LIFE AND LETTERS BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A. /ti/ // , Ji;i),t,' , - mJ,.2H / THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A. MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD BY EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., LL.D. AND LEWIS CAMPBELL, M.A., LL.D. WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 77V TWO VOLUMES: VOL. I E. P. BUTTON AND CO. No. 31 WEST TWENTY THIRD STREET NEW YORK 1897 Stack Annex PREFACE "PROFESSOR, JOWETT'S life naturally falls into two -*- sections the period before the Mastership, and the Mastership. The first of these volumes contains the first period, and is the work of Professor Campbell ; in the second, I have written the story of the Mastership ; and I am responsible for the whole. The plan followed in both volumes is of course the same. A few letters have been worked into the narrative ; others, far too numerous to be used in such a manner, but of a personal character, have been appended to the chapters according to their dates, and thus form as it were illustrations of the text, giving in Jowett's own words his thoughts and feelings at the time l . In the second period the material was to some extent different from that in the first, for Jowett's personal memoranda became far more numerous as he grew older, and from these, as in some respects the truest record of his life, it was necessary to draw largely. The second volume is also somewhat more annalistic than 1 A number of very valuable Lansdowne, and others, could not letters on more general topics, to be included in the Life, and are Sir R. B. D. Morier, the Marquis of reserved for a separate volume. a 3 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. PAGE Jowetts of Manningham in Yorkshire The Master's great-grand- father, Henry Jowett, and his four sons The Evangelical move- ment Musical cultivation The Master's father and mother The Langhorne family The Jowetts at Camberwell Changes of position and circumstances The Master's sister Emily His brothers, Alfred and William Jowett ..... 1-28 CHAPTER II. INFANCY AND BOYHOOD. 1817-1836. Early training and companionships Camberwell Blackheath Mitcham Entrance at St. Paul's School at the age of twelve Dr. Sleath and his methods School-fellows and school successes The Balliol Scholarship 'Apposition Day' . . . . 29-44 CHAPTER III. SCHOLAR AND FELLOW OF BALLIOL. 1836-1840. Early friendships at Oxford The Hertford Latin Scholarship A Balliol undergraduate sixty years since Reminiscences of surviving contemporaries The Master, Richard Jenkyns, and the Tutors, Tait and Scott The Balliol Fellowship won by the under- graduate Scholar Work in private tuition Death of Ellen Jowett Graduation Letters to W. A. Greenhill 45-7 1 CHAPTER IV. FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL. 1840-1846. W. G. Ward and A. P. Stanley Tract XC and the Thirty-nine Articles First foreign tour The Decade Assistant Tutorship Ordination The Paris libraries Appointment as Tutor (1842) x Contents PAGE College business With Stanley in Germany Hegel and Schelling Degradation of Ward Action of the ' Oxford Liberals ' Projected work on the New Testament Archdeacon Palmer's reminiscences Letters 72-124 CHAPTER V. TUTORSHIP (continued). COMMENTARY ON ST. PAUL. 1846-1850. Attachment of his pupils to him His interest in their works Hegel and Comte Lectures in Political Economy Plato at Oxford .Paris in 1848 Conversation with Michelet, &c. Theological Essays Long Vacations The Oban reading party Alexander Ewing, Bishop of Argyll Notes on the Romans Death of William Jowett A pupil's record of conversations Letters . . 125-171 CHAPTER VI. UNIVERSITY AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 1846-1854. W. D. Christie, M.P. Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth Roundell Palmer Goldwin Smith The University Commission East India Civil Service Examinations Lord Macaulay's Committee Letters on University Reform 172-194 CHAPTER VII. TUTORIAL AND OTHER INTERESTS. 1850-1854. Widening social horizon Bunsen Sir C. Trevelyan Tennyson Tutorial methods Vacations Mr. W. L. Newman's reminis- cences ........... 195-225 CHAPTER VIII. THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. THE PROFESSORSHIP OF GREEK. 1854-1860. Position in Oxford and elsewhere Repulse for the Mastership Epistles of St. Paul Greek Professorship Vice-Chancellor Cotton Endowment withheld Work of the Chair Isolation Death of his brother Alfred and of his father Second edition of the Epistles Portrait by G. Richmond W. L. Newman's reminis- cences (continued') 226-258 CHAPTER IX. FRIENDS AND PUPILS. 1854-1860. Theological attitude Desultory studies Advice to young writers and preachers Society in Scotland and elsewhere Preparation of Essays and Reviews Publication of the volume Letters . 259-289 Contents xi CHAPTER X. 'ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.' 1860-1865. PAGE Essays and Reviews Panic in the religious world The Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews Bishop Wilberforce Stanley at Oxford Dr. Pusey's attitude Bishop Colenso Prosecution of Williams and Wilson The Vice-Chancellor's Court Continued agitation for the Endowment of the Greek Chair E. Freeman and C. Elton Endowment of the Chair by Christ Church . . . 290 320 CHAPTER XL TUTORIAL WORK. 1860-1865. Personal effects of controversy Extracts from correspondence Professorial and Tutorial work Letters from W. Pater and Professor G. G. Ramsay ' Colonization ' George Rankine Luke Society at Clifton and in Scotland Vacation parties Letters 321-374 CHAPTER XII. REFORMS AT BALLIOL. 1865-1870. Improved circumstances Reforms in Balliol and the University Effects of experience Characteristics Speculation and action Health impaired Mr. Robert Lowe The poet Browning Meeting with Mr. Gladstone Death of his mother Second series of Essays and Reviews Why never completed Scott made Dean of Rochester The Mastership in view 375-446 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PORTRAIT FROM CRAYON DRAWING BY G. RICHMOND, R.A. 1854) Frontispiece SKETCH OF A CONCERT IN THE HALL OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, GIVEN BY DR. JOSEPH JOWETT. (From a Contemporary Drawing) ... ... Page 7 FISHER'S BUILDING AND END OF 'RAT'S CASTLE,' BALLIOL COLLEGE. (Copied from a print in an old Oxford Guide) To face page 48 FACSIMILE OF EARLY HANDWRITING (1855) . To face page 236 THE OLD CHAPEL AND LIBRARY, BALLIOL COLLEGE (from the North-east End) To face page 248 BALLIOL COLLEGE BEFORE THE REBUILDING IN 1868 To face page 376 THE OLD HALL AND MASTER'S LIBRARY, BALLIOL COLLEGE To face page 408 LIFE OF BENJAMIN JOWETT CHAPTER I BIRTH AND PARENTAGE JOWETTS of Manningham in Yorkshire The Master's great- grandfather, Henry Jowett, and his four sons The Evangelical movement Musical cultivation The Master's father and mother The Langhorne family The Jowetts at Camberwell Changes of position and circumstances The Master's sister Emily His brothers, Alfred and William Jowett, T)ENJAMIN JOWETT was born in the parish of -'-' Camberwell, Surrey, on April 15, 1817, and died on October i, 1893. The following entry, headed ' On rising in life,' was found in one of the note-books in which it was for many years his practice to write down thoughts and observations : 'My ancestors lived at Manningham near Bradford, where they had land, part of which they sold in 1740. They were probably in the condition of yeomen. The Eeverend Dr. Joseph Jowett, Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Cambridge, who died in 1813, was my great-uncle. He had a brother, Henry Jowett, Eector of Little Dunham in Norfolk, and another brother, John Jowett, a wool-stapler I believe, who had three sons, clergymen, the Eeverend William Jowett, a Missionary among the Copts, the Eeverend Joseph Jowett, Eector of Silk Willoughby, Lincolnshire, and the Reverend John Jowett, Eector of Hartfield.' VOL. I. B 2 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i At the beginning of the eighteenth century, two Jowetts of Manningham l were doing business in London and York. Henry Jowett, of London, is described as a man of character and probity and a strict Churchman, who attended the week-day prayers at his parish church. His brother Benjamin, of York, counts likewise amongst the Master's ancestry, through an intermarriage of cousins to be mentioned by-and-by. This Henry Jowett, of Manningham and London, had a son Henry, the Master's great-grandfather. Henry Jowett, of Leeds and Camberwell, 1719-1801. He was born in London in 1719, and passed some of his childhood at Whitby, where he conceived a passion for the sea. After one voyage, however, he was apprenticed by his father to a hat-manufacturer in London. While thus employed, he heard' the preaching of Whitefield, and the impression was deep and permanent. "When his apprenticeship came to an end, he set up for himself as a skinner or furrier. In 1757 he removed with his young family to Leeds, where he remained till 1773. Here he formed two intimacies which had an important influence upon the life of his sons. "William Hey, the well-known surgeon and Fellow of the Royal Society, not only shared the same religious impressions, which were then still comparatively rare, but was also an accomplished musician, and a student of great writers whom he loved to introduce to younger men ; and Henry Venn, who came to Huddersfield in 1789, helped to con- firm the spiritual work which Whitefield had begun. 1 The Jowitts (formerly Jow- with the Jowetts of Manningham ; etts), an old Quaker family in but in the period now under re- the neighbourhood of Leeds, if view there was no connexion traced far enough back, might between the branches, prove to have a common origin Four Generations 3 About two years after the death of his wife in 1771, Henry Jowett removed his place of business to London, and his home to Camberwell Green. He resided there until he died in 1801, having survived his eldest son, John, by one year. He is a dignified, patriarchal figure, of a strong, determined nature, profoundly imbued with genuine piety, ruling his house with authority, and bringing up his children and his grandchildren with vigilant care ' in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' His sons in middle life still deferred to his authority, and prized his counsel, addressing him in their letters as 'Dear and honoured Sir.' His corre- spondence is marked by simple gravity of style, and while often expressed in the peculiar dialect of Methodism, has the ring of true affection, sagacity, consistent purpose, and resignation to the Divine "Will. In early life he had owed much to Mr. Hill, a Nonconformist minister, and in his old age was inclined to "Wesleyanism, react- ing not against the formalism, but the too pronounced Calvinism, of the parish clergyman \ There still remains 1 The following excerpt from minds, make it appear wearisome the manuscript record of his and gloomy. He usually in the granddaughter, Mrs. Elizabeth evenings read a whole chapter of Pratt, is characteristic both of the the Bible with Matthew Henry's times and of the man : commentary ; which occupied so ' In the government of his much time that the children and family my grandfather was servants got sleepy and tired, thought to be strict. His children If the boys showed symptoms of greatly reverenced him ; yet it drowsiness, they were required to must be confessed that they often stand up, and their father would felt a degree of awe in his pro- occasionally ask them their sence which made them in their opinion of a sentiment or put boyish days rather shrink from some question which required his company. His family wor- them to have attended to the ship, too, was perhaps somewhat reading in order to answer it, calculated to exhibit religion in ... I shall never forget the an austere light, and, to young patriarchal benediction which he B 2 4 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i in his handwriting a solemn form of self-dedication, signed, sealed, and doubtless executed, October 27, 1770, identical with that recommended in Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, chap, xviii. 7. To the last he followed with keen interest the course of public aifairs ; disliking the war with America, but rejoicing in Admiral Duncan's successes ; although he feared that they might unduly minister to national pride. Henry Jowett, of Camberwell, had four sons, John, Joseph, Benjamin (the Master's grandfather), and Henry ; and two daughters, Elizabeth, who died young, and Sarah, who lived to old age. The sons, except John, the eldest, who had been at St. Paul's School for a time before they left London \ attended the Leeds Grammar School, in companjr with John Venn, who lived with the Jowetts as one of the family. Joseph and Henry Jowett, as well as John Venn, proceeded to the University of Cambridge ; while Benjamin, like his eldest brother, John, was apprenticed to his father's business. As three of these men, his great-uncles, are mentioned by the Master himself, and as more is known of them than of his grandfather, it may be allowable to give a short account of each of them before proceeding in the main line. pronounced upon me and Mr. of God the Father, God the Son, Pratt, when we went to take and God the Holy Ghost might leave of him. He was sitting by rest upon us. He did this with the fireside in his dressing-gown much emotion, and I could with his night-cap and a large have imagined that it was the cocked hat on his head ; and patriarch Jacob blessing his pos- before we left him he raised him- terity.' self on his feet, feeble and totter- * According to the belief of ing as he was, and with a most his daughter, Mrs. E. Pratt ; but graceful air took his hat off his his name is not on the Register head, and prayed that the blessing of St. Paul's scholars. Four Generations 5 John Jowett, of Leeds and Newington Butts, 1743-1800. John had been at work in his father's office from the time of going to Leeds, 1757, being then in his four- teenth year. But he continued his education through intercourse with William Hey, who read with him such works as Locke, Butler, Jonathan Edwards, &c., and conversed with him on theological subjects. The two friends often walked to Huddersfield together to listen to the preaching of Henry Venn. Mr. Hey, who was a student of thorough-bass and a lover of Corelli and other early composers, also encouraged his companion's love for music, and John learned to play the organ. John was already in partnership with his father, when in 1771, shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth Bankes, younger sister of Mrs. Hey, he removed to London, and opened a warehouse in Red Lion Court, Bermondsey. Here he was joined by his father and by his brother Benjamin. The business prospered after a while, and in 1790 John Jowett purchased the lease of a house and grounds at Newington, Surrey 1 , where he was often visited by his brothers from Cam- bridge and their friends ; and also by the ' worthy Mr. John Newton 2 ,' who is said to have designated John Jowett's household as par excellence ' the Christian family.' He was in fact a pillar of the Evangelical party in the Church, and his home was also a centre of musical culture. He died at the age of fifty-six in 1800, having shortly before assisted at the foundation of the Church Missionary Society. His profoundly religious 1 The proceeds of the Man- the last heiress, ningham estate had before this 2 This was in the later period been divided amongst the cou- of Mr. Newton's career, when he sins, by the will of Eleanor, was Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth. Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i character, combined as it was with persistent practical energy, gives him a just claim to prominent considera- tion in these preliminary pages. His ' enthusiasm,' as it would then have been termed, was tempered, in a remarkable degree, with candour and moderation. On his death-bed, he told his relatives who surrounded him that he felt ' not rapture, but peace.' ' The Scrip- tures speak of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits, &c. I should like to feel that, but I am not anxious about it ; I leave the matter to God 1 .' 