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.... ‘Sunderland spoke first after Doyle, who opened, then Hallam, then some Oxonians, and I succeeded. The contrast from our long, noisy, shuffling, scraping, talking, vulgar, ridiculous-looking kind of assembly, to a neat little square room, with eighty or ninety young gentlemen, sprucely dressed, sitting on chairs or lounging about the fire-place, was enough to unnerve a more confident person than myself. Even the brazen Sunderland was somewhat awed, and became tautological, and spoke what we should call an inferior speech, but which dazzled his hearers. Hallam, as being among old friends, was bold, and spoke well. I was certainly nervous, but, I think, pleased my audience better than I pleased myself[81].’ In his second account, written thirty-six years afterwards, Milnes gives greater prominence to the Union Society than, we think, is consistent with the facts. It might easily be argued, after reading it, that the three Cambridge undergraduates had been selected by the Society to represent it. This exaggeration of the part played by the Union was perhaps only natural on an occasion when the speaker must have felt almost bound to magnify the influence of that Society on all departments of Cambridge life. After mentioning Arthur Hallam and Sunderland, he says: