ing what they teach in song," there is
often a vein of comedy in their lives. If we could transport ourselves
to Miller's Hotel, Westminster Bridge, on a certain afternoon in
the early spring of 1811, we should behold a scene apparently swayed
entirely by the Comic Muse. The member for Shoreham, Mr. Timothy
Shelley, a handsome, consequential gentleman of middle age, who
piques himself on his enlightened opinions, is expecting two guests to
dinner--his eldest son, and his son's friend, T. J. Hogg, who have just
been sent down from Oxford for a scandalous affair of an aesthetical
squib. When the young men arrive at five o'clock, Mr. Shelley receives
Hogg, an observant and cool-headed person, with graciousness, and an
hour is spent in conversation. Mr. Shelley runs on strangely, "in an
odd, unconnected manner, scolding, crying, swearing, and then weeping
again." After dinner, his son being out of the room, he expresses his
surprise to Hogg at finding him such a sensible fellow, and asks him
what is to be done with the scapegoat. "Let him be married to a girl who
will sober him." The wine moves briskly round, and Mr. Shelley becomes
maudlin and tearful again. He is a model magistrate, the terror and the
idol of poachers; he is highly respected in the House of Commons, and
the Speaker could not get through the session without him. Then he
drifts to religion. God exists, no one can deny it; in fact, he has the
proof in his pocket. Out comes a piece of paper, and arguments are read
aloud, which his son recognises as Palley's. "Yes, they are Palley's
arguments, but he had them from me; almost everything in Palley's book
he had taken from me." The boy of nineteen, who listens fuming to this
folly, takes it all with fatal seriousness. In appearance he is no
ordinary being. A shock of dark brown hair makes his small round head
look larger than it really is; from beneath a pale, freckled forehead,
deep blue eyes, large and mild as a stag's, beam an earnestness which
easily flashes into enthusiasm; the nose is small and turn-up, the
beardless lips girlish and sensitive. He is tall, but stoops, and has an
air of feminine fragility, though his bones and joints are large. Hands
and feet, exquisitely shaped, are expressive of high breeding. His
expensive, handsome clothes are disordered and dusty, and bulging with
books. When he speaks, it is in a strident peacock voice, and there is
an abrupt clumsiness in his gestures, especially in dra