1 John had five sons, Henry, John, Joshua, Joseph, andWilliam, and two daughters, Elizabeth, who married the Eev. Josiah Pratt, and Hannah, who married Mr. Hudson. Three of the sons became beneficed clergymen, as appears in the Master's note-book above quoted : the most remark- able of these was William. He was twelfth wrangler at Cam- bridge in 1810, a Fellow of St. John's, and the first Cambridge graduate who volunteered for the foreign service of the Church Missionary Society. He ended his days in the rectory at Clapham Rise, where he suc- ceeded John Venn. He had some peculiar expedients for rousing the interest of a sleepy congrega- tion. ' And now I will read you a dispatch from a great com- mander at the seat of war : ' this prelude was followed by a quota- tion from the Book of Joshua. The reader will find more about him in the Dictionary of National Biography. Joseph, the Rector of Silk Willoughby, applied the musical skill which he inherited to the composition of hymn-tunes, which have been much appre- ciated by persons of religious feeling and fine taste. His Musae Solitariae, 'A Collection of Original Melodies, adapted to various measures of Psalms and Hymns' (fourth edition, 1826), was much valued by James Martineau and used in his family and congrega- tion in connexion with his own selected hymns. John,the Rector of Hartfield, held for a time an evening lectureship at Clapham. It is quite possible that the Master of Balliol, when a boy, may have heard the preaching of more than one of these men, his cousins, during some of his visits to the Courthopes at Blackheath or the. Langhornes at Clapham. Joshua appears to have opened a business in Liverpool before 1823 ; but he afterwards returned to London, where he set up as an ironmonger, and his home was again the centre of mu- sical reunions, similar to those at his father's house at Newing- Four Generations Joseph Jowett, of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1752-1813. Joseph Jowett was a prominent figure in the Cambridge of his day, where he was Professor of Civil Law, and the main particulars of his life are clearly recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography *. The biographer of his grand-nephew may be permitted, however, to dwell, before passing from him, on some characteristic traits : (i) his persistence in companionship . ^- PEN AND IKK SKETCH OF THE CONCERT GIVEN AT TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 4, 1789. with his early friend, Isaac Milner, with whom he spent two hours twice every week in Term-time, until his death ; (2) the freshness of his interest in young men ; (3) the fearless promptitude (called by his friends ' pre- cipitancy') with which he promoted the foundation of ton Butts. Henry was for a time a partner in the furrier trade. 1 For some interesting details concerning him the reader may be referred to the Life of Isaac Milner, Dean of Carlisle. It ap- pears that the elegance of his Latinity was much admired. 8 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i the Cambridge Auxiliary Bible Society, supporting the efforts of the serious undergraduates, when even Isaac Milner recoiled before the fulminations of Doctor after- wards Bishop Marsh ; (4) as a minor feature, his keen interest in the progress of music. He sang 'alto 1 ' in concerts which he had organized, and which took place in the Combination Boom, and on one occasion certainly (June 4, 1789) in the Hall, of Trinity Hall. Henry Jowett, of Little Dunham, 1756-1830. Henry Jowett, after passing several years as Lecturer and Tutor at Magdalene College, Cambridge, succeeded his friend John Venn as Rector of Little Dunham, Norfolk, in 1792. He married Charlotte Iveson, of Leeds, and had eight children. His daughter Charlotte became Mrs. Whiting. A good many of his letters have been preserved. They exhibit him in a very interesting light, as a faithful pastor, a tutor of young men 2 , a keen lover of music, and an active and observant traveller. He assisted in starting the Norfolk branch of the Bible Society; and is known to have been the founder of the first of many Clerical Societies. He was a genial parish priest, who upon occasion, as at the Peace of 1814, knew how to organize a village festival, with dancing, &c. There is a touch of play- fulness in his letters to his sister Sarah, who kept house for him after he became a widower in 1809. He showed paternal interest not only in his own, but in his brothers' families. His life-long friendship with the Venns proves his warmth and constancy. 1 See below, p. n. James, who, when old enough for 2 See the Life of Henry Venn Cambridge, went to Trinity Hall Elliot (who was one of his pupils), because of Joseph Jowett. See chap. i. Another pupil was the Life of Fitzjames Stephen by James Stephen, afterwards Sir his brother, chap. i. The Master's Grandfather 9 Benjamin Jowett, of Camberwell, 1754-1837. Benjamin, the third son of Henry of Leeds, was grand- father to the Master of Balliol. After leaving the Grammar School, he commenced business with his father in Leeds ; and when the family was settled in London, he became John's partner in the warehouse in Bermond- sey. In 1785 he married his cousin, Anne Jowett, of York, whose father is mentioned several times in letters of this period with a sort of respect, as ' Cousin Jowett V In right of this lady, who was his grandmother, the Master (then Professor Jowett) inherited, some eighty years after this, a property in Yorkshire 2 . She died in 1799, leaving five children, Elizabeth Maria, Benjamin, Josiah, and Henry. In a letter dated February 20, 1 799, Henry Jowett the elder, now of Camberwell, and in his eightieth year, speaks feelingly of his son Benjamin's loss. Soon after his father's death, Benjamin married again, and had a daughter, Irene. He appears as a witness to the marriage of his son, the Master's father, in 1814. Nothing more is known of him until the year 1823, when the success of Joshua (John's third son), who had opened a business in Liverpool, seems to have induced Benjamin senior and his two youngest sons to migrate thither. They were accompanied by the elder daughters, Elizabeth and Maria. Benjamin senior remained in Liverpool until the spring of 1837. In March of that year he writes an affecting letter to his sister Sarah. It is the year of influenza, and the prevalence of illness has interfered with the progress of music. ' Nothing new has been produced of late.' At this time he must have been about eighty-two years old. He died very shortly after- wards, in April, 1837. 1 Henry Jowett, of York (son of was Sheriff of York in 1764-5, Benjamin, see p. 2), flax-dresser, 2 See p. 375. io Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i The preceding narrative has carried the reader into the heart of English Methodism in its earlier stage. The names of Whitefield and Wesley, of Henry Venn, John Newton, Isaac Milner, Farish, Simeon, Robinson of Leicester, are as household words to all this family. The impression which the documents produce is irre- sistible that in the immediate followers of Wesley and Whitefield, personal religion was a very real thing. It was the mainspring of conduct, affecting all relationships, not in word only, but with power. Their theological attitude had its limitations, certainly : ' conversion ' meant separation from ' the world l ' ; but it contained a principle of expansion too. John Newton was not far from the kingdom of universal brotherhood when he wrote as follows in 1800 : 'I pray the Lord to bless you and all who love His Name in Scotland, whether Kirk, Relief, Burghers, Antiburghers, Independents, Methodists, or by whatever name they choose to be called. Yea, if you know a Papist, who sincerely loves Jesus, and trusts in Him for salvation, give my love to him.' ' Christianity,' he says elsewhere, ' is not a system of doctrine, but a new creature 2 .' If the religion of the ' Clapham sect' appeared to cast a sombre colouring over social inter- course, this apparent sadness was lightened and relieved in the case of many of them by the warmth of home affections and by their devotion to music. The scene at Newington Butts, where Mr. Latrobe of the Moravian brotherhood introduces Haydn and Mozart to the lovers of Handel, is suggestive of anything but gloom : 1 ' Come out from among them, tional Remarks, by the late Rev. and be ye separate,' is a text of John Newton, Rector of St. Mary which young converts thought Woolnoth, Lombard Street, Lon- with zeal and awe. don, 1809. 2 See Letters and Conrersa- Religious Antecedents n 'They had discovered,' he says, 'the secret of making Home the most pleasant place on earth. The young people were not restrained from following the so-called pleasures and amusements of the world by any coercive means, but rather encouraged to be attentive to whatever was innocently and profitably amusing. It was at home, however, that they found the greatest happiness, and love and peace and cheer- fulness reigned in their dwelling. ' What was my astonishment and delight, to find here a choir of vocal performers, the most perfect of its kind. The two daughters sang the treble ; Dr. Jowett ] , the alto ; Keverend H. Jowett 2 and the father, the tenor ; the eldest son, Henry, the bass. They sang all Handel's Oratorios, or rather select portions of them, with great precision, and, by employing me at the harpsichord, as I was more accustomed to read scores than any other of the party, I became acquainted with the exquisite beauties of that inimitable and gigantic composer. All their voices were good, but Eliza's treble and Dr. Jowett's alto were, I may truly say, the sweetest and richest of their kind I have ever heard, either in public or private. When the doctor was not in town, we tried as well as we could to supply the alto in choruses, and could always perform in four parts V In the matter of education also, they were before their age. "When we find Mr. Hey, the surgeon at Leeds, sparing time from a laborious profession to read Locke and study thorough-bass with young John Jowett; or when old Henry, the patriarch, wishes that his grandson could have gone to school with Cousin Marriott, ' who has profited so greatly by Mr. Penticross's tuition ' at Walling- ford ; or when Mr. Robinson, of Leicester, is carefully selected as an instructor for young Benjamin (the Master's father), these incidents are to be noted as instances, not of obscurantism, but of an expanding culture. 1 Joseph, the Professor of Civil 2 Henry of Little Dunham. Law. 3 Latrobe, Letters tohis Children. 12 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i Is it wonderful, considering such antecedents, that the Master should have delighted always in religious biographies that when most suspected of heresy, he should have heartily joined with private friends in singing simple hymns that to the sentimentalities of more recent hymnody he greatly preferred Dr. Watts' version of the ninetieth Psalm or that in his latest years he should have delighted in commemorating Richard Baxter and John Wesley from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey? When most convinced of the poverty and narrowness of the Evangelical school, and the inadequacy of its scientific and literary culture, he never failed to distinguish between its earlier and later phases. It seemed to him that its earlier spirituality had faded, and that an overgrowth of mingled cant and worldliness was stifling its vitality. There is considerable force in the following observa- tions of the B-ev. W. H. Langhorne : ' In estimating the religious views of the late Master, those which he inherited should be taken into account ; and which had descended to him through four generations. By the time they reached him, much of what had been lively, vigorous, and real had become conventional and spirit- less. The salt had lost its savour and the religious " movement," as it has been called, was nearly spent 1 .' Benjamin Jowett r 1788-1859. Benjamin Jowett, son of Benjamin, and father of the Master of Balliol, was born at Camberwell in 1788. Beyond the fact already referred to, that after his mother's death, when he was about eleven years old, he 1 The Warden of Merton (the on High Churchmen, I never Hon. G. C. Brodrick) says : heard him speak unkindly or dis- ' While I often heard him com- respectfully of the Evangelical ment harshly and even bitterly School.' The Master's Father and Mother 13 was sent to school with Mr. Robinson, of Leicester, nothing is known concerning the course of his education. His father's second marriage may have in some way interfered with it. That while retaining the impress of Evangelical pietism, his mind had been impelled towards some kind of literary ambition, is evident from the sequel. He joined his father's business, and at the time of his marriage in 1814 is designated as 'a furrier.' In the Directory for 1817, the firm at Red Lion Court, Ber- mondsey, is described as ' Benjamin Jowett and Son 1 ,' so that by this time he was in partnership with his father. When the latter removed his family to Liverpool in 1823, Benjamin junior seems to have remained in charge of the Bermondsey business, his cousin Henry, son of John, being in some way associated with him for a time. In 1825 the firm 'Benjamin Jowett and Sons, Furriers, Red Lion Court, Bermondsey,' occurs for the last time in the London Directory, and in the same year there appears the name of ' Benjamin Jowett Junior, Furrier, 10 George Yard, Lombard Street.' This entry is continued during the years 1826-1836. It would seem therefore that the furrier business lasted all this while, no doubt with 'fluctuations,' and it is probable that the removal from Bermondsey was caused by some depression 2 ; for 10 George Yard was the place of business of his brother- in-law, Mr. John Bryan Courthope, stationer, &c., with whom it is natural to suppose that Mr. Jowett took refuge, when no longer able to maintain the warehouse in Bermondsey. But he seems also to have ventured 1 Inthesameyear,inhissonBen- jamin Jowett, Peokham, Furrier.' jamin's Baptismal Register in the 2 It is right to bear in mind church of St. Giles, Camberwell, that 1826 was a time of great the father is described as ' Ben- commercial depression. i4 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i upon a wholly different line of business. In the Directory for 1826 there appears for the first time the firm of 'Mills, Jowett, and Mills, Printers, Bolt Court, Fleet Street,' and this entry is continued until 1835 l . That the Jowett of this firm was the Master's father is proved by the form of his son Benjamin's nomination to St. Paul's School, dated June 4, 1829. Here the boy is described as ' son of Benjamin Jowitt (sic) of Bolt Court, Fleet Street, Printer.' The marriage of the Master's parents took place in 1814. He himself wrote as follows on February 24, 1893 2 , with reference to his mother's ancestry : ' My mother told me that her father, who died young, lived at or near Kirkby Lonsdale (Kirkby Stephen ?), and that Langhorne the poet was her great -uncle ; she had no doubt of this. Also I remember her brother joking her about the member of their family who was executed for treason.' Isabella Jowett, nee Langhorne, born December 25, 1790; died October 16, 1869. Isabella was the daughter of Joseph Langhorne, who appears from the above statement to have been a nephew of John Langhorne, the Rector of Blagdon, the poet, and translator of Plutarch. Joseph is said to have been a Lancashire cotton merchant, who, after retiring from business, lived first at "Walworth and then at Stockwell, in the neighbourhood of Camberwell. ' The member of their family who was executed for treason ' is Richard Langhorne, the lawyer of King Charles II's reign, who fell a victim to the accusations of Titus Gates, for the 1 The volume of the Lancet '* To the Rev. W. H. Langhorne. issued in 1826 bears the imprint acknowledging the latter's book of Mills, Jowett, and Mills. of Reminiscences. The Langhorne Family 15 alleged Popish Plot in 1679 *. Burnet 2 speaks of him as ' in all respects a very extraordinary man.' But the supposed connexion of Richard Langhorne with the Kirkby Stephen Langhornes is not clearly proved, unless a constant family tradition may be taken for proof. If the Jowetts of Leeds exemplify an important phase of English pietism, the Langhornes of Kirkby Stephen are fairly representative of the mental refinement, classical taste, and liberal culture, which has always characterized some portion of the clergy of the Church of England. Joseph Langhorne's son Henry was a banker in Buck- lersbury 3 , and about 1820 retired to Mitcham. He moved his family again to Clapham in 1829. Besides Isabella, there were two elder daughters, twins, both of whom have a place in this biography : Jane, married to John Bryan Courthope, above-mentioned, and Frances, married to the Rev. William Smith. There was frequent inter- course between the Jowetts and the Courthopes. In earlier days, while Mr. Courthope was successful in business, he dwelt in a handsome residence at Blackheath Hill. He afterwards removed his family to a smaller house in the same neighbourhood. He died in 1844. His wife had died in 1840, and they had lost many chil- dren. Mrs. Courthope retained her charm and youthful looks until very shortly before her death. She left behind her the impression of