination. This perhaps
is a matter of no great consequence, certainly of no
great rarity. De Quincey has expressed his opinion that
a// anecdotes are false. " My duty to the reader,"
he says, * extorts from me the disagreeable confession, as
upon a matter specially investigated by myself, that all
dealers in ^anecdotes are tainted with mendacity.
Rarer than the phcenix is that virtuous man (a monster
he is — nay, he is an impossible man) who will consent to
lose a prosperous anecdote on the consideration that it
happens to be a He." We may suspect that a goodly
number of Hoggf's anecdotes were retained by him in
spite of this trifling objection ; but as they are so graphic
and amusing, and as the general result is so good, we are
content to regard them not as lies, but " idealisations."

Unfortunately the misstatements in Hogg's later bio-
graphy are of a more serious nature. The most signal
instance is the account given by him of Shelley's sudden
departure from York to Keswick in November, 1811, — a
change of residence which was in reality necessitated by
Hogg^s conduct to Harriet, and was for that reason carried
into effect without the knowledge or sanction of the
amazed offender. Finding himself thus left ignominiously
in the lurch, Hogg wrote letter after letter, entreating
to be allowed once more to be a neighbour or inmate of
Shelley's family ; but his prayers, self-reproaches, expos-
tulations, and threats (for he even threatened Shelley
with a duel) were all alike disregarded, and he received
only the cold comfort of several admonitory epistles, —
written in a measured philosophical style like that of

1 8 HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEY:^

Godwin, — in which Shelley advised him as to the course
of conduct that would best conduce to his moral wel£su^
When Hogg was writing the history of this passage of
Shelley's life, he found himself in an awkward predica-
ment ; for it was not at all to his taste to chronicle his
own dismissal at the hands of his *' incomparable friend ; "
he therefore put a bold face on the matter, and repre-
sented the journey to Keswick as a mere whim on
Shelley's part, while his own sojourn at York was due to
his inflexible determination to continue his legal studies.
^ Nothing would please," he says, " but an immediate
journey to Keswick; and our flight must be in the
winter. I was requested, strongly urged to join in it
To quit my professional duties in which I had engaged
was impossible ; besides, the impracticable month of
November was ill-suited for such an excursion. ... I
gave no hopes that I would soon follow, but they knew
better than I did ; and they were confident I should not
tarry." Unfortunately for Hogg's story, Shelley's letters
to Miss Hitchener give a full account of this episode, and
show that so far from strongly urging him to join them,
they resolutely declined the ofier of his company. But
writing nearly half a century later, Hogg no doubt
trusted that all record of these events had perished,
except the letters which he had himself received from
Shelley ; and so great was his audacity, that he actually
printed one of these in a later chapter of his book, under
the title of a " Fragment of a Novel," substituting the
name Charlotte for Harriet. "You deceive yourself
terribly, my friend," says the supposed novelist, who is
of course Shelley. " It convinces me more forcibly than
ever how unfit it is that you should live near us ; it con-
vinces me that I, by permitting it, should act a subservient
part in the promotion of yours and Charlotte's misery.
... It appears to me that I am acting as your friend —
your disinterested friend — by objecting to your living
near us at present." To publish this passage in the very
volume where he represented himself as being urgently
invited to Keswick, was certainly a sign of considerable
biographical hardihood.

It must be admitted that Hogg, in the matter of
veracity, or the contrary, did not do things by halves,

HOGG'S ""LIFE OF SHELLEY:' 19

but that when he had told a lie of the first magnitude he
not only stuck to it bravely, but took pleasure in garnish-
ing it and enhancing its proportions by a few auxiliary
fibs. So it was in this case of Shelley's departure to
Keswick. " My instructions/' says Hogg, " with regard
to Shelley's correspondence were to open all letters that
should come to York for him, and to despatch such only
as appeared to me to be worth the postage." These
instructions may have been given ; though under the
circumstances it does not seem very probable that
Shelley would have empowered Hogg to read his letters.
But when Hogg goes on to state that, among the letters
he opened and forwarded, was one from the Duke of
Norfolk, dated November 7th, 181 1, in which Shelley
was invited to pay a visit to Graystoke, he at once shows
the cloven hoof, for it has been ascertained beyond
doubt ^ that the letter of November 7th contained no
invitation at all, the invitation being given in a later letter
of November 23rd, which did not pass through Hogg's
hands. He had evidently heard of the visit to Gray-
stoke, and naturally concluded that the letter he had
forwarded had reference to that point ; he therefore
invented the account of his opening and reading the
letter, in order to give a life-like touch to his foregoing
figments about his unbroken intimacy with Shelley at
this time. As the letter which he forwarded was franked
by the Duke, he had no cause to open it at all, and
doubtless did not do so.

