Doyle had ‘brought forward a motion at the Oxford Union that Shelley was a greater poet than Byron[[79]].’ According to Blakesley, ‘the respective moral tendency of the writings of Shelley and Byron[[80]]’ was the subject under debate. Doyle states that he acted ‘under Cambridge influences’; and that his motion was ‘an echo of Cambridge thought and feeling,’ words which probably refer to the then recent reprint of Shelley’s Adonais at Cambridge. The debate, he proceeds, ‘was attended by three distinguished members of the Cambridge Union, Arthur Hallam, Richard Milnes, and Sunderland’; or, to use the words of what may be called his second account, taken from a lecture on Wordsworth delivered forty-three years afterwards, ‘friends of mine at Cambridge took the matter up and appeared suddenly on the scene of action.’ That this was the true state of the case, and that there was little or no premeditation about the excursion, is made still clearer by Milnes’ first account. After mentioning that he had been to Oxford, he proceeds:
‘I wanted much to see the place and the men, and had no objection to speak in their society; so, as they had a good subject for debate (the comparative merits of Shelley and Byron), and Sunderland and Hallam were both willing to go—and the Master, when he heard what was our purpose, very kindly gave us an Exeat—we drove manfully through the snow, arriving in time to speak that evening....
‘Sunderland spoke first after Doyle, who opened, then Hallam, then some Oxonians, and I succeeded. The contrast from our long, noisy, shuffling, scraping, talking, vulgar, ridiculous-looking kind of assembly, to a neat little square room, with eighty or ninety young gentlemen, sprucely dressed, sitting on chairs or lounging about the fire-place, was enough to unnerve a more confident person than myself. Even the brazen Sunderland was somewhat awed, and became tautological, and spoke what we should call an inferior speech, but which dazzled his hearers. Hallam, as being among old friends, was bold, and spoke well. I was certainly nervous, but, I think, pleased my audience better than I pleased myself[[81]].’
In his second account, written thirty-six years afterwards, Milnes gives greater prominence to the Union Society than, we think, is consistent with the facts. It might easily be argued, after reading it, that the three Cambridge undergraduates had been selected by the Society to represent it. This exaggeration of the part played by the Union was perhaps only natural on an occasion when the speaker must have felt almost bound to magnify the influence of that Society on all departments of Cambridge life. After mentioning Arthur Hallam and Sunderland, he says:
‘It was in company with Mr Sunderland and Arthur Hallam that I formed part of a deputation sent from the Union of Cambridge to the Union of Oxford; and what do you think we went about? Why, we went to assert the right of Mr Shelley to be considered a greater poet than Lord Byron. At that time we in Cambridge were all very full of Mr Shelley. We had printed the Adonais for the first time in England, and a friend of ours suggested that as Shelley had been expelled from Oxford, and greatly ill-treated, it would be a very grand thing for us to go to Oxford and raise a debate upon his character and powers. So, with full permission of the authorities[[82]] we went....
We had a very interesting debate ... but we were very much shocked, and our vanity was not a little wounded, to find that nobody at Oxford knew anything about Mr Shelley. In fact, a considerable number of our auditors believed that it was Shenstone, and said that they only knew one poem of his, beginning, “My banks are all furnished with bees.” We hoped, however, that our apostolate was of some good...[[83]].’
Sir Francis Doyle is provokingly brief in his account of the performances of his Cambridge allies. Sunderland, he tells us, ‘spoke with great effect, though scarcely, I believe, with the same fire that he often put forth on more congenial subjects. Then followed Hallam, with equal if not superior force.’ Of Milnes he says but little. After recounting the discomfiture of a speaker from Oriel, who while declaiming against Shelley suddenly caught sight of him, he adds: ‘Lord Houghton then stood up, and showed consummate skill as an advocate.... After him there was silence in the Union for several minutes, and then Mr Manning of Baliol rose.’ He was on the side of Byron; and when the votes were taken the members present agreed with him.
Mr Gladstone, in a conversation with the author of the life of Cardinal Manning, has given a rather different account of the matter:
‘There was an invasion of barbarians among civilized men, or of civilized men among barbarians. Cambridge men used to look down upon us at Oxford as prim and behind the times. A deputation from the Society of the Apostles at Cambridge, consisting of Monckton Milnes and Henry [Arthur] Hallam, and Sunderland, came to set up among us the cult of Shelley; or at any rate, to introduce the School of Shelley as against the Byronic School at Oxford—Shelley that is, not in his negative, but in his spiritual side. I knew Hallam at Eton, and, I believe, was the intermediary in bringing about the discussion[[84]].’
This view, that the commission of the three knights-errant emanated from the Apostles, and not from themselves, or from the Union Society, is borne out to some degree by Blakesley’s account. But for this we have no space. We will conclude with Manning’s admirable description of the scene. It occurs in a letter dated 3 November, 1866—just after Lord Houghton had made his speech at the Cambridge Union.