an active practical nature, which had a great influence on those surrounding her. 1 Further particulars about s The bankers were Brown, him may be found in the Dictio- Langhorne, and Brailsford. ' The nary of National Biography and firm suffered in the financial Granger's Biographical History of panic which followed the second England. American War. H. L. then 2 Burnet's History of my own started as an Insurance Broker.' Time, vol. ii. p. 259 of the (So writes Mr. C. Langhorne, of Edinburgh edition (1753). Corncliffe, Sydney, N.S.W.) 16 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i The Rev. William Smith was Rector of Brandsby, in Yorkshire. He died in 1823. His widow, who was considerably younger than he was, survived him many years, during which she lived at Bath. She died in 1835, leaving some house property in Bath to the Jowett family. Mr. and Mrs. Jowett appear to have spent the earlier years of their married life at Peckham, in the parish of Camberwell, where they formed a lasting friendship with the Channells l . There were nine children of the marriage, two of whom, Isabella and Francis, died in infancy. The others were Emily, Benjamin, Agnes, Alfred, Ellen, William, and Frederick. Emily and Ben- jamin were the only two who survived their parents, and passed the meridian of life. A change in the family history occurs in 1829, about the same time as young Benjamin's admission to St. Paul's School. Mrs. Smith, who was now alone at Bath, knowing that the Jowetts were in straitened circumstances, offered a home to her sister and the children. This was accepted on behalf of all but Ben- jamin, whose education was already provided for. ' The little fold at Bath 2 ' remained there after Mrs. Smith's death until 1841. The father went to and fro between Bath and London, while young Benjamin stayed in lodgings in the City. A journey to the West of England was in those days a matter of no small trouble and expense. Meanwhile Mr. Jowett's employments, if not very profitable, were strangely varied. He aspired to be a publisher's reader, and sought opportunities for 1 See below, p. 27. The late 3 Letter of Mr. Jowett to Baron Channell was then a boy Mrs. Irwin in December, 1838. of ten years old. ' The Little Fold at Bath' 17 dabbling in journalism, especially on questions of phi- lanthropy. Mr. Wood, of Bradford (brother-in-law to Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, now Lord Cranbrook), the first person who seriously took up the question of Factory Legislation *, employed him as a writer, and it was probably through Mr. Wood's recommendation that he became known to Lord Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury. For several years he laboured at collecting statistics and in other ways promoting the great work which Lord Ashley had so much at heart. At this time he must have been a familiar figure in the lobby of the House of Commons. The following entry occurs in Lord Shaftesbury's Diary for August 24, 1840 : ' Let no one ever despair of a good cause for want of coad- jutors ; let him persevere, persevere, persevere, and God will raise him up friends and assistants ! I have had, and still have, Jowett and Low ; they are matchless V In 1835 Mr. Jowett was consulted by Captain F. C. Irwin with regard to the publication of a work on Western Australia 3 . Captain, afterwards Colonel, Irwin always retained a high regard for Mr. Jowett, whom he used emphatically to describe as 'a Christian, a scholar, and a gentleman.' The acquaintance ripened into friendship, and before his return to his post of Commandant of the troops at the Swan River settlement, Major Irwin had married Mrs. Jowett's niece, Elizabeth Courthope. Mrs. Jowett, meanwhile, had been anxious about her son Benjamin's future, and appealed to several friends for counsel about his proceeding to the University. He was at the head of St. Paul's School, and in his nineteenth year, and himself desired to go to Trinity 1 Life of Lord Shaftesbury, vol. i. 8 Major Irwin's book was p. 143. published by Simpkin, Marshall 2 Ibid. p. 301. & Co. VOL. I. C i8 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i College, Cambridge: but a Scholarship or some extraneous help was absolutely necessary 1 . Mr. J. Walker, now Eector of Great Billing, North- ampton, but in 1835 still resident Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford, replied to Mrs. "Wood, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy's sister, who inquired of him on Mrs. Jowett's behalf without mentioning the name, that it was near the time of examination for open Scholarships at Balliol, and that 'the said youth, if he was thought clever enough, might try for one of them.' This hint may have encouraged him to try at Balliol, but it can hardly have been necessary, as the Turners, intimate friends at Bath, had already their son John entered there, who would naturally be eager to second such a proposal. However this may have been, the Scholarship was gained. CadetsMps for William and Alfred Jowett, 1842 and 1846. Benjamin's younger brothers, Alfred and William, were educated at the Bath Grammar School ; where the most active teacher was Mr. James Pears 2 . The boys seem to have profited at school, and their after history may be briefly told. Both obtained Indian cadetships at the recommendation of Lord Ashley. William went out as Ensign in September, 1842, to Madras, and after doing excellent service as Quartermaster and interpreter to his regiment, died at Saugor, September n, 1850. 1 See p. 44. this time practically retired to 2 His father, the Head Master the living of Melcombe which he of the Grammar School, had by held with the Head Mastership. Domestic Circumstances 19 Alfred, having qualified as surgeon, went out in Sep- tember, 1846, and after various services which became more than ever exacting in the year of the Mutiny, died at Banda, October 4, 1858. His brothers were probably in the Master's mind when he wrote after- wards to a cousin in India : ' I hope you know how to live and not die in India, which I believe to be greatly an art.' But for the great and solid happiness of Benjamin's election to the Balliol Fellowship in 1838, the later years at Bath must have passed heavily with Mrs. Jowett. Her husband's constant absence on business of uncertain profit; the delicacy of her two younger daughters, of whom Agnes died in 1837 ; the weakness of Frederick, consequent on an accident in infancy, which arrested his education, and the anxiety about ways and means made more trying by her husband's absorption in that unproductive labour, the metrical version of the Psalms, which occupied him during the remainder of his life must have weighed upon her spirits, and induced a certain tone of depression which is noticeable in her letters. The younger daughter, Ellen, was already drooping, and died shortly afterwards (1839) at Tenby, whither they had removed for a time on her account. She was deeply mourned, especially by John Turner, who was attached to her, and afterwards called his eldest child by her name. If we except the promise of the cadetships which were due to the connexion with Lord Ashley, the father's prospect of improving the fortunes of his household was not encouraging. His philanthropic employments, his leader-writing, his advice to authors, and other ' incidental G 2 20 Life of Benjamin Joivett [CHAP i work/ such, as the Secretaryship of the Church Exten- sion Society, had all given way before the fascination of the metrical Psalter. In 1841 Mrs. Jowett and Emily returned from Bath to Blackheath with Alfred and William J , whose Indian careers were now in prospect, and towards the end of 1842 removed to Teignmouth. By this time "William was in India, and Alfred must have been ' walking the Hospitals' in London. In 1846 (Alfred also being now in India) the home trio, father, mother, and surviving daughter, took up their abode in a neatly furnished apartment on the fifth floor of a house in the Rue Madeleine in Paris, spending the summer months mostly at St. Germains or Fontainebleau. In 1848 they were driven by fear of the Revolution to sojourn for a while at Bonn and Aix-la-Chapelle. But they soon returned to their old quarters, and in 1850 were visited there by Mr. F. T. Palgrave, who has thus recorded his impressions : 'Mr. Jowett had some theories upon Milton's rules of versification, in which he took great interest, and tried to set them forth for me. He looked like a man rather past middle age, and had the manner, more easily recognized than defined, of one who had not been successful in his profession. . . . The mother (venerated as much by Jowett as the father) was a pale, white, graciously dignified lady of about her husband's age ; her voice, her features, her bearing, wore the air of a long, perfect, uncomplaining resigna- tion 2 . The sister, apparently rather younger than the Master, was also of a thoughtful cast of mind. She had a true feeling for music, and used to play for me, when I called, several 1 During this brief sojourn Mammas, fell to talking about at Blackheath, Lord Lingen's their sons at Oxford.' mother, in visiting her sister, 2 This was the year in which Mrs. Rea, met Mrs. Jowett, 'and William and Frederick died, the two, after the manner of Mrs. Jowett 21 little pieces, which she kindly copied in a writing fine and clear, much akin to her brother's.' In removing to Paris they appear to have been guided by the advice of Benjamin, who had already begun to contribute largely towards the support of his mother and sister. In this action, after a few years, he was nobly seconded by the sons in India, who before 1850 had arranged to remit considerable sums out of their pay, to lighten the burden which 'their brother had so long borne.' After the death of William Jowett in 1850, quickly followed by that of poor Frederick, who had been left in England under proper care, Mrs. Jowett's letters to Alfred in India have a somewhat plaintive tone, but they also evince a noble calmness of resignation and a loving spirit of conciliation. The conditions of the little house- hold were made more difficult by the step which Emily took about this time, in being received into the Roman Catholic Communion. This was due to the influence of their most intimate acquaintances in Paris, the Cruick- shanks, who were friends of long standing and neighbours in the same house. Helen Cruickshank and Emily were fast friends, and Helen's brother was a priest, having joined the Roman Catholic Church while still a youth. Mrs. Jowett partly sympathized with Emily; she had found comfort for herself in Bossuet and Fenelon l ; and her letters to her son Alfred show some indication of what was passing in her mind. The father no doubt 1 Jowett wrote to A. P. Stanley time I told Mrs. Stanley I had in 1856 : ' If you go over to reason to think she would be- St. Germains, my mother would, come a Roman Catholic, but that I think, like to see you. . . . She phase has passed away with her, is much worn with care and years, ending in universal charity to and I cannot expect that she all the world.' should live much longer. At one 22 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i remonstrated, but, absorbed in his unprofitable task, seems to have left his wife and daughter very much to themselves. He would shut himself up in his study, even in the evenings, which had heretofore been en- livened with Emily's exquisite playing on the piano. In early days she had been used to accompany her father, who had a fine bass voice. So things continued for some years; but prices rose under the Empire, and living in Paris became more difficult. The metrical Psalter, too, was approaching completion. At last, in 1856, the ' trio ' are found at Dover for a while. Here Mrs. Jowett's letters reveal fresh uncertainties, and speculations about trying Germany again. But before the spring, all shadows had cleared away, and the wish of the mother's heart was gratified by their returning to their former lodgings at Tenby. Emily shrank from the scene of old sorrows, but Mrs. Jowett found comfort in being there, in the house of Mrs. Lewis, who had known and been kind to her daughter Ellen. She was again much alone, through the temporary absence of Emily, in attendance on her friend, Miss Cruickshank. Mr. Jowett meanwhile re- newed his friendship with the Laws of Kennington *, the Channells, and Dr. Blundell (who gave him an annuity of 40), and at last he published anonymously, with Samuel Bagster and Sons, A New Metrical Translation of the Book of Psalms 2 . In 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, deep anxiety was naturally felt on Alfred's account. He sent his usual remittance in that year, but died in October of the year following. His father survived him by only six 1 See Mr. F. Law's account on notion of chanting common p. 27. English metres. Mr. Jowett had 2 The work is by no means learned enough Hebrew to make contemptible, although doomed elaborate use of English Corn- to failure by the impracticable mentaries on the original Text. His Father's Character 23 months, and was buried at Tenby in March, 1859. The inscription on his tombstone is probably from the hand of his son : 'He was greatly beloved for his simple and disinterested character.' In one sense it may be said of him that he was too disinterested. He cared nearly as much for the things of others as for his own. "When Sir W. Channell was made a judge, he was hardly less rejoiced, and certainly much less surprised, than he would have been if Benjamin had been made a bishop. He seems to have worked most effectively when he was labouring on behalf of some one else. While he inherited, even to overflowing, the traditions of Methodism, he managed to combine them with a kindly and intelligent outlook upon the world at large. But his mind was like an eye which cannot be focussed upon nearer objects. His letters to Australia are pamphlets on the treatment of Aborigines. Those to India during the Mutiny are full of just re- flections on the situation the views are excellent, if they were not aimed from so far off and they are not without a family likeness to many passages in his son's private letters in which he expatiates on home and foreign politics from a speculative point of view. Emily speaks of her father with real affection, but complains that he has so little power of understanding others or of being understood. Too pliable where firm- ness was required, he was persistent even to obstinacy in unpractical ways : a precisian in unimportant matters, but without much real power of command. He seems always to have been too little demonstrative at home. His children hardly saw the best side of his nature : and the effect of this reserve upon his son Benjamin is not to be ignored. An unchecked flow of love and confidence, 24 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i and the frank expression of a just pride in the achieve- ments of his son, might have given a different turn to some aspects of that son's after-life. Though he was passionately fond of music, his daughter's playing drew from him no praise. While affectionately solicitous for his children's highest welfare, as he conceived it, he was superstitiously afraid of exciting their vanity by open encouragement. The Master, in later life, spoke of his father as having been ' one of the most innocent of men.' Mr. F. Law, who remembers him well, says, 'He was a lovable old man. I never heard him say a harsh word of any one.' After her husband's death, Mrs. Jowett with her daughter Emily resided at Torquay, where she was soothed and consoled for her past trials by the devotion of her two surviving children. She died there October 16, 1869, only a few months before it became a certainty that her son was to be the Master of Balliol. Those who knew her during these years describe her as a dignified and gracious lady of the old school 1 . Her alabaster complexion, touched with shell-pink, was often suffused with a girlish blush at some casual surprise. Her simple black dress, with a white shawl, and a white drawn satin bonnet, setting off her slim upright figure, made a beautiful picture of refined old age. Her manner retained much of its early charm, for young as well as for old, and she was a favourite with children. She would not be photographed, and never sat for her picture although her son desired it. Her niece, Henry Lang- horne's daughter, has spoken of her as she was in early days, describing her as 'gentle, sweet, highly educated in every way, and so devotedly attached to her children that she sacrificed everything for their sakes, being so 1 This is the impression of Lady Lingen, who saw her at Torquay. His Sister Emily 25 constantly with them that it was not easy to see her.' Another hint of the impression which she made on those nearest