His school-friend, Hogg, is a gentleman of independent property; Shelley detected the sensitiveness of his nature; and I know that the man has been capable of truly generous conduct.  How is it, then, that he has written such utterly unintelligible stuff, and has descended to such evasions as to insert initials, lest people should detect amongst Shelley’s correspondents a most admirable friend, who happened, it is supposed, to be of plebeian origin?  Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, I surmise, was conscious, somewhat early in life, that his better qualities were not fully appreciated; and his love of ease, his wit, his perception of the ludicrous, made him take refuge in cynicism until he learned almost to forget the origin of the real meaning of the things he talked about.  His account of Shelley is like a figure seen through fantastically distorting panes of glass.

Thomas Love Peacock, again, is a man to whose extraordinary powers Shelley did full justice.  He has worked through a long official career without losing his very peculiar dry wit; but a dry wit was not the man exactly to discern the form of Shelley’s mind, or to portray it with accuracy and distinctness.

Few men knew the poet better than my father; but a mind checked by “over-refinement,” excessive conscientiousness, and an irresistible tendency to find out niceties of difference,—­a mind, in short, like that of Hamlet, cultivated rather than corrected by the trials of life, was scarcely suited to comprehend the strong instincts, indomitable will, and complete unity of idea which distinguished Shelley.  Accordingly we have from my father a very doubtful portrait, seldom advancing beyond details, which are at once exaggerated and explained away by qualifications.

Byron, I suspect, through the natural strength of his perceptive power, was likely to have formed a better design; but the two were separated soon after he had begun to learn that such a man as Shelley might be found on the same earth with himself.

One or two others that have written have been mere tourists or acquaintances.  Unquestionably the companion who knew him best of all was Mary; and although she lacked the power of distinct, positive, and absolute portraiture, her writings will be found to contain, together with his own, the best materials for forming an estimate of his natural character.

The real man was reconcilable with all these descriptions.  His traits suggested everything that has been said of him; but his aspect, conformation, and personal qualities contained more than any one has ascribed to him, and more indeed than all put together.  A few plain matters-of-fact will make this intelligible.  Shelley was a tall man,—­nearly, if not quite, five feet ten in height.  He was peculiarly slender, and, as I have said already, his chest had palpably enlarged after the usual growing period.  He retained the same kind of straitness in the perpendicular outline on each side of him; his shoulders were the