No novel indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate and satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of the student life enjoyed together for a few short months by the inseparable friends.

To make extracts from a masterpiece of such consummate workmanship is almost painful.

Future biographers of Shelley, writing on a scale adequate to the greatness of their subject, will be content to lay their pens down for a season at this point, and let Hogg tell the tale in his own wayward but inimitable fashion.

I must confine myself to a few quotations and a barren abstract, referring my readers to the ever-memorable pages 48--286 of Hogg's first volume, for the life that cannot be transferred to these.
"At the commencement of Michaelmas term," says this biographer, "that is, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened one day to sit next to a freshman at dinner; it was his first appearance in hall.

His figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably youthful, even at our table, where all were very young.