ent him a copy:--

On perusing it I was very much struck by the contrast it exhibited
between the faculty of versification which (I thought) was good,
and the faculty of poetry, which was very defective. This faculty
of verse had been trained I suppose by verse-making at Eton, and
was based upon the possession of a good or tolerable ear with which
nature had endowed me. I think that a poetical faculty did develop
itself in me a little later, that is to say between twenty and
thirty, due perhaps to having read Dante with a real devotion and
absorption. It was, however, in my view, true but weak, and has
never got beyond that stage. It was evidently absent from the
verses, I will not say the poem, on Coeur de Lion; and without
hesitation I declined to allow any reprint.[48]

DEBATES AT THE UNION

He was active in the debates at the Union, where he made his first start
in the speaking line (Feb. 1830) in a strong oration much admired by his
friends, in favour,--of all the questionable things in the world,--of
the Treason and Sedition Acts of 1795. He writes home that he did not
find the ordeal so formidable as it used to be before the smaller
audiences at Eton, for at Oxford they sometimes mustered as many as a
hundred or a hundred and fifty. He spoke for a strongly-worded motion on
a happier theme, in favour of the policy and memory of Canning. In the
summer of 1831, he mentions a debate in which a motion was proposed in
favour of speedy emancipation of the West Indian slaves. 'I moved an
amendment that education of a religious kind was the fit object of
legislation, which was carried by thirty-three to twelve.' Of the most
notable of all his successes at the Union we shall soon hear.

DAILY LIFE

His little diary, written for no eye but his own, and in the use of
which I must beware of the sin of violating the sanctuary, contains in
the most concise of daily records all his various activities, and, at
least after the summer at Cuddesdon, it presents an attractive picture
of duty, industry, and attention, 'constant as the motion of the day.'
The entries are much alike, and a few of them will suffice to bring his
life and him before us. The days for 1830 may almost be taken at random.

_May 10, 1830._--Prospectively, I have the following work to do in
the course of this term. (I mention it now,