to her is afforded by a letter of Mr. Courthope's, after his wife's death, to his daughter Elizabeth Irwin. in Australia, May 10, 1840 : ' I feel much the absence of your dear Aunt Bella, so cheerful and affectionate, with sweet feminine person and mind. I fear that while supporting and consoling others, she had tired herself too much. I never felt more the distance between us. Dear Ben is an excellent fellow, so fond of her and so kind to his beloved mother, it is gratifying to see it.' With all this softness and amiability she was not without a touch of womanly pride. On the whole she well deserves Queen Katharine's praise of 'a great patience ' ; having borne the vicissitudes of a chequered lot with meekness and dignity. Emily survived her mother thirteen years. She lived quietly, kept up her accomplishment in music, and saw her brother from time to time, visiting him more than once at Balliol. She suffered from a stroke of paralysis in 1880, and spent her remaining time with her cousins the Irwins at Clifton, in whose house she died in 1882 *. She was devoted to her family, above all to her mother, from whom she was never separated for long together, and when her brothers went to India she parted with her share of Mrs. Smith's bequest, in order to furnish them forth. She was exquisitely refined, but shy and diffident, above all in the presence of her brother, under whom her ' genius was subdued.' It is said that she could not do herself justice even in playing the piano before him ; and when her cousins were inclined to mock at the pomposity of some Oxford personage, she mustered courage to reply, ' My brother has a high opinion of him.' 1 Mrs. Irwin had died in April of the same year. 26 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, i In hours of gloom and misunderstanding she loved to dwell on the earlier days of free and joyous intercourse, which could never be recalled. An impression long prevailed at Oxford that Jowett had no family ties. It used to be jestingly said that he was like Melchizedec, 'without father, without mother, without descent.' When one of the Irwin cousins who was in business at Madras declared his relationship, the Governor, an old Balliol man, professed to regard him as a prodigy : ' I thought he had no relatives V Mr. F. T. Palgrave was almost equally surprised when, on Jowett's invitation, he was introduced (as above mentioned) to the little family party in the Hue Madeleine in the summer of 1850. The mistake was due to the profound silence in which Jowett habitually buried what was personal to himself. Only at rare moments of intimate converse, under some exceptional stress of feeling, the veil was lifted, and disclosed the treasures within. Still less could it be divined that in later years his thoughts were occupied with his own family. And yet to more than 1 This impression appears to stories of his childhood how have been shared even by Arthur deeply historical he then was, Stanley until, at Jowett's own re- studying Rollin's Ancient History, quest, he paid a visit to the little well versed in Assyrian dynasties, manage at St. Germains in March, standing long in silent contempla- 1856. He wrote to (Canon) Hugh tion of a " Stream of Time " sus- Pearson: ' On Saturday last I went pended in his little bedroom. . . . to St. Germains, and saw the Deeply musical also, he listens parents of Melchizedec ! a truly with pleasure to Beethoven played antique and venerable pair, each by his sister, while at work, and bearing a slight resemblance to even proposes corrections.' Let- the son, each with some of the ters of Dean Stanley, p. 248. This qualities in him concentrated; visit of Stanley's took place a short very kind and rapt in interest con- time before the parents' return to cerning him, relating singular England. Mr. F. Law's Reminiscences 27 one friend who suffered from bereavement after speaking of those of his kindred whom he had lost he wrote : ' I do not expect to see them again, but I am always thinking about them.' Mr. F. Law, whose father and the Master's father were friends, as mentioned above, has favoured us with the following reminiscences : ' My mother's family had been on very intimate terms with the family of the late Master, from the early part of the century 1 . There was not much difference in the ages of the children, and the two daughters Ellen and Emily Jowett were amongst my mother's greatest friends ; the friendship continued after my mother's marriage, and until death put an end to it. ' My earliest distinct recollections of the Jowetts date back to 1841, when we were living at Blackheath. Mr. and Mrs. Jowett, with their surviving daughter Emily and their younger sons, came to live near us. Mrs. Jowett was not a strong woman ; in fact, during the rest of her life she was always delicate, requiring constant care, and she did not go out much ; but Mr. Jowett or some of his children came to our house several times a week, and in the course of our daily walks we were frequently taken to see Mr. and Mrs. Jowett. Mr. Jowett was not then in business. Ben was settled at Oxford, and Alfred and William were working for their future careers in life. ' Mr. Jowett was tall and carried himself well, and as he had a large face and head, with a quantity of white hair, which was worn longer than is usual at the present day, he was conspicuous in a room. His face was entirely shaven. When I first remember him, he invariably dressed in black, and usually wore a dress coat, and, until his latter days, 1 This must have been during Peckham Lane. Mrs. Law was a the Jowetts' early married life at younger sister of the late Baron Peckham, where the Channells Channell. also lived, at the corner of 28 Life of Benjamin Jowett he very rarely put on a great-coat, whatever the weather might be. He was still active and fond of walking, and took his constitutional with great regularity till age interfered with his doing so. Though not a teetotaler, he was most temperate as regards stimulants. On general subjects he was a well-informed man, and had an extensive knowledge of the English Poets. I do not remember his showing any acquaintance with foreign authors. Still he certainly knew the French language, in which he could converse fluently, although his accent, I imagine, was very English. From time to time he would write a few hymns, and paraphrases of portions of Scripture, and sometimes set them to music ; but, so far as I can recall, his translation of the Psalms was the only thing he published. His handwriting was some- what cramped, and the formation of his letters small and not regular, though he gave much time to his pen. 'He was very fond of sacred music, caring little about secular I do not remember his voice until it was failing him ; it must have been a powerful and deep bass in its prime and he was never happier than when he could get some one to accompany him in the songs from Handel's and Mendelssohn's Oratorios, to which he would sing by the hour, without seeming to tire. He himself only touched the piano when none of the ladies were at hand to accompany him. ' Though not devoid of imagination and sentiment, Mr. Jowett had not much originality of thought, and was by no means inclined to develope any new theories, whether in reference to religious or secular matters. ' Upon political matters, his views were strongly Conservative. He was a very regular attendant at Divine Service, and a good Churchman according to his own belief as one of the old Orthodox School of thinkers. He did not obtrude his opinions upon others ; but, proud as he was, and he was very proud of his son's success at Balliol, his most intimate friends under- stood that he entirely dissented from and deeply regretted his son's convictions upon these points.' INFANCY AND BOYHOOD. 1817-1836 EARLY training and companionships Camberwell Blackheath Mitcham Entrance at St. Paul's School at the age of twelve Dr. Sleath and his methods School-fellows and school successes The Balliol Scholarship ' Apposition Day.' T71B-OM the preceding survey of two hundred years -*- we return to the second decade of this century, and to the child Benjamin. He, who all his life was the friend of children, must have had a happy child- hood ; but few traces of it can be recovered now. There is a family rumour or tradition that he was brought up by two maiden aunts, but if there is any foundation for this, it must be extremely slight. Mrs. Jowett was never very strong, and in the years from 1820-1823 her maternal cares may have been largely engrossed by little Frank, who died at four years old. Benjamin was then a child of five or six, and would be often at his grand- father's, much petted by his father's sisters, Elizabeth and Maria, after the grave and solemn manner of that household. Their cousin, Mrs. Whiting (Henry of Little Dunham's daughter), was often heard to remark on the docility and gentleness of the child. But this state of things ceased, as we know, in 1823, when the old home at Camberwell Green was broken 30 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n up for the removal to Liverpool 1 . In the years which followed it is unlikely that the boy owed much to any one except his mother. No doubt there were visits to his uncle Henry Langhorne at Mitcham, whose good looks he was supposed to inherit, and to the Courthopes' house at Blackheath Hill. There he was seen by some who long remembered it, 'a bright and merry child, running about on Blackheath Common.' An early recol- lection, which came back to him in his last years, although of trivial import, may be touched in passing. He re- membered that when a child, he had been made to stand upon the table after dinner and to repeat poetry for the entertainment of the guests. At Mitcham, as the years went on, he also received some of his earlier lessons in Latin and Greek from the tutor who was employed in teaching his cousins. Miss Lang- horne (H. Langhorne's daughter) writes : ' He was a pale, delicate-looking boy, of unusual mental precocity, and he learned for a while with my brothers' tutor, Mr. Richardson. I have heard them say that they had no chance against him in their Greek lessons.' At other times it is said that his father used to instruct him 2 . The visits to Blackheath Hill were of a more holiday kind ; but sometimes, while the other children were at play, young Benjamin would be stretched upon the hearth-rug with Pope's Homer or a volume of Bollin's Ancient History. If there were bright memories associated with those early playmates, there were also sad ones. Four of the Courthope cousins, Jane, Fanny, Emma, and Harriet, died before reaching the age of twenty-five. Emma 1 p. 9. hithe, who told it to her grandson. 2 The authority for this is Mrs. the Rev. R. B. Gardiner, now a Thomas Courthope, of Rother- master at St. Paul's School. 1817-1836] Infancy and Boyhood 31 and Harriet were of an age to be companions of Emily and Benjamin. They were accomplished young women, with a great natural gift for drawing. Sidney Court - hope, nearly of the same age with Benjamin, early became an invalid. He died shortly after his father, in 1845. His cousin Benjamin was very attentive to him during his illness. Speaking of the years after 1826, when Henry Lang- horne had removed to Clapham, Miss Langhorne says : ' It was customary for Benjamin to shut himself up with his sister Emily in a room with their books, where they spent hours in close study together.' Emily was a good Latin scholar. It is obvious, from the previous chapter, that the family life, though attended with some degree of religious severity, was cheered with graceful music, with the com- panionship of books, and an atmosphere of liberal culture. The force of home impressions appears in the delicate and characteristic handwriting which Jowett long retained in spite of school exercises, University essays, and other causes usually destructive of such an accomplishment. This was evidently learned from his mother, who wrote the finest of 'Italian' hands, and as late as 1844 his writing closely resembled that of his sister *. The poet most in favour with that household, as with others of a similar type, was naturally William Cowper. When a lady who met Jowett at C. Bowen's 2 house in Chester Square (at some time in the seventies) happened to quote Cowper, he said, ' I was brought up on Cowper ' ; and they continued for good part of an hour repeating familiar lines without exhausting either's repertory. 1 It appears, however, that Mr. ticular about the neatness of Bean, his master during his first exercises. year at St. Paul's, was very par- 2 Lord Bowen. 32 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n St. Paul's School, 1829-1836. Jowett was admitted into St. Paul's School June 16, 1829, on the nomination of Thomas Osborne of the Mercers' Company, Surveyor-Accountant of St. Paul's School, who is said to have been an engraver and printer at 72 Lombard Street. Benjamin was now twelve years old, and in consequence missed some advantages which would have been secured by entering two years earlier. His previous education, whatever it was, must have been fairly efficient, for he was placed high on entrance, and rose rapidly in the school. There were eight forms then as now, and he was entered in the sixth, where he remained only for one year. The High Master at this time was Dr. John Sleath, of Wadham College, Oxford. He held the post from 1814-1837, and during that time gained much credit for the school, which was not then regarded at the Universities as on a level with the great public schools. He used to say, ' I do not profess to be a good scholar, but I make my scholars polish one another 1 .' The ' Sur-master ' was a Mr. W. A. C. Durham (commonly called ' Whack Durham '), but Jowett never came under him, as the sixth were taught by Dr. Sleath' s assistant, Mr. John Phillips Bean. The hours of school-work in those days were from seven or eight to eleven or twelve in the morning, and from two to four in the afternoon three days a week. In the interval Benjamin, who had his own separate lodging (it was a lonely boy- hood), used to be taken by his father to dine at some literary chop-house, such as 'The Cheshire Cheese.' The lidbitues of the place were embarrassed by the presence 1 In this boast he was more others. Sleath had been private than justified, having amongst his tutor to Walter Savage Landor former pupils such men as Prince when a boy at Rugby. Lee, Canon Blakesley, and many 1817-1836] At St. Paul's School 33 of the boy, the more so as the father would 'put him through his facings ' in their hearing. There is a tradition that at first coming to school young Jowett was more distinguished in Mathematics than in Classics (there was little mathematical teaching then in St. Paul's), but he must have made marked progress in Greek studies before 1833, in which year several of his Greek exercises were copied into the school album or 'playbook,' entitled Musae Paulinae, where they are still preserved \ They are not without school-boy errors (which to the credit of the authorities remain uncorrected), but they already show a fine sense of literary form, and a true feeling for Greek tragedy ; and as they are not translations, but original compositions on set themes, they evince no little resource and dexterity in a boy of sixteen. The following epigram in elegiacs the other exercises are all in iambics may be quoted as a sample of his youthful invention : In Mercurii Imaginem. ei Kd/cos e, ae /z. es X*P aiXow e/te 8' ev^o/iai cTvai Totcri KO.XOLCTI KO.KOV, roicrt KaKotcri KaXov 2 - 1 Cf. G. R. Kingdon, S. J., in the captain standing aside, Sleath The Pauline, 1884: 'Now and then would say in his most solemn the High Master would say to the tone, " There will be a play captain just before the end of to-day for the good compositions morning school-time, " Fetch the of. . ./'whatever the names of the playbook." Then we knew that favoured ones happened to be. . . . we were in for a half-holiday; The particular compositionswhich and at the sight of the big, gained the half-holiday had to morocco-bound, gilt-edged book be written out in the playbook, brought in from the library, there for the admiration of future would be a deal of finger-snapping generations, or, perhaps, more among the smaller boys. Taking often for their amusement.' the book on his arm at prayer-time, 2 I have thrown in the accents, VOL. I. D 34 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n (Inscription for a statue of Mercury. 'Are you a rogue? Then take me in your hand. But steal me not before you understand. I am your friend ! a god of varying mood, Kind to bad men, but evil to the good.' L. C.) Puerile as the verses are, and not quite accurate, they have something in them of the sly simplicity which marked many of Jowett's sayings in after life. In these years he formed the habits of industry, of neatness, and of methodical study, which never left him. The teachableness, which he always regarded as the best sign of promise in boyhood, must have been strongly characteristic of him ; and the rarity of outdoor amuse- ments, of which the educational value was then little recognized, also left its impress on his after career. In compensation for this want he early became a voracious reader. He would 'fly upon a new book,' as he once told me, and in the holidays passed with his sister at Blackheath or Clapham this taste must have been in- dulged to the full. The habit of learning poetry by which had been omitted accord- edition : ing to a fashion of the day. It ' Epigramma, fortasse sepul- is worth observing that in a crale, ex persona Thucydidis, ad truly mercurial spirit the form calcem codicis Augustani adiec- of the epigram is 'conveyed' from turn ' (v. Jacobsii Anthol. gr. t. 4, one on Thucydides, quoted by p. 231). Bothe in the preface to his *Q (piXos, el vofpos t, Xa/3e fi e? X*P as ' e * ^ ir vijis Movcrdav, pfyov a /j,f) voeeis. eifii yap ov iravrfcrcri PO.TOS, Travpoi ' dydcravTO 'OXdpou, KfKpOTridrjv TO yevos. (Friend, art thou learn'd ? Then take me in your hand : But if unlearn'd, stay till you understand : Few find their way in me ; the many scorn The son of Olorus, Athenian born. L. C.) 1817-1836] At St. Paul's School 35 heart was at that time far more cultivated than it is now, both at school and in enlightened homes. One of his latest recollections was that he and Emily had once tried who could first commit to memory a thousand lines of Virgil. Before he left St. Paul's he could repeat the greater part of Virgil and Sophocles, probably also the Trilogy and Prometheus of Aeschylus. He never regretted this, although he sometimes wished that the same attention had been given to English literature. But he had more of English verse at his command than is at all common nowadays, and could recite long passages from his favourite authors. His intimate familiarity with Shakespeare came later. The teaching at St. Paul's appears to have been well adapted, if not to produce the extreme accuracy of verbal scholarship for which (some years after this) other great schools were famous, at least to imbue the minds of boys with a genuine love of literature. And one method was in use, that of retranslating from English into the original Latin or Greek, in which Jowett himself always firmly believed. A characteristic anecdote is told of his early school life. A statute of the foundation, by which a boy who had been absent more than a certain number of days for- feited his place in the school, was about to be revived. A comrade of Benjamin's was running dangerously near the limit, and was supposed to be unaware of the declared intention to put the rule in force. At this boy's home in some far-lying suburb, the bell was rung late at night, and a small figure was found on the doorstep. It was little Benjamin, who had walked for many miles to warn his friend of the danger he was incurring. The following reminiscences contributed by persons D 2 36 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n who were at St. Paul's with Jowett will be read with interest : i. The Eight Rev. C. R>. Alford, late Bishop of Victoria, who was a class-fellow of Jowett's, writes (July 4, 1894):- 'His image as a youth is still before me, a slim weakly figure, gentle and polished in manner, keen eyes, very intelli- gent countenance. In reading and construing he had a clear expressive voice, and in class he spoke out as one who knew what he meant to say. I only remember Jowett in the eighth, i. e. in the first class of the school under Dr. Sleath. I think he stood second boy, and was much associated with Arthur Shelly Eddis, the captain of our year. Eddis and Jowett had the charge of, and chiefly occupied together the School Library, located in the old buildings, between the High Master's house and the great schoolroom. They seldom appeared in school except at prayer-time and when we assembled around and before the table of the High Master in class. Eddis was Chancellor's Medallist of his year (1839), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor in Lincoln's Inn, and Judge at Clerkenwell County Court. As captain, Eddis always took the lead, daily reading the Latin school prayers from the step of the dai's on which the High Master's chair was placed Dr. Sleath, in cap and gown, standing behind him a figure of great presence and commanding appearance. '. . . I can call to mind Jowett's return to school after his successful competition for the Balliol Scholarship. We boys held up our heads an inch or two higher than we did before, and it was a sight worth beholding to gaze on the beaming countenance of our dear old High Master, Dr. Sleath, whose frown was dreaded, but whose smile of approval and encourage- ment, never grudgingly bestowed, was a joy and coveted reward. ' I remember one personal circumstance with pleasure. On my wedding-day (1841) I alighted at the Great Western Eailway Station, Paddington, with my wife, and as chance would have it, as I got out of the carriage at the station Jowett was there ! 1817-1836] At St. Paul's School 37 He greeted me warmly, was introduced to my wife, and as he shook hands with us both wished us all happiness. We travelled by the same train to Oxford. This was the last occasion on which we spoke to one another. Some forty years after, I saw him and heard him say a few words at an " Apposi- tion " at St. Paul's School, West Kensington. Then he was an elderly, venerable man in figure and feature and speech, the Master of Balliol ; but still he reminded me much of old St. Paul's School and the youthful scholar of 1836. ' 2. From the Rev. John B. Brodrick, Rector of Sneaton, near "Whitby, April 9, 1894: ' There was so much difference between my standing and Jowett's as to prevent our having any very intimate intercourse, and the higher we got in the school the fewer those intimacies became. My recollection of him at Paul's is of a pretty -looking boy- youth who wore a perpetual sort of green sateen which never got, in my time, to the dignity of a coat-tail, but stuck to the less dignified one of a jacket. He never associated much with anybody, and on the strength of his looks we used to call him, though perhaps not to his knowledge, "Miss Jowett." We used to put him up to say curious things to old Sleath, which would certainly not lead that scholastic divine to predicate anything like what was the real future of his simple-minded pupil. . . . The only thing in the least memorable that I bear in mind is that on one occasion I, along with another class companion, went either with or for Jowett to that historical spot, Bolt Court, where Jowett Senior was then living, and the door was opened by William Cobbett, who sported a tricolour ribbon in his button-hole, which then meant a little more than it would do now. . . .' 3. From Baron C. E. Pollock, May 18, 1894 : ' I joined the school September 30, 1833, at the age of nine. Jowett was then in the highest class, the eighth, and con- sequently a monitor. . . . My brother, George Pollock (now Queen's Eemembrancer), remembers going with Jowett to see his father's printing-press in Bolt Court. ... I can myself 38 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n remember Jowett when in the eighth class, a very young- looking boy with round face and bright eyes, retiring in manner, but holding his own, and much respected. Barham and my brother Robert used to speak of him as "the boy Jowett," and made fun of his journeys to Oxford outside the coach and his supposed conversation with the guard. ' On one occasion, when Jowett was in the seventh, he was struck by a boy bigger than himself but of inferior capacity. This was immediately resented by his other school-fellows, who treated it as an offence and thrashed the bigger boy.' 4. From the Rev. John Couchman, of Thornby Rectory, near Rugby, who was Jowett's class-fellow: 'Concerning Jowett's school-days, I have not much to say. He was of a very taciturn and gentle disposition, more devoted to books than to play : but as far as I remember his quiet disposition gained him many friends amongst his school-fellows and no enemies : he was what we all called " a very nice fellow," and got on very well and amicably with us all. . . . Dr. Sleath told me that he thought Jowett to be the best Latin scholar he had ever sent to College. . . . Personally I had always a great regard for him.' Amongst his contemporaries at school, in the eighth form, were the late Lord Hannen; Charles C. Roberts, of Trinity College, Cambridge, Assistant Master at St. Paul's ; Arthur Shelly Eddis, Trinity College, Cam- bridge, Judge of the Clerkenwell County Court ; Robert John Pollock, Trinity College, Cambridge, of the Madras Light Cavalry, and afterwards of the Inner Temple (who died in 1853) ; R. H. D. Barham, Rector of Lul worth, and author of the biography of his father, R. H. Barham (' Thomas Ingoldsby ') ; C. J. Clay, Printer to the Univer- sity of Cambridge. This list makes it readily understood why Benjamin Jowett, when head of the school, began to turn his thoughts to Trinity College, Cambridge. But the suggestion that he should try at Balliol, 1817-1836] The Balliol Scholarship 39 which had come to Mrs. Jowett in the way already described J , had the approval of Dr. Sleath, and it was no doubt the more readily acted on from the fact that John Turner, of Bath, who had been at Winchester School, was already at Oxford. At all events it was expected that Turner should take some charge of his young friend ; and as the latter had not been recently at Bath, and might have grown out of knowledge, it was arranged that when he met the coach, John should recognize Benjamin by the colour of his tie 2 . The following anecdote connected with Jowett's elec- tion to the Scholarship is given in the words of the Rev. Hay S. Escott 3 , who was a witness of the incident, having gained an Exhibition the same year : ' On the morning after our election we met by appointment in the Master's dining-room to pay him a formal visit. Dr. Jenkyns had not yet appeared, and Jowett had seated himself on a chair in the bay-window overlooking the chapel quadrangle, arrayed in academicals, then first put on for the purpose of Matriculation. But, alas ! he had forgotten that the college cap was only intended for protection out of doors, and it was still on his head when the door suddenly opened, and the Master with his usual quick, jerking step swung himself into the room. Then apparently startled, and inflamed with real or simulated passion, he attacked without mercy the innocent young Scholar for so flagrant a breach of the primary laws of good breeding. " Do my eyes deceive me, or do I see a gentleman in my dining-room with his cap on ? " The whole scene was most painful, and the impression it made on me is indelible. It was one of those occasions on which Dr. Jenkyns showed his want of sympathy, of the power of appreciating other minds, and of allowing for circumstances. But his good feelings quickly came to his aid, and he commenced a more 1 p. 18. had visited him not long before. 2 John Turner became a parish s Rector of Kilve, Somerset ; clergyman, Vicar of Hennock, late Head Master of Somerset Devon, and died in 1858. Jowett College, Bath. 40 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n friendly and complimentary address, by the half-jesting, half- sarcastic remark " I suppose it was the novelty of the bauble." These were the ipsissima verba V A welcome glimpse of him in the Christmas vacation following his election to the Scholarship, and his entrance at Balliol, is afforded by the E,ev. Henry Holden, Rector of South Luffenham, who was then a Balliol Scholar of three years' standing. Dr. Holden begins his recollections from the time of the election. He X says : ' My first acquaintance with him was when he was elected Scholar at the usual examination in November, 1835, from St. Paul's School a school at that time not of very high classical repute, but which has since gradually risen to distinction inferior to none amongst our greatest schools. I well remember introducing myself, on the evening of his election, to the slightly built, curly-headed lad, who seemed the last candidate likely to gain what was then considered the blue ribbon of scholarship, nearly all other colleges at that time confining their privileges to Counties and Founders' kin. The acquain- tance thus commenced was increased during the subsequent winter vacation, when, being in London, I frequently visited him at his lodgings in the City Road. He had attended St. Paul's School as a day-scholar, being one of the 153 Founda- tioners, and remained even during vacations in London, to avoid the expense of long journeys to a distant home. Dr. Sleath was then Head Master, and it was by his advice that he was sent to try for the Scholarship. All that I then saw of him bore testimony to his industry, frugality, and simplicity of character. We worked together frequently during that winter vacation. When I returned to Oxford he continued 1 This tale is confirmed, with in W. G. Ward and the Oxford some slight variations, in a letter Movement, p. 441 : 'He was a con- from the Rev. H. C. Adams, Vicar siderable actor, and would put on of Shoreham, and late Fellow of severe looks to terrify freshmen, Magdalen College, Oxford. Cf. but was really kind-hearted and Jowett's own remark on Jenkyns indulgent to them.' 1817-1836] S/. Paul's 41 at St. Paul's School, and I saw nothing more of him till he came into residence at Balliol.' "When in December, 1835, he returned to London, bringing with him the ' blue ribbon ' of Oxford, an honour which no Pauline had at that time won, young Jowett at St. Paul's was a distinguished figure. There are contemporaries who still remember how, after his return, he used to be assailed from all sides whenever he passed among the younger boys in school, with cries of ' Give us a construe,' a request with which he com- plied as far as he could 1 . Now also he must have taken a leading place in the little debating society to which he belonged, and which met somewhere about St. Paul's Churchyard 2 . The school was under the shadow of the great cathedral, and one lasting impression, which may be with con- fidence referred to this early period, was his love of classical architecture, and in particular his reverence for Sir Christopher "Wren 3 . Nothing delighted him more in after years than to take his guests to the Library of All Souls, Oxford, and to go over with them the various 1 G. R. Kingdon, S.J., in The I would urge my petition : " I say Pauline, 1884 : ' The eighth were Jowett, give us a con., there's a supposed to have so many books in good fellow ! " Jowett was captain use that their ownlockers were not at the time. He was always too enough for them. Consequently good-natured to refuse, and with they were allowed the use of the his locker open would translate unoccupied ones on the bottom Valpy's Delectus for me " straight bench of some of the lower forms, off," to my great satisfaction.' I remember when I was in the 2 The Rev. W. Guillemard, late second, the boys on the bench Rector of St. Mary the Less, Cam- just above the bottom used to take bridge, told me of this in 1880. advantage of a monitor's coming L. C. down to his locker, and coax him 3 He once heard Sydney Smith to translate a lesson for them, preach in St. Paul's. See Benja- I can almost hear myself now, min Jowett, by L. A. Tollemache, when stooping under the desk p. 14. 42 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, n plans for the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral, copies of which are there preserved. He very rarely made any reference to his school days, but eagerly embraced opportunities of renewing ac- quaintance with old Paulines, and, when occasion served, he spoke affectionately of those that were gone. In the light of after years his boyhood does not seem to have been regarded by him as, on the whole, a time of bright- ness or of enjoyment. The pleasures which it had for him lay chiefly in the region of his studies. The spirit of self-culture, of loyalty and devotion, of generous and manly ambition, mingled with a pious aspiration to be doing good, already lay warmly at his heart. But his hold upon life and upon the outer world was weakest at the first, and grew steadily with the increase of his years and the widening of his opportunities. In a familiar letter of 1 86 1, he writes, with a humorous turn which hides a serious meaning : ' No day passes in which I don't feel the defects of early education. I was never taught how to play at cards, or even at billiards, and it seems too late to repair the error now. Do you think I could learn to waltz ? ' Partly no doubt from the circumstance that his school- fellows mostly went to Cambridge, no life-long friendship seems to have been made by him at school. In one respect, however, the system at St. Paul's was well suited to prepare the cleverer boys for making their mark in after life. The ' speeches ' on ' Apposition Day ' were so managed as to give something like a real training in elocution. School lessons were suspended for the rehearsals, which were serious things. ' On one occasion,' says an old Pauline 1 , ' during the delivery of 1 G. R. Kingdon, S.J., in The Pauline for March, 1884. 