Coming to Oxford for residence in the autumn of 1810, when Hogg had acquired status and character amongst the younger members of his academic house, the sensitive, simple, never worldly-wise Shelley entered University College with a strong appetite for general knowledge, and an intention to peruse many books on many subjects for his own amusement, but with no ambition for academic honours, no intention of competing for them, no purpose of becoming, in the academic and limited sense of the term, 'a reading man.' Hogg had not been three months in University College, before the tutors saw he meant to put his name in a 'first class.' Shelley, on the other hand, had not been three weeks in College before the tutors saw he meant to go out with the 'pass men,' and were doubtful whether he would take a degree. As it must be held in some measure accountable for the influence he acquired over Shelley, readers must assign considerable weight to the fact that Hogg was qualified by several matters--his seniority on the College books, priority in residence, greater knowledge of the University, higher status in the lecture-rooms,--to play the part of academic superior to his new acquaintance. Superlatively trivial to men of _the_ world, the matters that gave Hogg this precedence and superiority over Shelley in University College, are no light affairs in the small world of the University, the still smaller world of a single College. The sensitive Shelley would not have presumed to invite Hogg to his rooms after their first meeting 'in hall.' It was for Hogg to pay the compliment to the freshman in his first term of residence; and no old University man will doubt that Shelley felt he received a considerable attention, when so notable a personage amongst the first-year's men as Mr. Hogg said to him, 'Come and have wine at my rooms.' As Hogg and Shelley sat over their wine in consequence of this invitation, the host took an opportunity to examine the aspect of his new acquaintance more minutely, and to observe that his girlish pink-and-white complexion was much freckled. 'His complexion,' says Hogg, 'was delicate, and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting;' a piece of description that is referred to by 'the Shelleyan enthusiasts' as an example of Hogg's imaginativeness. No one (if we may credit Shelleyan enthusiasts) but a suspiciously imaginative historian would have ventured to say he could remember, after twenty years, the sun-spots of an old college friend's complexion. I venture to say that the disfigurement is a good example of the kind of things, likely to live in the memory of certain observers.