c rttafor s,upfientettt.

MAY 1, 1858.

BOOKS.

HOGG'S LIFE OF SHELLEY..

Tax outlines of Shelley's career are well known and the world

has ample means to 1111 them up in part. known, in his book,t undertakes to narrate the whole life ; but his more direct and original knowledge related to Shelley's family, his childhood, and his school days at "Sion House, Brentford, ' where Medwin was his schoolfellow. More than a quarter of a century ago, the present biographer, Mr. Hogg, published in the New Monthly _Magazine, under the title of the Shelley Papers," a narrative of the poet's life, habits, and various studies at Oxford, till both he and his friend were expelled the University, for a sort of Atheistic thesis written by Shelley. Mrs. Shelley, in her prefaces and notes to the several editions of her husband's works, published in 1839,t gave a full account of him during their first Continental tour in 1814-'16; with a species of critical introduction relating to the composition of his poems. She, Medwin, and various other writers, including Mr. Trelawny, whose "Recollections" have been published within these few months, § have furnished descrip- tions and anecdotes up to his very death. The blankest parts of the poet's thirty years of life-1792-1822, are his school days at Eton, and the period between his expulsion from Oxford in 1811, and his separation from his first wife in 1814. Of his career at Eton Mr. Hogg knows little more than Medwin, and nothing of his own knowledge. The communications made to the present biographer by Shelley's family, add something to Medwin's remi- niscences of the poet in childhood. Mr. Hogg has made some additions to the Oxford narrative already published, but not of an importance compared with the space they fill. From their joint expulsion at Oxford in March 1811, to the day of Lord Cochrane's trial, June 8, 1814, when Mr. Hogg first saw Mary Godwin, afterwards the second Mrs. Shelley, the narrative of Shelley's doings and whereabouts is minute, informing, charac- teristic, and, with a few intervals, complete. For a portion of the time, the friends lived together ; for a much longer their per- sonal communication was frequent ; when separated a correspond- ence was kept up ; it was only during some apparent freak or preoccupation that Shelley's ever running pen was checked, and the period of his silence towards Mr. Hogg is generally compen- sated for by letters or information from other quarters.

The feature of the biography during the years of close inter- course is amplification rather than novelty. The strange ir- regularity and (to other people) discomfort in which Shelley lived —the foolish not to say reckless way in which he squandered his money, and the manner in which he allowed himself to be im- posed on by other people, are known generally. Precise instances are, we think, adduced by Mr. Hogg for the first time. A single example will convey an idea of his thoughtlessness. Shelley generally lived in lodgings, always apparently in a very hugger- mugger way, and was ever in want of money. One day at the house of a common friend, where the poet was expected to dinner, Mr. Hogg underwent "a caption" instead of the bard, at the suit of a coachmaker for a new carriage which Shelley had bought, though without horses, servants, or means. Nor was the embryo " counsellor " permitted to join "the gay and festive scene," till the arrival of the creditor who knew his man. It would seem that Shelley's usual want of punctuality baffled the catchpolls • on this occasion.

On the much mooted, mysterious, and painful subject, the poet's first marriage, and his first wife's suicide, there is new and tolerably complete information up to the time when Shelley's at- tachment to his wife not only began to waver, but it may be sur- mised was transferred to another. The letters of Shelley and the statements of his biographer quite contradict the received notions that the marriage was hasty, or Harriet Westbrook (for her day) unaccomplished, still less ignorant or unintellectual. Taken sud- denly by a pretty face, Shelley was not ; for the acquaintance ex- tended over a year and a half; whether he might not have been drawn into the marriage by the schemes of the eldest Miss West- brook is a matter of more doubt. The story which traces the first acquaintance to Shelley's meeting Harriet Westbrook at a Clap- ham boarding-school, where one of his sisters was a pupil, is probably true. The following extracts exhibit the principal pas- sages directly bearing upon the courtship, so far as they appear in the correspondence. We give the dates where we can, the first being soon after the expulsion from Oxford, when Shelley was lodging in Poland Street. "April 18th, 1811.—Miss Westbrook has this moment called on me, with her sister. It certainly was very kind of her. Adieu! The post goes." • The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ey Thomas Jefferson Uogg. Ili four volumes. (Volumes I. II.) Published hy Moxon.

+ Spectator for 1847. page 976. Spectator for 1839, pages 88, 1118. 1166.

I Spectator for 1858, page 236.

[MONTHLY SIIPPLERENT.]

" April 24th, 1811.—Adieu! I am going to Miss W.'s to dinner. Her father is out. I will write tomorrow."

