It is impossible, at a distance of just sixty years, to form an exact estimate of the success of Milnes in those debates. But that it was something more than ordinary, is, we think, certain; for otherwise he would not have ventured to present himself at the Oxford Union in December 1829, in the character of a self-selected missionary, who hoped to carry light and leading into the dark places of the sister University. As this expedition has been twice described by Milnes himself, first in a letter to his mother soon after his return to Cambridge, and secondly in a speech at the opening of the new building of the Cambridge Union Society in 1866; and also, more or less fully, by four of his contemporaries, Sir Francis Doyle, Mr Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, and Dean Blakesley, it is clear that it was regarded by himself and his friends, both at the time and afterwards, as something uncommon and remarkable, and we feel sure that we shall be excused if we try to give a connected narrative of what really took place.
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....