"He said—'You will be very sorry if it happens that you are not first legalist of your year—that is the only place in the Law Tripos that you can be content with—and yet remember you have Shee in your year, who is always a dangerous adversary, and who starts with some little knowledge on the subject.'
"I said I should read with Shee, and make him understand that I was intended by Nature to beat him."
The dangerous Shee had been thus announced in a letter of February, 1863: "Shee—son of the well-known Serjeant, [Footnote: Mr. Serjeant Shee was later a Judge—the first Roman Catholic since the time of the Stuarts to sit on the English Bench.] has come up and taken the rooms over me. He seems a nice kind of fellow; of course, a strong Romanist."
Shee remained till the end Dilke's chief competitor, and he was also one of the band of friends who met each other incessantly, and incessantly talked over first principles till the small hours of morning. Perhaps it is not without importance that Charles Dilke should have had the experience, not very common for Englishmen, of living on terms of intimacy with an Irish Roman Catholic: at all events, his relations in after-life, both with Irishmen and with Roman Catholics, were more friendly than is common. For the moment Shee made one factor in the discussions upon theology which are inevitable among undergraduates, and which went on with vigour in this little group, according to the recollection of Judge Steavenson, who in those days, faithful to the orthodoxy of his Low Church upbringing, found himself ranged by the side of the 'strong Romanist' against a general onslaught upon Christianity. Charley Dilke himself had come under the influences of the place and the time. There is an entry headed May, 1863: "I find a fair argument against miracles in my notes for this month." He had abandoned attendance at Communion, but, according to Judge Steavenson, did not go further in opinions or in talk than a vague agnosticism—which was also the attitude of another subtle and agile intelligence in that circle.
Turning over, in 1891, the boxes which held his letters and papers of college days, Charles Dilke wrote:
"1863.
"In every page of the destroyed notebooks of this year I could see the influence of two men—my grandfather and H. D. Warr." [Footnote: Mr. H. D. Warr became a journalist. In 1880 Sir Charles secured him the post of Secretary to the Royal Commission upon City Companies, of which Lord Derby was Chairman.]
Warr was a classical exhibitioner of Trinity Hall in Dilke's year, and was not among the few who are named at first as likely friends, though he figures early as a competitor in the Euclid and Algebra 'fights' at his tutor's. In February, 1863, his name must have been on Dilke's tongue or pen, since this is evidently a reply to inquiries:
"Warr is a clergyman's son. He will probably be about fourth or fifth for the Bell (Scholarship)."
It is not till the October term of his second year that more explicit notice of this friend occurs, when Dilke is giving an account of his first speech as Vice-President of the Union. He opened a debate on the metric system, concerning which he had solid and well-thought-out opinions: