Whilst William Godwin's daughter was silent from pecuniary prudence, Leigh Hunt silent from fear of the consequence, and Peacock silent because he thought the book (which, if written, should be written honestly) had better not be written at all, Hogg was reluctant to produce the memoir, which the success of the Papers had caused most people to think should come from his pen. No one can charge him with intruding himself prematurely, or without invitation, into the chair, out of which he was thrust so discourteously by the very persons who had begged him to take it. The man of imperturbable temper and adamantine patience (as he is styled by Peacock) was not pricked into unauthorized action by the amateur biographers, who, sometimes without acknowledgment, and always without permission, pillaged his Papers. Medwin's _Life_ appeared in 1847; and smiling at the _littérateur's_ blunders, the man of imperturbable temper held his pen. He remained the man of adamantine patience, though rumours came to him that Mr. Middleton was at work on a _Life_ of the poet, whom he had never known at all; that Trelawny was threatening to produce a book of gossip about the poet, whom he had known for only six months; and that the works of these gentlemen would be followed at no great distance by a work from the pen of the 'metropolitan versifier' (Leigh Hunt), of whom his in due course remarked in the preface to his two volumes: 'If it were a question of assets, of faculties, of effects, the taking of an account of plunder,--an inventory of sums received, and of moneys to be received, refunded, and disgorged,--a mere calculation of the wind that had been raised, this indication of the person best qualified to be the biographer of a prince amongst poets would be judicious.'
It was not till Field Place felt the necessity of correcting the numerous misstatements about the man of genius by a complete and authoritative biography, that the largely employed lawyer declared his willingness to execute the difficult task, which had been deferred too long. Midway between sixty and seventy years of age, when he thus accepted the invitation of Sir Percy Florence and Lady Shelley, the man of many affairs, and an exacting avocation, did not set to work on the _Life_ till nearly a quarter of a century had passed since the publication of the _New Monthly_ Papers; till the poet had been dead nearly thirty-five years; till full forty-five years had passed since the poet, in the company of his future biographer, set their faces for London, on leaving University College, Oxford.