"One Sunday we had been reading Plato together so diligently, that
the usual hour of exercise passed away unperceived: we sallied forth
hastily to take the air for half-an-hour before dinner. In the
middle of Magdalen Bridge we met a woman with a child in her arms.
Shelley was more attentive at that instant to our conduct in a life
that was past, or to come, than to a decorous regulation of the
present, according to the established usages of society, in that
fleeting moment of eternal duration styled the nineteenth century.
With abrupt dexterity he caught hold of the child. The mother, who
might well fear that it was about to be thrown over the parapet of
the bridge into the sedgy waters below, held it fast by its long
train.
""Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, Madam?" he
asked, in a piercing voice, and with a wistful look."
Shelley and Hogg seem almost to have lived in reality the life of the
Scholar Gipsy. In Mr. Arnold's poem, which has made permanent for
all time the charm, the sentiment of Oxfordshire scenery, the poet
seems to be following the track of Shelley. In Mr. Hogg's memoirs we
hear little of summer; it seems always to have been in winter that
the friends took their long rambles, in which Shelley set free, in
talk, his inspiration. One thinks of him
"in winter, on the causeway chill,
Where home through flooded fields foot travellers go,"
returning to the supper in Hogg's rooms, to the curious desultory
meals, the talk, and the deep slumber by the roaring fire, the small
head lying perilously near the flames.
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