r would overshadow its radiance at once.

There is a task for a patient, unambitious, perceptive man! He must be
a man of infinite leisure, and he must be ready to take a large risk of
disappointment; for he must outlive his subject, and he must be willing
to sacrifice all other opportunities of artistic creation. But he might
write one of the great books of the world, and win a secure seat upon
the Muses' Hill.

XLVI

I have been reading all the old Shelley literature lately, Hogg and
Trelawny and Medwin and Mrs. Shelley, and that terrible piece of
analysis, _The Real Shelley_. Hogg's _Life of Shelley_ is an
incomparable book; I should put it in the first class of biographies
without hesitation. Of course, it is only a fragment; and much of it is
frankly devoted to the sayings and doings of Hogg; it is none the worse
for that. It is an intensely humorous book, in the first place. There
are marvellous episodes in it, splendid extravaganzas like the story of
Hogg's stay in Dublin, where he locked the door of his bedroom for
security, and the boy Pat crept through the panel of the door to get
his boots and keep them from him, and a man in the room below pushed up
a plank in the floor that he might converse, not with Hogg, but with
the man in the room above him; there is the anecdote of the little
banker who was convinced that Wordsworth was a poet because he had
trained himself to write in the dark if he woke up and had an
inspiration. There is the story of the Chevalier D'Arblay, and his
departure to France; and the description of his correspondence, in
which he said for years that he was inconsolable and suffering
inconceivable anguish at being obliged to absent himself from his wife;
yet never able to assign any reason for his stay. Then, too, the whole
book is written in the freshest and most crisp style, with a rare zest,
that gives the effect of the conversation of an irrepressibly impudent
and delightful person. The picture of Shelley himself is delightfully
drawn; it is a perfect mixture of rapturous admiration of Shelley's
fine qualities, with an acute perception of his absurdities. The
picture of Shelley at Oxford, asleep before the fire, toasting his
little curly head in the heat, or reading the _Iliad_ by the glow of
the embers, seems to bring one nearer to the poet than anything else
that is recorded of him. I cannot think why the book is not more
universally known; it seems to me one of the freshe