CHAPTER VII.
PRIZE POEMS, ETC.
In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems, "The Suttees" and the "African Desert," won respectively by Claughton, now Bishop of St.Albans, and Rickards, whose honours of course I ought to know, but don't.

A good-looking and well-speaking friend of mine, E.H.Abney, now a Canon, was so certain that the said prizes in those two successive years were to fall to me, that he learnt my poems by heart in order to recite them as my speech-substitute in the Sheldonian Theatre at Commemoration, and he used frequently to look in upon me to be coached in his recital.

It was rumoured that I came second on both occasions,--one of them certainly had a 2 marked on it when returned to me, but I know not who placed it there.

However, my pieces were afterwards printed; both separately, and among my "Ballads and Poems," by Hall and Virtue, and are now before me.

As an impartial and veteran judge of such _literaria_, I am bold to say they are far better than I thought, and might fairly have won Newdigate prizes, even as friend Abney & Co.