A stronger contrast of character is seldom witnessed than the contrast to be noticed in the two undergraduates, who, through meeting casually, and talking together freely at the same dinner table 'in hall,' formed at once a close friendship, that (with the exception of the brief period of estrangement, which renders the story of their intercourse more singular and interesting), endured till death divided them for ever. Whilst Shelley was a Liberal, whose liberalism even at the commencement of this friendship was revolutionary in its aims and enthusiasm, Hogg was a caricature of Eldonian Toryism, who held Dissenters in disdain, snapt his fingers at Catholic Emancipation, and smiled contemptuously at every reference to Irish grievances. In political sentiment the Hogg, who wrote the _New Monthly_ Papers on 'Shelley at Oxford' differed from the Oxonian Hogg, only as the Toryism of a middle-aged man differs from the Toryism of a boy. The election that 'had just taken place,' when he entered University College was a choice he disapproved; though animosity against the Lord Chancellor, who deprived Shelley of his children, and animosity against those of the Chancellor's supporters who expelled Shelley and Shelley's friend from Oxford, caused him in later time to write of Eldon, as though the Chief of the Law were greatly inferior in culture and mental dignity to his victor in the academic conflict. Doubtless, on coming to Oxford immediately after the election of Lord Grenville, the young gentleman declared his disapproval of the triumph of the blue-and-buff faction:--not passionately, for passion seldom stirred his breast; but with much droll ridicule of a business so eminently ridiculous, for even from his boyhood Mr. Hogg (a born humourist and cynic) turned everything, even his own religious convictions, to jest. Whilst the Oxonian Shelley, already a half-fledged republican, talked tenderly of the poor and the populace, Hogg ever a provincial aristocrat (and by no means devoid of provincial vulgarity), regarded the populace with disgust, and maintained that all the poor wanted was to be kept in their proper places and to their proper work. Ever impatient, Shelley was fervid as fire itself, whilst Hogg, from youth to old age, was remarkable for imperturbable temper and adamantine patience, on every question that had no reference to his academic misadventure. Coming from the North of England to Oxford in the autumn of 1809, some weeks before he donned cap and gown in February, 1810, Hogg entered the University with the purpose of taking honours, and had acquired the reputation of 'a reading man' before the long vacation of 1810.