ABSTRACT
Shelley became an undergraduate of University College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas Term of 1810. Shelley and Hogg fell at once into a dispute about modern German and Italian literature, Shelley being for the Germans, Hogg for the Italians. The teaching at Oxford was still almost as listless as Gibbon found it. For the Christmas vacation Shelley went to Field Place and Hogg to Bucking hamshire. Shelley wrote long letters to Hogg, and these reveal his state of mind more clearly even than Hogg's narrative. Thereupon Timothy Shelley wrote a letter to his son which caused him the most exquisite apprehension. The master produced a copy of the pamphlet, and asked if he had written it, speaking in a rude, abrupt, and insolent tone. Undergraduates were not sent to the University to write pamphlets on the necessity of atheism, and at that date they were all supposed to be members of the Church of England.
