On the morning following their expulsion (the morning of 26th March, 1811), Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, formerly of University College, Oxford, made the journey to London on the outside of a stage-coach. Thus Shelley passed in disgrace from his University at the close of his second residence-term; an event that may be regarded as the termination of the first period of his literary career. What a disastrous period it was! How fruitful of misadventure, ridicule, catastrophe, and shame! No literary aspirant, destined for imperishable fame, ever made a more inauspicious beginning. In his first voyages on literary waters, Byron encountered stormy weather and rough usage. His first book of poetry resembled Shelley's maiden volume, in being suppressed for fear of consequences. Ere his first razor had lost its edge, he was assailed by the _Edinburgh Review_. But having weathered the gale, that almost wrecked _The Hours of Idleness_, he enjoyed merry seas and favourable breezes. A notability before starting for Greece, he returned from the 'pilgrimage,' to spring to the highest pinnacle of fame. On leaving Oxford, Shelley had produced the _Victor-and-Cazire_ book (suppressed for want of originality); two of the feeblest and absurdest novels ever written in the English tongue; the _Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson_, that, despite all Hogg says to the contrary, made him the laughing-stock of Oxford; the advertisements of the _Poetical Essay_ that never saw the light; and (with Hogg's help) the _little_ syllabus that brought him to _great_ grief,--to about the greatest disgrace a young man can undergo at manhood's threshold, without falling in the grip of the criminal law. CHAPTER XIV. THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1811. Arrival in Town--The Poland-Street Exiles--The Squire's Correspondence with Hogg's Father--His gentle Treatment of Shelley--Dinner at Miller's Hotel--Hogg's Testimony to the Squire's Worth--Shelley's Nicknames for his Father--Shelley rejects his Father's Terms--Shelley offers Terms to his Father--The Squire's Indignation--He Relents--He makes Shelley a Liberal Allowance--Lady Shelley's Misrepresentations-- The Exiles about Town--The Separation of 'The Inseparables'--Shelley's Intimacy with the Westbrooks--John Westbrook's Calling and Character-- Taking the Sacrament--Harriett Westbrook's Conversion to Atheism--Her Disgrace at School--Shelley's Measures for illuminating his Sister Hellen--Tourists in Wales--The Change in Elizabeth Shelley-- Arrangements for a Clandestine Meeting--Mrs. Shelley's Treatment of her Son--Captain Pilford's Kindness to his Nephew--Harriett Westbrook's Appeal to Shelley--Her Decision and Indecision--From Wales to London--Hogg's Influence--The Elopement to Scotland--Hogg starts for Edinburgh.