I had the honour at Christ Church of being prizetaker of Dr.Burton's theological essay, "The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also contested it, stood second; and when Dr.Burton had me before him to give me the L25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr.Gladstone to have L5 worth of them, as he was so good a second.

Certainly such an easy concession was one of my earliest literary triumphs.
My first acquaintance with Gladstone, whom I have known from those college days now for more than five and fifty years, was a memorable event, and may thus be worthy of mention.

It was at that time not a common thing for undergraduates to go to the communion at Christchurch Cathedral--that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular benefit of Dean and Canons, and Masters of Arts.

So when two undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship so well begun has continued to this hour.

Not that I have always approved of my friend's politics; multitudes of letters through many years have passed between us, wherein if I have sometimes ventured to praise or to blame, I have always been answered both gratefully and modestly: but I have ever tried to hold the balance equally too, according to my lights, and if at one time (on occasion of the great Oxford election, 1864) I published a somewhat famous copy of verses, ending with "Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage, The Crichton,--more, the Gladstone of the age," my faithfulness must in after years confess to a well-known palinode (one of my "Three Hundred Sonnets") commencing "Beware of mere delusive eloquence," and a still more caustic lyric, beginning with "Glozing tongue whom none can trust," and so forth, as a caution against a great man's special gift, so proverbially dangerous.