It is useless, however, to multiply instances of the
vulgarity and inaccuracy which are apparent to every
reader of Hogg's two volumes. Many of his stories are
too coarse and brutal to bear repetition ; nor is their
coarseness often redeemed by any touch of real wit or
humour — they are, in nine cases out of ten, stupid and
pointless to the last degree, and their inclusion in a Life of
Shelley is scarcely less than an outrage on Shelley's name.
The only excuse for Hogg is that he was unaware of his
own vulgarity ; and this excuse, I fear, is the severest con-
demnation that can be passed on a man. When we
read some of the sallies and witticisms which he records
with so much self-satisfaction, we can feel the force of

1 MacCarlhy's Shelley* s Early Life^ p. 118— 120.

>

327951B

20 HOGG'S « LIFE OF SHELLEY^

that story about the Oxford don, who, when Hogg
heroically exclaimed before the magnates of University
College, ''If Shelley is an atheist, / am an atheist,"
quietly answered, "No; you are only a fooL" Was
there ever such bathos, such balderdash, as that into
which Hog^ sinks, quiet contentedly, and unconsciously,
when he attempts to write of Shelley, or of Mary
Shelley, or of himself, in a tender and touching strain ?
Here is his allusion to Sir Timothy's refusal to allow his
daughter-in-law to write her husband's life. ** Be silent
or starve ! The prohibition is certainly hard ; harder
than all things ; harder than all hard things ; harder
than all hard things put together, and hardened into one
superlatively hard thing. The poor widowed dove was
forbidden to lament her lost mate." And again, of his
own biography, which really does not seem to call for
any particular gush of sentiment, least of all from an
eiuthor who boasted himself the sworn foe of all senti-^
mentality: "Let us next write of the immortal dead
whilst he was at Eton. And, oh ! let us write of him
with a tender sadness, as a dove would write about his
lost mate." This pathetic symbol of the bereaved dove
was evidently one to which Hogg was partial; but
feeling, on this occasion, that his metaphors were getting
rather " mixed " when he attributed to this plaintive bird
the faculty of penmanship, he adds by way of exj^lana-
tion: "And why may not a dove write, with a pen-
drawn painfully from his own wing?" Had he said
^oose instead of dove, the notion might have been less
open to critical remark.

In consideration of the above-mentioned defects in
Hogg's biographical style, numerous other instances of
which might easily have been adduced, I do not think it
can be a matter for surprise that Shelley's relatives de*
clined to lend their sanction to the production of a thind
and a fourth volume of a similar kind.

In late years Mr. Jefferson Hogg has found a fitting
champion in Mr. Cordy JeafTreson, whose view is that
Hog^s delightful book '• was stopped midway because
its realism offended the Hunts and Field Place." **It
had been hoped," he says, " by Field Place, that Mr.
Hogg would varnish ugly facts with specious phrases^"

HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEY:' 21

and Hogg, being "a robust enemy of shams," was
sacrificed to this family sentiment ; since " no biography/'
according to Mr. Jeaffreson, " would satisfy Field Place,
which should fail to accord with the notion that Shelley
was a being of stainless purity and angelic holiness*"
V Field Place " is well able to take care of itself in this
matter { but it is worth pointing out that the true grava-
men of the charge against Hc^g is not that he was
disloyal to Shelley (for, as a matter of fact, he bears
repeated and explicit testimony to the nobility of
Shelley's character) but that he utterly failed in his
bic^aphical duties, owing to his ^otism, vulgarity,
untruthfulness, and general incompetence. Even Mr.
Jeaffreson is compelled to admit that Hog^ was guilty
of occasional lapses in this respect ; though, with
characteristic perverseness, he chooses the episode at
York, and Shelley's jconsequent quarrel with Hogg, as
the opportunity for passing a severe censure on the
wicked poet, and a high encomium on the faithful and
wrongly-suspected friend. Shelley, it seems, was the
victim in this matter of " a mprbid fancy," ** a ghastly
hallucination," caused in the first instance by the
machinations of Eliza Westbrook ; while Hogg was
wholly guiltless of offence, being, according to Mn
Jeaffreson's description, '* from certain points of view a
t3^ical English gentleman," with '* a vein of poetry, a
strong vein of romance, in his comparatively cold
nature." Such is Mr. JeafTreson's "real Hc^g" — a
personage quite as mythical and non-existent as his
"real Shelley."

It is far from being a fact that Hogg has been unjustly
depreciated by those whom Mr. Jeaffreson calls " the
Shelleyan enthusiasts." On the contrary, it is strange
that so many Shelley students should have taken him

S)ractically at his own valuation, gravely repeating his
antastic assertions concerning his aristocratic tastes,
intellectual exclusiveness, and so forth ; the only notable
exception of which I am aware being found in Mr.
Denis MacCarth/s volume on Sheilas Early Life^
which contains a merciless exposure of many of Hogg's
absurdities and misstatements.

Let us be just to Hogg and allow that as a young

F

22 HOGG'S « UFE OF SHELLEYJ'

man he had a liking for good literature (his love of
Greek, especially, seems to have been an abiding
affection) ; he had moreover a certain caustic humour
and good-natured oddity of character, which, if not too
closely examined, might have been mistaken, as indeed
it wets at first mistaken by Shelley himself, for originality.
Apart from Shelley, Hogg was simply a rough diamond
— a coarse-tongued jester, whose jokes did not improve
with time ; magnetized by Shelley's genius into genuine
and loyal admiration of faculties the most dissimflar to
his own, he was able, in spite of his seeming disqualifi-
cations, to give us, in his Shelley at Oxford^ one of the
best, perhaps the very best, of all the portraits of the
poet, a portrait which, incorporated in ihi^ Life of Shelley ^
stands out in strong relief from the ineptitude and
vulgarity of its surroundings. When commissioned, a
quarter of a century later, to construct a larger work,
with materials which exceeded and transcended the
limited range of his knowledge and experience, he failed,
as he might have been expected to fail, to do justice to
his subject ; such value as his work possessed being due
to the intrinsic interest of the biography rathfer than to
the biographer's manner of treatment. The sarcastic
comment made by Ruskin on Grote's History of Greece^
— that as good a book might have been written by any
clerk between Charing Cross and the Bank — might be
applied, without being wholly erroneous, to the later-
written portion of Hogg's Life of Shelley, How destitute
Hogg was of any real literary ability, except when
under the influence of that one interesting feature of his
life — his connection with Shelley, — may be learnt by
those who care to look into his foumal of a Traveller on
the Continenty published in 1827, as commonplace a book
of travel as could anywhere be met with. That early
comradeship with his " incomparable friend " was the
one fertile oasis in Hogg's life- desert of barren soil and
egotistical platitudes ; his career — if I may venture to
quote Mr. Browning's often-quoted stanza — was

" A moor, with a name of its own.

And a certain use in the world no doubt ;
Yet a hand's-breadtli of it shines alone,
'Mid the blank miles round about."

HOGG'S ''LIFE OF SHELLEY.'' 23

Hogg, like Boswell, was gifted by fortune with one
memorable thing to tell to his fellow-men ; and the
telling of it was enhanced, as in Boswell's case, by the
singular contrast between the biographer and the subject
of the biography. Whenever the Shelley at Oxford is in
question, we recognise with gratitude the value of Hogg's
work ; but, outside that special and limited province, we
cannot for a moment admit that his writing is in any
way trustworthy or valuable.

H. S. Salt.

LmuUm:
PrinUd by Richard Qay & Sons, limited, Brtad Strtet HilL

August^ 1889.