Some thirty or more years later Captain Kennedy recalled how, before setting out for a walk beyond the limits of the Field Place demesne, he (a sixteen-years-old ensign) and the poet used to exchange their outer garments, so that the disguise of a scarlet uniform should render the Warnham peasants less likely to recognize their Squire’s son. It lived in Captain Kennedy’s recollection how, though he had a small pate, his military cap was so much too large for Percy that it was found needful to pad the lining liberally for his use. But because Shelley saw a necessity for dressing himself out in this fashion, and, doubtless, enjoyed the fun of masquerading about the Warnham lanes in a red coat, it does not follow there was any need for the disguise. That Captain Kennedy resembled the biographer for whose benefit he racked his recollection, and all other persons who try to recall clearly what they can only remember vaguely, in permitting his fancy to aid his memory, appears from one or two passages of his entertaining narrative. Though the exchange of costumes was a matter to live in the memory of either masquerader, it is difficult to believe the Captain could recollect (some thirty or forty years afterwards) that Shelley wore ‘an old black coat,’ which had been ‘done up, and smartened with metal buttons and a velvet collar.’ To believe all the Captain says about this seedy and re-trimmed garment, is to believe that Shelley (the young gentleman who a few weeks since had set up his carriage) dressed thus meanly because he was too generous ever to have any money in his pocket, and too precisely honourable to run in debt. A passage from the Captain’s narrative, as it was originally offered to the world in Hogg’s second volume, may be given both as an example of the deponent’s evidence, and as an illustration of the editorial carelessness by which Hogg enabled his enemies to charge him with falsifying documents:-- ‘He told me,’ says Captain Kennedy, ‘Sir James was intimate with one to whom, as he said, he owed everything; from whose book, _Political Justice_, he had derived all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue. He discoursed with eloquence and enthusiasm, but his views seemed to me exquisitely metaphysical, and by no means clear, precise, or decided. He told me he had already read the Bible in Hebrew four times. He was then only twenty-two years of age. _Shelley never learnt Hebrew; he probably said in Greek, for he was much addicted to reading the Septuagint._ He spoke of the Supreme Being as of infinite mercy and benevolence. He disclosed no fixed views of spiritual things; all seemed wild and fanciful.’