smiling face,--
All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away,
And Melancholy flees the sons of day;
Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light,
And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight.

"My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praise
And the fool's censure equally betrays,
Accept the humble blessing of my Muse,
Nor your assistance to her aim refuse,
She asks not flattery, but let her claim
A kind perusal, and a secret name."

I scarcely like to mention it, as a literary accident, but being a
curious and unique anecdote it shall be stated. 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

"Glozi