Volume 1 — CHAPTER XIII. (continued 2)

In his letter, dated 16th February, 1857, from Torquay (a letter already referred to more than once in these pages), Shelley’s cousin, Charles Henry Grove, says, indeed, of The Necessity of Atheism and its consequences, ‘The pamphlet had not the author’s name, but it was suspected in the University who was the author; and the young friends were dismissed from Oxford, for contumaciously refusing to deny themselves to be the authors of the work;’ words of evidence that Shelley’s attempt to misrepresent the cause of his dismissal from the University was not unsuccessful within the lines of his domestic circle; or at least of evidence that his near relatives liked to attribute his expulsion to contumacy rather than to atheism.

The account, given by Shelley of his expulsion to Peacock, differed notably in certain particulars from the substantially accurate account he gave on the morning of its occurrence to his fellow-collegian. To Thomas Love Peacock, the poet averred that ‘his expulsion was a matter of great form and solemnity,’ and that ‘there was a sort of public assembly, before which he pleaded his own cause in a long oration, in the course of which he called on the illustrious spirits who had shed glory on those walls, to look down on their degenerate successors.’ Yet further, in confirmation of this extravagant story, Shelley showed Peacock an Oxford newspaper, or what appeared to be an Oxford newspaper, containing a full report of these theatrical proceedings, together with his own oration at great length.

‘His oration,’ Peacock adds (vide Fraser’s Magazine, of June, 1858) ‘may have been, as some of Cicero’s published orations were, a speech in the potential mood; one which might, could, should, or would, have been spoken; but how in that case it got into the Oxford newspaper passes conjecture.’

To the young gentleman, who made the Bishop imagine him a lady, and had confidential relations with John Munday (the Oxford bookseller and printer of the Oxford Herald), it is no injustice to suggest that, instead of being a veritable copy of the Herald, the paper exhibited to Hogg may have been a ‘bogus’ copy of the journal, made up in accordance with Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s instructions, for his private use. No reader, acquainted with Oxford and the ways in which things are done in the University (and in ‘the city’ whose people stand, or used to stand, in wholesome awe of the academic authorities), can need assurance that the business of the expulsion was a strictly private affair; that no proceedings in the case afforded diversion to a public assembly; that Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley delivered no grand oration on the degeneracy of collegiate establishments; and that it is highly improbable any Oxford printer ventured to offer the readers of any bonâ fide Oxford journal any ‘such speech in the potential mood.’

On the morning following their expulsion (the morning of 26th March, 1811), Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, formerly of University College, Oxford, made the journey to London on the outside of a stage-coach. Thus Shelley passed in disgrace from his University at the close of his second residence-term; an event that may be regarded as the termination of the first period of his literary career. What a disastrous period it was! How fruitful of misadventure, ridicule, catastrophe, and shame! No literary aspirant, destined for imperishable fame, ever made a more inauspicious beginning. In his first voyages on literary waters, Byron encountered stormy weather and rough usage. His first book of poetry resembled Shelley’s maiden volume, in being suppressed for fear of consequences. Ere his first razor had lost its edge, he was assailed by the Edinburgh Review. But having weathered the gale, that almost wrecked The Hours of Idleness, he enjoyed merry seas and favourable breezes. A notability before starting for Greece, he returned from the ‘pilgrimage,’ to spring to the highest pinnacle of fame. On leaving Oxford, Shelley had produced the Victor-and-Cazire book (suppressed for want of originality); two of the feeblest and absurdest novels ever written in the English tongue; the Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, that, despite all Hogg says to the contrary, made him the laughing-stock of Oxford; the advertisements of the Poetical Essay that never saw the light; and (with Hogg’s help) the little syllabus that brought him to great grief,—to about the greatest disgrace a young man can undergo at manhood’s threshold, without falling in the grip of the criminal law.