" April 28th, 1811.—My poor little friend has been ill, her sister sent for me the other night. I found her on a couch pale' her father is civil to me, i

very strangely ; the sister too civil by half. She began talking about

l'Amour. I philosophized, and the youngest said, she had such a headache, that she could not bear conversation. Her sister then went away, and I staid till half-past twelve. Her father had a large party below, he invited me ; I refused. Yes ! The fiend, the wretch, shall fall! Harriet will do for one of the crushers, and the eldest (Emily), with some taming, will do, too. They are both very clever, and the youngest (my friend) is amiable. Yesterday she was better, today her father compelled her to go to Clapham ; whither I have conducted her, and I am now returned."

" May 17th, 1811.—Miss Westbrook, the elder, I have heard from today; she improves upon acquaintance ; or is it only when contrasted with sur- rounding indifference and degradation ? But all excellence is comparative —exists by comparison ; I have therefore a right. The younger is in prison ; there is something in her more noble, yet not so cultivated as the elder,— a larger diamond, yet not so highly polished. Her indifference to, her con- tempt of surrounding prejudice, are certainly fine."

The following has no date, but it seems to have been written in May or early part of June 1811. About the interpretation to be put upon it we are not sure. According to Mr. Hogg, Shelley often wrote poetically, that is with little or any foundation in fact. "I shall certainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook will decide whether now or in three weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most horrible way, by endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked my advice : resistance was the answer, at the same time that I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain ! And in consequence of my advice she has thrown herself upon my protection. "I set off for London on Monday. How flattering a distinction ! I am thinking of ten million things at once. "What have I said ? I declare, quite ludicrous. I advised her to resist. She wrote to say that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200/. a year; when we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love. Gratitude and admiration, all demand, that I should love her for ever. We shall see you at York. I will hear your arguments for matrimonialism, by which I am now almost convinced. I can get lodgings at York, I suppose.'

The following has neither date nor place, but is of the same time.

"I will write tomorrow. I am now called to Miss Westbrook. I was too hasty in telling my first unfavourable impression: she is a very clever girl, though rather affected. No! I do not know that she is. I have been with her to Clapham. I will tell you an anecdote. Harriet Westbrook has returned thither, as I mentioned. They will not speak to her ; her schoolfellows will not even reply to her questions ; she is called an aban- doned wretch, and universally hated, which she remunerates with the calmest contempt. My third sister, Helen, is the only exception. She, in spite of the infamy, will speak to Miss Westbrook, because she cannot see how she has done wrong. There are some hopes of this dear little girl; she would be a divine little scion of infidelity, if I could get hold of her.

The following account of the elopement from London is given in a letter of recollections, written for the purpose of this work by C. H. G.—apparently Mr. Grove, Shelley's cousin.

"When Bysshe finally came to town to elope with Miss W., he came, as usual, to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I was his companion on his visits to her, and finally accompanied them early one morning,—I forget now the month, or the date, but it might have been September,—in a hackney- coach to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch Street, where we remained all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches start, when they departed in the northern mail for York."

It has generally been said that the marriage took place at Gretna Green. Mr. Hogg says it was in Edinburgh, where he soon after joined them ; and his account seems too circumstantial for the possibility of mistake.

"Shelley and his future had travelled from London to Edinburgh by the mail without stopping. A young Scotch advocate was their companion in the coach for part of the way ; he was an agreeable obliging person. Shelley confided to him the object of his journey and asked his advice. "The young lawyer told the young poet how to get married. They fol- lowed his directions, and were married on their arrival in Edinburgh—how or where I never heard. Harriet had some marriage lines, which she sent to her father. I never saw them."

The letter which took Mr. Hogg from York to Edinburgh, was written by Shelley in York, as the mail changed horses. It an- nounces trouble as well as happiness.

"My dearest friend—Direct to the Edinburgh Post-office—my own name. I passed tonight with the mail. Harriet is with me. We are in a slight pecuniary distress. We shall have seventy-five pounds on Sunday, until when can you send ten pounds ? Divide it in two. "Yours, PERCY SHELLEY."

Of the person of Harriet Westbrook Mr. Hogg speaks highly— rapturously, and thus of her mental acquirements.

"It has been represented by reckless or ill-informed biographers that Harriet was illiterate, and therefore she was not a fit companion for Shelley. This representation is not correct ; she had been well educated ; and as the coffee-house people [her father was a retired inn or hotel keeper) could not have taught her more than they knew themselves, which was little or nothing, she must have received her education at school; and she was un- questionably a credit to the establishment.

