'He is not your father,' Hogg replied slily in reference to the Pater Omnipotens, of whom they had been reading in the satirical treatise on their way to the hotel. 'It is the God of the Jews: the Jehovah you have been reading about!'--an answer that tickled Shelley's never fine sense of humour so acutely, that he slipt from the edge of his chair, and 'laughing aloud with a wild, demoniacal burst of laughter,' measured his length on the floor, to the surprise and alarm of his father, and Mr. Graham, who hastened to raise him from the ground. If Mr. Shelley the Elder 'went on strangely,' Mr. Shelley the Younger cannot be said to have behaved in an orderly and commonplace manner. Dinner being announced, just as Mr. Timothy Shelley and his factotum had raised the younger Mr. Shelley to his feet, the party went to the meal, which passed off agreeably. After dinner (in the absence of Percy Bysshe), Hogg had some friendly conversation with the Member for New Shoreham, about his perplexing son. 'You are a very different person, Sir,' said the Squire, 'from what I expected to find; you are a nice, moderate, reasonable, pleasant gentleman. Tell me what you think I ought to do with my poor boy. He is rather wild; is he not?' 'Yes, rather.' 'Then, what am I to do?' 'If he had married his cousin, he would perhaps have been less so; he would have been steadier.' 'It is very probable that he would.' 'He wants somebody to take care of him--a good wife. What if he were married?' 'But how can I do that? It is impossible. If I were to tell Bysshe to marry a girl, he would refuse directly. I am sure he would. I know him so well.' 'I have no doubt he would refuse, if you were to order him to marry; and I should not blame him. But if you were to bring him in contact with some young lady, who, you believed, would make him a suitable wife, without saying anything about marriage, perhaps he would take a fancy to her; and if he did not like her, you could try another.' It has been remarked by Mr. Rossetti that this conversation accords in some of its particulars with Thornton Hunt's unsatisfactory evidence, that Shelley indulged at Oxford in dissipation, hurtful to his health. Hogg's admission that Shelley had been 'rather wild,' followed immediately by advice that he should be happily married to a young lady qualified to 'take care of him,' would bear this construction; but it may admit of a different interpretation. Young men may be rather wild without being rakish; and rakishness is not the only kind of wildness for which early marriage is often prescribed as a remedy. Shelley's reappearance (after executing the errand on which his father had sent him) having put an end to the talk about various young ladies, any one of whom might be appointed to wean him from wildness, tea was served; and after tea there was some conversation on matters pertaining to religion, of which Hogg gives the following example:--