1817-1836] Apposition Day 43 a dialogue from Milton's Samson Agonistes, the boy who personated Harapha, in the line "I am of Gath, men call me Harapha," put rather too much emphasis on men. Sleath instantly thundered out, " And what do women call you ? " I need not say that the criticism was appreciated.' Young Jowett' s appearance at his last ' Apposition ' (i. e Founder's) ' Day ' is thus recorded in the Times of May 6, 1836: 'The Apposition of the Scholars of St. Paul's School took place yesterday. We had the misfortune not to be present at the early part of the proceedings, which commenced with speeches in Greek, Latin, and English, in commemoration of the founder, by Messrs. Jowett, Wright, and Jephson, the three senior scholars. Then followed the prize compositions, Her ad Emmaum in Latin Hexameters, and Fatale Jephthae Votum in Greek Trimeter Iambics, both by Mr. Jowett, the senior scholar. . . . We may here remark that gesticulation appears to be very properly more encouraged at this than at other public schools, and under the guidance of excellent taste, rarely, if ever, is ridiculous or degenerates into acting. . . . The closing piece was highly entertaining ; it was a scene from the Ranae of Aristophanes, where Bacchus (Mr. Jowett) is alarmed by his man Xanthias (Mr. Harriott), while in the Infernal regions, with a supposed spectre. . . . The comic distress of the former excited much laughter even amongst that portion of the audience customarily presumed to be ignorant of the learned languages.' All these distinctions did not smooth away the financial difficulties of his entrance at Balliol. It was usual for the head boy of St. Paul's to take with him the Campden Exhibition of 100 a year for five years to Trinity College, Cambridge ; but Jowett was debarred from this, and also from other Exhibitions which were tenable at any College in either University, by the fact that he 44 Life of Benjamin Jowett had passed his twelfth birthday before entering the school l . Under these circumstances his old patrons of the Mercers' Company stepped in, and on July 14, 1836, Jowett was elected to one of Lady North's Exhibitions, and at the same date a small sum was given to him by the Company as senior scholar of St. Paul's School, on his going to College. His friends at St. Paul's be- thought themselves of a further expedient for rewarding him. The school library had grown to considerable magnitude, and had not been catalogued. To this con- genial task Jowett was appointed, and gained for it an honorarium of 100 guineas from the Mercers' Company, which was paid to him in 1837. Even with these additions to the Balliol Scholarship, his means for living at Oxford were narrow enough, and must have required the strictest economy 2 . 1 G. R. Kingdon, S.J., in The 2 ' On February 10, 1837, the Pauline, 1884 : ' There were then then Surveyor- Accountant laid two Carnpden Exhibitions of 100 before the Court of the Mercers' and 75, the holders of which must Company copies of a newly printed go to Trinity College, Cambridge, Catalogue of the Library of the and besides these as many others School, prepared by Mr. Benjamin of 50 per annum as there might Jowett, late Senior Scholar, and be deserving candidates. These shortly afterwards a present of last might be held at any College 100 guineas was made to him for of either University. These Ex- the care and attention he had hibitions, in my time, lasted for bestowed in forming an entirely five years. ... In order, however, new Catalogue of the Library of to be eligible for them, you must that Establishment ' (Letter from have been on the foundation, i.e. Mr. John Watney, Secretary of you must have been admitted the Mercers' Company, April 18, before you were ten years old.' CHAPTER III SCHOLAR AND BELLOW OF gALLIOL. 1836-1840 (Aet. 19-23) EARLY friendships at Oxford The Hertford Latin Scholarship A Balliol undergraduate sixty years since Reminiscences of surviving contemporaries The Master, Richard Jenkyns, and the Tutors, Tait and Scott The Balliol Fellowship won by the under- graduate Scholar Work in private tuition Death of Ellen Jowett Graduation Letters to W. A. Greenhill. FT was the common practice then as now at Oxford *- to interpose two or more ' Grace Terms ' between the election to a Scholarship and coming into residence. Accordingly the new Scholar of Balliol entered as a fresh- man in October, 1836, being then nineteen years of age. How or where the Summer Vacation had been spent does not appear, except that it seems probable that part of it had been occupied in the task of cataloguing the St. Paul's School library. He seems to have remained at St. Paul's until July, although his attendance there should strictly have ended with his nineteenth birthday, April 15, or at latest with Apposition Day. In old age he spoke of his election to the Scholarship as the happiest event of his life ; and his entrance on that career at Oxford, which only terminated with his death, 46 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in cannot fail to have been accompanied with a strong feeling of enlargement and emancipation. Yet con- sidering the combination of enterprise and caution, of moral intrepidity with constitutional shyness, of eager interest in life with the most delicate refinement and sensitiveness, which was inherent in his nature, one cannot suppose that his freshman's term at the University was altogether unclouded. And the difficulties of be- ginning life at Oxford were sensibly increased for him by the fact that, notwithstanding the Scholarship and the liberality of the Mercers' Company, in comparison with the public school men amongst whom he found himself, he was decidedly poor. His first anxiety was to gain, if possible, the Hertford University Scholarship for Latin, and for this purpose he felt the need of extra tuition. An unexpected gift of 20 from an anonymous donor enabled him to read with Edward Massie of Wadham, a Shrewsbury man who had taken the Ireland in 1828, and was known to be a successful ' coach.' Jowett won the Hertford, to the disgust of his competitors, who, as one of them l says, could not bear to be beaten by ' a little puny, boyish, chubby-faced youth.' This was in Lent Term, 1837, the same year in which A. P. Stanley obtained the Ireland. Jowett's first success, with the accompanying circum- stances, produced a marked effect upon him, and was the beginning of the earliest, and for a time the most intimate, of his Oxford friendships. His benefactor proved to be "W. A. G-reenhill, a Rugby man, Stanley's senior by about two years, who was at this time studying Medicine. He afterwards practised as a physician at Oxford, and married 1 Dr. Frederick H. M. Blaydes, of the Hertford in the following the well-known editor of Aristo- year, 1838. phanes, &c. He was the winner 1836-1840] Scholar of Balliol 47 Miss Ward, a favourite niece of Dr. Arnold. He has since been known as a learned writer on the history of Medicine. The following letter, written while the giver was unknown, shows the feeling with which the gift was received: OXFORD, January 31, 1837. DEAR SIR, I gratefully avail myself of your wonderful and un- expected goodness. I do so with the less hesitation as I am persuaded from the letter with which it was accompanied that it was really meant. It will give me the opportunity of obtaining what I have long wished for and could not other- wise have had. May I venture to hope that I shall one day have the pleasure of thanking personally my unknown benefactor. Should I fail in the ensuing contest (and I feel persuaded such will be the result) I trust he will believe that this want of success has been owing to no deficiency of exertion on my part. With the most sincere gratitude for your kindness, and the manner in which it was offered, Believe me to remain, my dear Sir, Ever yours most truly and respectfully, B. J. Should I not hear from you to the contrary, I will leave a letter for you at the Post Office on March i, directed to X. Y. Z. May God bless you for your kindness to me. I never thought much about religion till a few days before your letter came, [and] it has left an impression which I trust I shall never forget. Many years afterwards (in 1867), when Professor Jo wett was corresponding with Dr. Greenhill on the subject of Plato's Timaeus, he referred with characteristic grati- tude to this long-past kindness, adding that he had 48 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in himself known the pleasure of helping others in a similar way. Before proceeding further with the narrative, some attempt should be made to imagine Balliol College as it was when Jowett entered it. The Scholarships had been thrown open to competition in 1828, Richard Jenkyns having then been Master for several years. This was a most important step, for which G. A. Ogilvie, one of the Tutors l , was largely responsible. The list of Balliol Scholars, previous to 1836, already held distinguished names, and the Scotch contingent, supplied chiefly by the Snell foundation, had long since been an acknow- ledged source of strength. Adam Smith, John Lockhart, and Sir William Hamilton, not to mention others, were Snell Exhibitioners in their day. Archibald Campbell Tait, who, when Jowett began residence, had recently been appointed Tutor, was both a Scholar and a Snell Exhibitioner, having been educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Glasgow University. The bond of friend- ship with him, thus early formed, was strained by later events, but never broken. Another of the Tutors to whom Jowett owed much as an undergraduate, was Robert Scott, part author of the famous Lexicon, who in 1854 became Master of Balliol. The Mathematical Lecturer at this time was W. G. Ward 2 , the importance of whose influence over Jowett for a brief period will shortly appear. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was now entering on his third year at College, and, as his custom was, took out the junior Scholar from time to time for a walk in the afternoon. On the first of these occasions he is said to have reported that he never met with such a disputatious 1 Afterwards Professor of Pas- 2 See Life of Dean Stanley, vol. i. toral Theology. p. 169, letter to C. J. Vaughan. S- . t FISHER'S BUILDING AND END OF 'RATS' CASTLE,' BALLIOL COLLEGE Copied/rout a print in an old Oxford Guide 1836-1840] Scholar of Balliol 49 youth. His surprise was not unnatural. For many years after this Jowett's appearance was juvenile in the extreme, and it was long remembered that he first came to College in a round jacket, and with a turned-down collar. This gave to his animation in argument the greater piquancy. What subjects were discussed between the two young men, whose friendship was destined to be so closely cemented afterwards, we can only guess ; but it is difficult to imagine any discussion at Oxford, in those days, that did not turn, on matters theological. The subscription to the Articles ; Dr. Arnold's influence ; the observance of Sunday ; J. H. Newman's sermons ; Clericalism and Evangelicism ; the relation of Catholics to Protestants ; the admission of Jews to Parliament ; the Divinity Examination at London University : any or all of these subjects afforded ample matter for controversy, and had more fascination for young Oxonians than those eternal arguments on ' Foreknowledge, "Will, and Fate ' in which Milton's fallen spirits lose themselves. But the event which had most interested Stanley's mind in 1836 was the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the Regius Pro- fessorship of Theology, and the disputes that followed. Some others of Jowett's College contemporaries may be here enumerated. Edward Cardwell l had taken his degree in 1835 and was now a junior Fellow. John Moore Capes, who afterwards became a Roman Catholic, was a graduate of the same year. James Lonsdale 2 had been elected Scholar with A. P. Stanley. W. C. Lake 3 , Benjamin C. Brodie 4 , E. M. Goulburn 5 , and Hay S. Escott, were Jowett's seniors by a year ; also senior 1 Afterwards Lord Cardwell. 4 Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, F.R.S., 2 Rev. James Lonsdale. See his Professor of Chemistry, Oxford. Life by Duckworth. 5 Head Master of Rugby ; after- 3 Afterwards Dean of Durham. wards Dean of Norwich. VOL. I. E 50 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in to him were John "Wickens 1 , Hugh Pearson 2 , Samuel Waldegrave 3 , E. Hobhouse 4 , and P. S. H. Payne (who died in 1841). His immediate contemporaries, who must have been freshmen with him, were F. C. Trower 5 , Stafford H. Northcote G , and Reginald Hobhouse 7 . His juniors while he was still an undergraduate were T. H. Fairer 8 , "W". Rogers 9 , Arthur Hobhouse 10 , Arthur H. Clough n , Constantine Prichard 12 5 Frederick Temple 13 , and John Duke Coleridge ll . Oxford contemporaries not at Balliol, who became distinguished in after life, were W. F. Donkin 15 of University College, Richard "W. Church 16 of "Wadham, James Fraser 17 of Lincoln, James A. Froude 18 of Oriel, Richard Congreve 19 of Wadham, R. R. W. Lingen 20 of Trinity, Henry Halford Vaughan 21 of Christ Church, Bartholomew Price 22 of Pembroke, Henry W. Acland 23 , Christ Church and All Souls, John Ruskin 24 , Christ Church, and George 1 Vice Chancellor Wickens. Bishop of Exeter, 1869 ; Bishop 2 Vicar of Sonning and Canon of London, 1885 ; Archbishop of of Windsor. Canterbury. 1896. 3 Bishop of Carlisle. 14 Lord Chief Justice. 4 Bishop of Nelson, New Zea- 15 Savilian Professor of Geo- land. metry. 5 Bishop of Glasgow, after- 16 Dean of St. Paul's, wards of Gibraltar. 17 Bishop of Manchester. 6 Lord Iddesleigh. u The Historian. 7 Rector of St. Ives and Arch- 19 The Founder of English deacon of Bodmin. Positivism. 8 Lord Farrer. 20 Lord Lingen. 9 Rector of St. Botolph, 21 Professor of Modern History, Bishopsgate ; Canon of St. Paul's. Oxford. 10 Lord Hobhouse. 22 Sedleian Professor of Natural 11 The Poet. Philosophy, Master of Pembroke 12 Fellow of Balliol, son of College. James Cowles Prichard, the 2S Sir Henry W. Acland, Bart., author of Natural History of M.D., Professor of Medicine, Man, &c. Oxford. 13 Head Master of Rugby ; 2 * The well-known Author. 1836-1840] Scholar of Balliol 51 Butler 1 of Exeter. Mark Pattison 2 of Oriel, afterwards Fellow of Lincoln, was already a young graduate when Jowett came into residence at Balliol. These names may suffice to indicate to those who recall their many associa- tions, the sort of milieu into which the reserved, town-bred youth, eager and yet shrinking, dutiful and adventurous, was suddenly plunged. There was the Eton set, brilliant and careless, full of gentlemanly prejudices, but also of boyish fun. There were the Scotchmen, in striking con- trast to these, not less noisy perhaps, but plodding and industrious, and bringing with them more of metaphysics than of classical learning. And there were the Rugby men, full of enthusiasm for Dr. Arnold, in whose un- popularity they gladly shared. They knew more of history than the rest, and were eager to break a lance in theological controversy. That was already filling the air to the detriment of other studies ; and grave dispassionate elders lamented the decline of scholarship in the Uni- versity of Musgrave and Elmsley. Young Jowett kept his head, we may be sure, but while proving all things, was taking impressions from all. In these early days he was eagerly observant, but more receptive than critical ; and in the pursuit of scholarship, which was his main business, he made rapid progress, though he did not immediately come quite to the front. Indeed he was very little known in his earlier years at Balliol, and did not see much of any one, even in his own College, except when he met his brother Scholars daily in Hall. There was always a good deal of conversation at the Scholars' table, and it is easy to imagine how the novice, after listening long in silence, would strike in from time to time with some unexpectedly pertinent remark. His 1 Canon of Winchester. 2 Rector of Lincoln College. E 2 52 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in circumstances forbade his entertaining any one, and he took no part in athletic exercises, although on rare occasions he indulged himself with rowing in a solitary skiff on the river 1 . He took long walks, was fond of bathing, being a fair swimmer, and, like his friend A. P. Stanley, took part in visiting the poor 2 . By degrees, however, his love of conversation and his social nature made for him an inner circle of companionship drawn from all the various sets in College, in which the figures of Arthur Hobhouse, Benjamin C. Brodie, H. S. Escott, E. M. Goulburn, A. H. Clough, Stafford H. Northcote, and "W. Rogers are still clearly discernible. In picturing the life of an Oxford undergraduate of sixty years since, it is necessary to bear in mind that athletic sports were less developed, and there were stronger lines of demarcation between the reading, the boating, and the hunting men, than at a later time. It was in one of his rare sculling excursions that Jowett first came in contact with one of the Bunseii family. Henry Bunsen of Oriel 3 happened to be passing by at the moment when Jowett's skiff was upset in one of the lower reaches of the river, and he always spoke of Bunsen as having acted the part of the Good Samaritan on that occasion. No friendship formed in Jowett's undergraduate days was more lasting than that with "W. Rogers, a boating man from Eton. The following reminiscences have been kindly com- municated by surviving contemporaries. I take first the narrative of Lord Hobhouse, who seems to have been 1 He took part in a College visited a poor woman, sculling race in June, 1838. See s Eldest son of Baron Bunsen ; p. 71. Vicar of Lilleshall, Salop ; after- 2 He pointed out to Dr. Evelyn wards Rector of Donington. He Abbott a house in the neighbour- was educated at Rugby, under hood of Hinksey, where he had Dr. Arnold. 1836-1840] Lord Hobhouse's Reminiscences 53 brought into specially close companionship with Jowett when both were undergraduates T : ' I went to reside at Balliol in Oct. 1837, being then under eighteen years old ; and I made acquaintance with Jowett, who was a Scholar of the House, and had commenced his residence a year before. I do not remember how our acquain- tance began, but it must have been very soon after my arrival ; probably through Northcote (Lord Iddesleigh), an old Eton friend, who won a Scholarship a year later than Jowett. The Scholars dined at a separate table ; and, not being one, I missed that stimulus of intimacy which is got by companionship at meals. On the other hand, I was thrown in with Jowett in this way. The top floor of the staircase on which he lived was shared between his rooms and those of a man of his own standing named Vaux. This Vaux was very fond of taking to his rooms some congenial soul, or it might be more than one, to imbibe tea, and indulge in talk de omnibus rebus. He often so received me ; and occasionally his neighbour Jowett would come in ; and, again occasionally, Jowett would make tea for us, or for me alone, in his own territory 2 . ' So there sprung up, quickly as is the case with lads, a mutual attraction, and such intimacy as our natures and 1 I am bound to insert here the remarks are worthy of the blessed words in which Lord Hobhouse repose of the waste-paper basket, deprecates the publication of the But of that you, who are writing contribution so kindly made by the biography, are the best judge, him ; although I think the reader and not I. So I will throw such will agree with me in considering light on your subject as I can.' his doubts unnecessary. 'Review- L. C. ing my intercourse with Jowett 2 His poverty was so evident, I cannot think that anything that A. H. scrupled even to accept 1 have to say is fit for publication his invitations to tea, but his or for more than casual talk doing so gave B. J. manifest across a tea-table. It is pleasant pleasure. ' It was difficult to enough for me to conjure up old draw him away from his studies, pictures shining in the soft light but when once you had him out of other days ; but to those who of his shell he was pleasant to have not that light the case is talk to.' (From conversation with different. I conceive that my Lord Hobhouse.) L. C. 54 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in circumstances permitted. I may mention in this connexion that to the end of Vaux's life, through good fortune and through ill, which he did not escape, Jowett never forgot the regard for him which existed in these early days. ' I have heard men say that one of Jowett's foibles was to be too much taken by successful or prominent men. I am by no means sure of that ; but I am sure that he was a man of rare fidelity in his attachments. I have known him come to like adversaries ; I have never known him turn away from or forget one whom he has called his friend. ' Jowett never joined in our games ; not from any dislike, I think, for he always took due interest in the doings of the Balliol boat, in which I then pulled an oar. The only exercise beyond a walk, which I ever enjoyed with him, was swimming 1 , to which we were both addicted. I do not know, but believe, that in the matter of games, as in other things, such as chess and entertainments, the necessity of a rigid economy kept him from doing what was done by others in easier circumstances. That his means were narrow before he won a Fellowship, was evident ; but he never spoke to me on the subject. Indeed he was very reticent on all things connected with his personal life, either in his school or in his family. It was natural that, seeking to know more of one to whom I was attracted, I should invite information on such matters, as in the case of other friends. But beyond the fact that his anchor was for the present cast in Bath, I learned little. He would give but a bare answer to a question ; and of course I soon abstained from broaching subjects on which he was not communicative. 'The part of Jowett's character which was most attractive to me was his perfect simplicity, truth, and originality. Behind his pretty, girlish looks, quiet voice, and gentle, shy manner, one soon found that there lay a robust masculine under- standing, which would not accept commonplaces as true or mere authority as a guide. I think that most boys of eighteen are apt to repeat without testing what they have been 1 ' Jowett took readily to the (From conversation with Lord water and swam well. The bath- Hobhouse.) L. C. ing was at Parson's Pleasure.' 1836-1840] Lord Hobhouse's Reminiscences 55 accustomed to hear, to fancy that what they see in print must be true, and to accept for gospel what comes to them accredited by the authorities of their little world. Certainly that was the case with me. And then I came into contact with one who, not flippant nor irreverent nor specially fond of paradox, nor specially desirous of victory in a discussion, yet insisted on seeing everything with his own eyes, and refused to utter a proposition until his own judgement was sufficiently in accord with it. I looked upon Jowett as the freshest and most original mind I had come across ; and I still think that I have never held converse with any one who was more thoroughly original, or more careful to say only what he made his own. Among the living influences which compelled me to think and tended to invigorate my thoughts in the plastic age between eighteen and twenty, I put as chiefest the lectures of Arch- bishop Tait and my intercourse with Jowett. Of course there were many others playing on a ripening mind, not then realized in any distinct way, and now impossible to disentangle ; but in looking back and trying to take stock of my earlier life, I have always attributed the most powerful effect to the hard- headed rationalism of these two, combined with their steady love of truth and their sympathetic natures. Probably the parts they played in after life will go far to justify my estimate. Jowett's fearless, and apparently passionless, tenacity under the storms which, at least during the first half of his working life, blew with great violence round the heads of the few who dared to think for themselves and to say so ; his absti- nence from anything like triumph when he made his position good all these things seem to me the natural healthy out- growth of the twenty-year-old boy, whose resolute questionings startled, posed, interested, and attracted me. ; I have just called his tenacity passionless, and his victory one without triumph. Of course in the immature time with which I deal, qualities of this sort are not brought out or tested by circumstances. But one of his characteristics which impressed me even then was his calmness when opinions differed ; that he did not, as other men are wont, get heated or argue for victory in a wordy war, but contended only when he had something to say which he believed to be true. 56 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in ' Not that he was wanting in feeling ; he had warm feelings and sympathies ; and he valued sympathy very much. Indeed I don't know why he should have regarded me with any favour except from feeling that I liked him. One expression of his I recall because it touched me at the time, and has always remained with me. In the spring of 1838 he stood for the Ireland Scholarship and was defeated. The successful man, if I rightly recollect, was the present Lord Lingen. Jowett had hoped to win and was much mortified. Probably, besides the pleasure of success, the emolument would have been a great help to him \ I went to his rooms and sat with him for some time. On parting he thanked me warmly, and added, perhaps with a little bitterness, "There are plenty who come when one wins, but you are a losing friend." I don't say that he was right, but such was the man, quickly respon- sive to sympathy, hurt if he thought it was withheld.' Dr. Holden, whose account of Jowett's appearance among the candidates for the Scholarship has been quoted in the previous chapter, continues his narrative as follows : ' As I was three years his senior we did not attend the same College lectures, and consequently did not regularly meet, except at the Scholars' dining table in Hall. But there I can well remember his quiet, unassuming manner, when the elder and more advanced Scholars led the conversation, and some- times laid down the law for the juniors in politics or theology, subjects, at that stirring time, very warmly discussed in Oxford. . . We little thought that the retiring, unobtrusive young Pauline was about to develop into a Hertford University Scholar in the following spring (1837), and in the year after that (November, 1838), while still an undergraduate, to be elected over the heads of all the senior Balliol Scholars and a score of others, First Class men from other Colleges, to the high distinction of a Balliol Fellowship.' 1 ' He was much disappointed also greatly disappointed at miss- when he found that the Hertford ing the Ireland.' (From conversa- Scholarship which he had gained tion with Lord Hobhouse.) L. C. was only for one year, and he was 1836-1840] Balliol Sixty Years since 57 The following recollections of the Rev. Hay S. Escott may be compared with the preceding. His account of the teaching at Balliol about this time is especially valuable : 'At the period of Jowett's election the undergraduates of the College numbered about eighty ; but this small number had in it a very large amount of intellectual power and energy of life. It was rather sharply divided into sets, and even at the tables in Hall, open to all, this division was generally preserved. But still the borderers in each set were more or less also members of the adjoining set, and a man might have friends in other sets than his own. But it was the stirring activity of the College which most struck the new members as they joined it. Of course in this vigorous life the Scholars took the lead ; but it was not confined to them, and the presence of such men, so intellectual and so studious as Lonsdale, Stanley, Goulburn, and Lake, may well be supposed to have kindled and stimulated many minds of less con- spicuous power. But much was also due to the authorities of the College. In Dr. E. Jenkyns 1 (afterwards Dean of Wells) it had a Master, according to his light, thoroughly devoted to its interest. He was not a man of a great and large mind and width of thought was neither cultivated nor affected in his day but he was eminently practical, and possessed of shrewd common sense, though deficient in delicacy of touch when handling minds more complex and more sensitive than his own. His dignity may have been somewhat pompous, and his energy bustling, but he honestly exerted all his powers for the improvement of the College, considering no part of its machinery beneath his notice ; and the result of his exertions was seen in the character of the men he gathered round him, first as Scholars or Commoners, then as Fellows and Tutors, by whose agency the prestige of Balliol was so rapidly and greatly raised. At the time of which we write, Moberly had just left Oxford to become Head Master of Winchester, and afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. 1 See Oakeleyi's 'Balliol under Dr. Jenkyns,' in Reminiscences of Oxford, Oxford Historical Society, 1892. 58 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in The Classical Tutors were Oakeley, Chapman, Tait, and imme- diately after (in the Lent Term of 1836) Scott, and the Mathematical Lecturer was Ward, of the Ideal. Oakeley, an excellent man, but speculative and dreamy, is more remem- bered as Catechetical Lecturer than as Tutor, though his lectures on Lucretius were highly spoken of. Chapman a truly good man, full of kindness and gentleness usually took the lectures to freshmen, and the more elementary part of the work, dividing the Divinity lectures with the other Tutors. But the nerve and backbone of the teaching lay with Tait and Scott and with the former even more than with the latter. Of Tait, tried and approved as he afterwards was in the highest position, it may seem superfluous to speak. But in enumerating the influences to which Balliol under- graduates were then subject, it is important to notice the impression made by him, as we know, on some at least of his pupils. There was in him a charm a union, perhaps, of manliness and kindness, which won for him the affection and respect of the more susceptible. He seemed to under- stand character, and to deal with the individual less according to any trifling occasional error, than according to what he knew to be his main purpose and aim. He had that dignity which was natural to his talents and his official position, but because it was natural, unstudied, and unassumed, he could exchange it for perfect equality with an undergraduate in social intercourse. Then, as a Lecturer, he had the remarkable gift of clearing up obscurities, and of leaving some definite idea in the minds of his pupils where all had appeared hope- lessly confused. He could take up some intricate passage, over which an inexperienced translator was sorely perplexed, and at once, apparently without effort, elicit a satisfactory meaning and produce it in idiomatic English. 