"Drawing she had never learned, at least she gave no indications of taste or skill in that department ; her proficiency in music was moderate, and she seemed to have no very decided natural talent for it her accom- plishments were slight ; but with regard to acquirements of higher import- ance, for her years she was exceedingly well read. I have seldom, if ewer, met with a girl who had read so much as she bad, or who had so strong an

inclination for reading. • • • "Her reading was not of a frivolous description ; she did not like light still less trifling ephemeral productions. Morality was her favourite theme. She found most pleasure in works of a high ethical tone. Telemachus and Belisarius were her chosen companions, and other compositions of the same leaven but of less celebrity. "She was fond of reading aloud, and she read remarkably well, very correctly, and with a clear, distinct, agreeable voice, and often empha- tically. She was never weary of this exercise, never fatigued ; she never ceased of her own accord, and left off reading only on some interruption. She has read to me for hours and hours ; whenever we were alone.together she took up a book and began to read, or more commonly read aloud from the work, whatever it might be, which she was reading to herself. If any- body entered the room, she ceased to read aloud, but recommenced the mo-

ment he retired. I was grateful for her kindness; - she has read to me grave and excellent books innumerable. If some few of these were a little weari- some, on the whole I profited greatly by her lectures."

Their married life seems to have been happy for some two years or more, when a something rather felt than seen, and whose very indications are dim served to shadow it. Possibly, the coolness originated with Shelley's acquaintance with the Godwins. The only evidence upon the matter, is this account by Mr. Hogg of what he saw one day when he called with Shelley at Godwin's in June 1814, with which the present instalment of the life really closes.

"He continued his uneasy promenade ; and I steed reading the names of old English authors on the backs of the venerable volumes, when the door was partiallyand softly opened. A thrilling voice called Shelley ! ' A

• g voice answered, ' Mary !' And he darted out of the room, like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting king. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him out of the room. He was absent a very short time—a minute or two ; and then returned. Godwin is out ; there is no use in waiting.' So we con- tinued our walk along Holborn."

"First thoughts are best." The tendency of these volumes is rather to support the earlier than the later judgment upon

Shelley. We do not mean to the extent of Southey 's "Satanic

School," or the dark insinuations of the Quarterly Review under Gifford's management, or the alarm which Byron's friends

(of all people in the world) felt when they found he had become

the familiar acquaintance of the author of Queen Ilfab. But unless Shelley had changed, which he might have done as he

grew older, he was scarcely entitled to the encomiums that from some eight or ten years after his death have usually been be- stowed upon his personal character. A creature of impulse he was beyond all doubt, doing always whatever the moment in- spired; but before impulse is to be received as an excuse for con- duct, we must look to the nature and consequences of the im- pulses. In matters of fashion they are of no account; in social intercourse not of much. Where duty is involved, or the in- terests or happiness of others, these impulses become of the last

importance. It will not do to plead impulse as a defence of mis- conduct, any more than conscientious motives. Men are re- sponsible for their consciences, and equally so for their impulses,

when they lead to action ; and we fear that Shelley as he ap- pears in his own letters and Mr. Hogg's descriptions was utterly indifferent as to the effect of his conduct, and had little other mo- tive of action than his own evanescent likes and dislikes. Mr.

Hogg admits that he was impulsively poetic in statement, and gives a curious instance or two of what looks extremely like direct lying in fact. It has been said that much of Shelley's

convention-defying proceedings, originated less in conviction than in vanity—he wished to startle the world. Assuredly his

principles hung loose upon him ; thus while Queen Mob was on

the anvil, we hear of his "going to take the Sacrament." In society he seems to have taken liberties which amounted to im- pertinencies, and not always in the most decorous way. There is a discreditable letter to Mr. Hogg, (volume 1 pages 404-408,) the larger portion of which seems evidently to refer to his once favourite sister Elizabeth, who like himself was poetical ; and the sole excuse for the following (if true) would be impulsiveness in Shelley proceeding to aberration of mind.

" Matrimony, I know, is a word dear to you. Does it vibrate in unison with the hidden strings of rapture—awaken divine anticipation ? Is it not the most horrible of al the means which the world has had recourse to, to bind the noble to itself? Yet this is the subject of her [his sister's] con- stant and pointed panegyric. It is in vain that I seek to talk to her. It is in vain that I represent, or rather endeavour to represent, the futility of the world's opinion. " This, then, is the honourable advice of a brother!' ' It is the disin- terested representation of a friend !' To which, unanswered, followed a sneer and an affected sportiveness of gayety that admitted of no reply."

