Though poets must "learn in suffering 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