Much of Shelley's peculiarity has been ascribed to his father's treatment ; father and son were certainly a very ill-assorted pair. It is however, by no means clear that the poet would have agreed better with anybody else. Both his 6•randfathcr and his father come out in Mr. Hogg's pages better than in Medwin's, We miss the air distingue which idedwin says the father could "put off and on as occasion served" ; but we hear nothing of the gross

profligacy, and really little of the harshness ascribed to him. It must be borne in mind, that Shelley at the time spoken of did not appear to the old Whig country gentlemen as he did to the World towards the close of his life—as the etherial poet, for whose eccentricities of genius great allowances were to be made, but as a Wilful and disobedient son who opposed the wishes of his parents, strove to make his sisters as bad as himself, who conducted him- self defiantly at the University, and ended by getting expelled for Atheism, at a time when even Tom Paine's Deism was overt rebellion against church, state, and society in general. Yet kinder men than Sir Timothy is described to have been, might not have written a milder letter under the circumstances of the

expulsion than he did, whatever criticism may say as to its com- position.

"Miller's Hotel, Apri15,1811.

"My dear Boy—I am unwilling to receive and act on the information you gave me on Sunday, as the ultimate determination of your mind. The disgrace which hangs over you is most serious, and though I have felt as a father, and sympathized in the misfortune which your criminal opinions and improper acts have begot ; yet, you most know, that I have a duty to per form to my own character, as well as to your young brother and sisters. Above all, my feelings as a Christian require from me a decided and firm conduct towards you. "If you shall require aid or assistance from me—or any proteetion—you must please yourself to me: "1st, To go immediately to Field Place, and to abstain from all commu- nication with Mr. Hogg, for some considerable time. "2d. That you shall place yourself under the care and society of such gentleman as I shall appoint, and attend to his instructions and directions he shall give. "These terms are so necessary to your well-being, and to the value which I cannot but entertain, that you may abandon your errors and present un- justifiable and wicked opinions, that I am resolved to withdraw myself from you, and leave you to the punishment and misery that belongs to the wicked pursuit of an opinion so diabolical and wicked as that which you have dared to declare, if you shall not accept the proposals. I shall go home on Thurs- day. "I am S. affectionate and most afflicted Father, "To P. B. S. T. SHELLEY."

In a biographical point of view the book is poor. There is a trader called a packer, one of whose functions is to compress flimsy goods into a small space. -Under hydraulic pressure the contents of a haystack occupy very little room in the veep& "hold," without any real loss of weight or substance. SO-4re with muslins, and many other loose-textured articles. The want of some such operator on literary lucubrations of an over exube- rant kind is continually felt, and very decidedly so in the case of Mr. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Not only does he print letters a trivial kind which illustrate nothing, but many whose pitJ would have answered every purpose, and which are biographical materials, not biography. His own indulgences in incidental and illustrative matter are frequently considerable, and often running into bad, taste or prejudiced vulgarity. Long comment is intro- duced on nothing in particular that we can see. When any thought or thinking about thought occurs to Mr. Hogg away he goes across country into a dissertation. The work cannot pro- perly be called a life at all. There is no plan, no completeness. It does not tell a continuous story ; the writer rarely avails him- self of the information already before the public either to embody or to reflect. Of the growth of Shelley's poetical mind and of the progress of his early prose or poetical works we have no critical account, and not much account at all. The book, so far as Shel- ley is concerned, is mainly Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg's remi- niscences of the poet and his wife, with the letters addressed to himself or that have come into his possession, the whole being accompanied by comments occasionally shrewd and racy, but quite as frequently longwinded and ineffective. About his re- gard for Shelley and his wish to do him the fullest justice there is no question ; but his taste, his prejudices, and a singular turn of mind, render it necessary to be on our guard against his repre- sentations. Even as to any judgment of Shelley, not formed from his own writing or the barest facts, we ought to remember that the representation comes to us through Thomas Jefferson Hogg. But Shelley and his concerns are by no means the only subject of the volumes. Mr. Hogg contrives to exhibit himself as often as possible in the narrative. A good part of the book consists of his own reminiscences of himself and his doings. These in them- selves are not all bad ; frequently very real or curious. There are good stories ; anecdotes of remarkable or singular men ; accounts of pedestrian and other journeys made nearly fifty years ago, with grievous complaints of inns and their accommodations. Many of these things are not without a curious interest, but they are out of place, and encumber a work which is long enough without them.