'Scott had not these gifts. Truly good and kind, and in pure scholarship immeasurably in advance of Tait, his learned and careful lectures left comparatively little impression on the mind. His manner did not commend him, and he was deficient in tact, and in those qualities, so conspicuous in Tait, which give influence over others and call forth affection and respect. Yet to those intimate with him he was, we believe, 1836-1840] Balliol Sixty Years since 59 as lovable as he was talented ; and in young Jowett fonder then of the literature than of the philosophy of Greece he had a pupil after his own heart, whose accurate scholarship he could at once admire and enrich \ ' Besides those already mentioned, a senior Fellow of the name of Carr 2 occasionally looked over the weekly Essay, dividing the work with the Master. For the "Essay " was then in existence, written alternate weeks in English and Latin. . . . At times a copy of English verses was accepted instead of an Essay. . . . And as the final schools drew near, it was allowed to substitute for original composition a translation of a passage of English into Latin prose.' With reference to the same period the Eev. John L. Hoskyns, Rector of Aston Tirrold, writes : 'I was never intimate with Jowett when at Balliol. He was a shy, retiring student, quite a recluse, and I was not one of the magic circle of the Scholars and their immediate friends. ' . . . But I can never forget the deep impression that the general aspect of things in College made upon me. The scene in Chapel, Hall, Lecture Boom; the countenances of the men of Tait, Scott, Oakeley, Chapman, Ward ; the Scholars' table, and high table ; the twos and twos going out for their constitutionals, live fresh in my memory after nearly sixty years. It was a marvellous time, and a most interesting set of men.' 1 In his reminiscences (W. G. think the Dean of Eochester's Ward, Sfc., p. 115), Professor Lectures on Niebuhr first aroused Jowett says : ' I must not forget in my mind doubt about the the late Dean of Rochester, after- Gospels, and that the Archbishop wards Master of the College, u~ho of Canterbury first aroused in was very kind to me in early life.' me the desire to read German The lectures of both these distin- theology.' guished men had effects for their 2 See W. G. Ward, $c., loc. cit. youthful listener which they were The Rev. John Carr, afterwards far from contemplating. He wrote Rector of Brattleby and an as follows in one of the note- Honorary Canon of Lincoln. books, dated October, 1875 : ' I 60 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in ' The twos and twos going out for their constitutionals,' recall a feature almost unknown to a more athletic generation, the ' long walk with a friend,' which Jowett has often recommended as a recipe for low spirits l . His failure for the Ireland Scholarship in 1838 may have been partly due to grief or anxiety for his sister Agnes, a year younger than himself, who died about this time. In the same Term, however, he again surprised his friends, by winning the Powell Prize at Balliol, then awarded for proficiency in English literature. His father wrote as follows to Mrs. Irwin : ' During the present term, Benjamin has been trying for the Powell Prize at Balliol, for English Composition. I wondered very much at his venturing, as it was quite out of his line at least, so I should have concluded. We knew nothing about it till he had obtained it. ... We were glad to find his English had been respectable enough to carry him through.' A greater and more joyful surprise was in reserve. By a statute of the College the Balliol Fellowships were open to all Bachelors of Arts of the University and to Scholars of Balliol. On one previous occasion, it was believed, an undergraduate Scholar had been elected. In November, 1838, there were four vacancies an un- precedented number and Jowett was urged by some of his companions, Goulburn in particular, and it is said also by his Tutor, Robert Scott, to try his luck. The biography of Dean Stanley has thrown a curious light on the conditions of election to a Balliol Fellowship in those days. Arthur Stanley was induced to try for a Fellowship at University College in July, 1838, because his ' supposed theological opinions ' had rendered his 1 M. Arnold's Scholar Gipsy and this familiar habit. Cf. Letters of Thyrsis enshrine reminiscences of Matthew Arnold, vol. i. pp. 38, 191. 1836-1840] The Balliol Fellowship 61 election at Balliol in November very improbable x ! Amidst the searchings of heart which he went through before taking that decisive step, the last thing to occur to his mind would be, that in changing his College he would be leaving the coast clear for the admission of his younger friend. Yet so it was ; and we may safely infer that Jowett had not as yet fallen under suspicion either for liberal or Tractarian sympathies. In point of fact, as appears from the letters to W. A. Greenhill, while Evangelical prepossessions had been to a great extent already discarded, he was looking keenly round him with a suspense of judgement very uncommon in one so young. The circumstances of his election may best be told in Dr. Holden's words : ' As this is an achievement only once before -, I believe, recorded in the annals of Balliol, some particulars may be interesting, especially as coming from one who was himself a candidate. Four vacant Fellowships were to be filled up by examination ; all B.A's were eligible. The undergraduate Scholars of Balliol had also the peculiar privilege of being eligible, as the Master of the College, Dr. Jenkyns, used some- times to remind them. It was current at the time that the Eev. Eobert Scott, afterwards Master of the College for six- teen years, and who had himself been elected Fellow from Christ Church just two years before, had persuaded the young Hertford Scholar, the most promising pupil in his lecture room, to avail himself of this privilege and to offer himself as a candidate for one of the four vacant Fellowships 3 . It is 1 Stanley's Life, vol. i. p. 195. nor Oakeley had as yet become Among the candidates was Mark known as followers of Newman. Pattison : see his Memoirs, p. 177. 2 In the case of Jenkyns him- The Master, Jenkyns, was a stern self (so tradition says), foe to innovations ; Tait's ante- s A contemporary letter names cedents were not Anglican ; Scott E. M. Goulburn and John Turner and Ward were not originally as ' the persons who with great Balliol men ; and neither Ward difficulty induced him to en- 62 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in said also that when speaking of this pupil to his brother electors, he often used the words non res scd spes (promise not performance) \ Jowett was out of College when the result was declared. The names had been read out in Chapel, and the Master and Fellows were waiting to confirm the election. Jowett was not forthcoming. Men rushed to his rooms and the rooms of his friends. He was not to be found. "W. Jenkins, the Blundell Scholar 2 , by whom this incident is told, ' chanced to be going out of College, and when the gate was opened ran full tilt against him.' ' Jowett,' he exclaimed, ' you are elected.' ' Nonsense/ was the answer. ' You are elected, they are waiting for you in the Chapel.' Even then he could hardly be persuaded till on his entering the gate other friends confirmed the tidings. The spirit in which Jowett took his success appears from the letter which he wrote to his father at the time. It has been preserved in a long epistle of Mr. Jowett's to Mrs. Irwin in Australia, to whom he confides what was probably hidden from those more nearly concerned, his exultant pride and delight in the success of his son, and the ambitious dreams which it awakened in him ; but also his fear of spiritual dangers which this might involve to Benjamin. There is no trace, as yet, of any constraint in the intercourse between the father and the son. BALLIOL COLLEGE, Friday Morning. MY DEAREST FATHER, You will be amazed and delighted to hear that I have been elected a Fellow of Balliol. There were four vacancies, roll his name among the can- his colleague in the work of Greek didates.' lexicography. Liddellthen heard 1 Immediately after the elec- of Jowett for the first time, tion Scott reported the fact to 2 Late Rector of Fillingham. 1836-1840] The Balliol Fellowship 63 and the four successful candidates are Woollcombe of Oriel, Lonsdale, Lake, and myself. The whole number of candidates was twenty-nine ; of whom about eighteen had taken a First Class. I can never be sufficiently thankful to Providence for giving me the ability to obtain it, or for putting it into their minds to give it me. The expenses of getting in here are about '35. What the value of the Fellowship is during the probationary year I do not know, probably about 60 a year, and afterwards nearly 200. Scott (one of the Tutors) has, with his usual kindness, advanced me the money of his own accord. If repaid in a month it will be sufficient. Pray write to me by return of post, as your joy at my success is half the joy of having succeeded. I am sorry to think of the unsuccessful candidates. One man whom they rejected, Wickens, is probably the ablest man in the University, and I should think facile princeps in the examination. The Master confesses that the only ground for it was his irregularity, not in moral conduct but in matters of discipline, when an undergraduate '. For Holden, whom you remember, I am also exceedingly sorry ; he wrote a most affecting letter to Wickens which the latter showed ine this morning. He said he could not but feel being beaten by one to whom he had been in the stead of a Tutor, ' the old man beaten by the boy.' Street's brother is another of the rejected candidates. I fear I must conclude, as I am engaged for a walk with Massie, &c. &c. Believe me, Yours affectionately, B. JOWETT. PS. I should have written last night, but was really unable. A few lines to Mamma I scribbled off, but was sent for before 1 Dr. Richard Congreve, who quoted repartee :Dr knew Wickens ' at home,' tells me ' Mr. Wickens, I never stand at that the Master said to the disap- my window, but I see you passing. 1 pointed candidate, 'Mr. Wickens, Wickens. ' Indeed, Master, I never we have elected in preference to pass but I see you standing at the you a little child.' Wickens is window.' the accredited author of the often- 64 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in I had finished them. Remember me to Mr. Turner, Johannes, Aunt Courthope, Uncle, and all others. That his letter to his mother should have remained unfinished is not wonderful, considering the excitement which his election had caused amongst his comrades. This is recorded in a letter from James Sandham, Commoner of St. John's (also transcribed by the glad father) : 'Nothing has been talked about here so much for a long time. It is thought to be, as it is, a most wonderful achieve- ment. " Little Jowett" was nearly pulled to pieces when his success was known ; one man shaking his hand with all his might and two or three others contending for the other, till at last, being hoisted above their heads, he was carried in triumph round the quadrangle V When Jowett was Vice-Chancellor, one of his con- temporaries whom he happened to be entertaining at luncheon said, referring to this election, ' I then thought you four the happiest people going.' ' So we were,' said the Master in a cheerful tone. A word may be added here a propos of ' little Jowett.' The undergraduates of his own time seem to have shared this impression with those who twenty years afterwards loved to talk of 'little Benjamin their ruler.' Yet it was only partly justified. Jowett was not 'little' in the sense in which Dean Stanley and Dean Johnson of AVells were little men. He was really middle-sized, with rather sloping shoulders, and a chest not broad but deep. His boyish countenance, like Milton's, 'Deceiving the truth That he to manhood was arrived so near/ 1 Cf. Mr. L. A. Tollemache, as high as he could, and he was Benjamin Jowett, p. 43 : ' He at carried round the quadrangle on once testified his joy by leaping the shoulders of his friends.' 1836-1840] Graduation 65 his delicate complexion, high-pitched voice, finely taper- ing hands, and small well-moulded feet, contributed to strengthen the illusion. By a custom which prevailed for some time after Jowett's election, the lessons in Chapel were read by the two junior Fellows, and the undergraduates were interested and perhaps amused to see this function assumed by one of themselves 1 . The Long Vacation of 1839 began sadly. Much of it was spent at home. His sister Ellen, who had long been in failing health, died at Tenby on July i in that year. Jowett's grief was silent but very deep. He wrote of it at the time to his friend Greenhill ; and in more than one letter written during the last years of life he spoke tenderly of those of his family whom he had lost as being never absent from his thoughts. The name of Benjamin Jowett appears in the First Class in Literis Humanioribus, Michaelmas Term, 1839, in the same list with Stafford H. Northcote of Balliol, and James Fraser and "William Kay, both of Lincoln College. Before taking his degree he had engaged in private tuition, and among his first pupils not counting his brothers Alfred and "William Jowett, whom he had tutored in the Long Vacation of 1838 were T. H. Farrer of Balliol 2 , who took honours in Easter Term, 1840, and his brother Oliver, who appeared in the same Class List. Lord Farrer's reminiscences contain the best record of the impression which Jowett produced on others at this time, and may fitly conclude the present chapter : 1 W. L. Newman and Charles to the Fellowship. The Scho- S. C. Bowen (Lord Bowen) are the lars' privilege was abolished in only-undergraduate Scholars who, 1857. since Jowett, have been elected 2 Lord Farrer. VOL. I. F 66 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in ' My first acquaintance with Jowett was as an undergraduate. He gained the Balliol Scholarship in 1835, an d I went up to Balliol after Easter in 1837. His youthful person, his round hairless face, which in later years made that mother of nick- names, Mrs. Grote, call him "the cherub 1 "; his low shoes and white stockings ; his brisk, tripping, almost childish gait ; made him a noticeable figure in Balliol quad ; and they are still present to me as a vivid image of what he was in early youth, and the more so since the characteristic features of that image remained traceable in him to the end. He did not at that time, I think, give any promise of the power which he afterwards became. I did not see much of him beyond an occasional walk together, for he joined in no games ; and though never an ascetic, or absorbed, as Clough was, in the theological mists of that polemical time, he was absolutely devoid of athletic propensities, and was I believe too poor then to indulge in the hospitality which in later years was so great a pleasure to him and to his friends. To him, to Brodie, to Hugh Pearson, and one or two others, I owed a mental stimulus which was not to be found in the general healthy, but not intellectual, society of the Eton and Harrow men with whom I mostly lived. Towards the end of my time at Oxford, I lost the good coach Elder with whom I was reading for my degree, and betook me to two Balliol men equally kind, and perhaps equally well-read, but very different in their effects on a pupil's mind. One, who shall be name- less, made Aristotle's Logic, as unintelligible to me as confusion of thought in the interpreter can make the work of a great master. The other, Jowett (I really cannot remember what he taught me), managed to make everything he taught sugges- tive and productive of thought. ' Indeed, if I were to attempt to characterize in a few words the effect which Jowett's personality had upon me through 1 She was anticipated, if I mis- Another creator of nicknames, take not, by Mr. Edward Pigott Mrs. Ferrier of St. Andrews, used in the Leader (weekly) newspaper, to speak of him some years after- who wrote of him, in the early wards as the ' little downy owl.' fifties, as 'the middle- aged cherub.' L. C. 1836-1840} Lord Farrer's Reminiscences 67 life, in our latest visits to one another as well as in those early days at Balliol, I should say that it was stimulating rather than formative. His instruction was not the explana- tion of a system of thought or the communication of cut and dried propositions, but the opening of a vista which you were to follow up yourself. He had the Socratic art of saying to youthful eagerness, "Are you sure you are right?" but of saying it in such a manner as to develop zeal in the pursuit of truth. He discouraged dogmatism, he encouraged thought. Perhaps this temper of mind was at a later period fostered by what I always felt to be his somewhat equivocal position with respect to the Church and Church doctrines ; a relation which, whilst in some respects it gave him great power, I have often wished otherwise. But however this may be, I have always felt from those early undergraduate days down to the last visit I paid him in Balliol in 1893, that his effect on me was one of the most invaluable services one man can render to another, viz. the stimulation of mental and moral energy of eVepycia i/^X*? 5 Kar> apeTiyv, and he would have gladly added himself ev /3to> TeAeiu) ("in a complete existence "). ' I remember at one of the Balliol gatherings of which he was so fond, when going through his old friends in his after- dinner speeches, his referring to those old undergraduate relations between us by saying of me "And then comes my old friend Farrer, of whom I may perhaps say, that something more might have come of him if he had not been my first pupil." I prize those words for their kindness, not for their truth.' 68 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in LETTEKS, 1837-1839. To ~W. A. GEEENHILL. COWES, 5 TRAFALGAR PLACE, September 15, [1837]. ... I went to call on Waldegrave. He was in Ireland with his father's ship, but his mother received me very kindly, so that I was really glad to have had an opportunity of seeing her. She almost did as much to dispel my prejudices against the Evangelicals, as the Welsh clergyman had done to increase them. Indeed I hope I see more and more the necessity of not proscribing any order of men, however widely we may differ from them in opinion. There is a text very often quoted which it is hard to realize in its full meaning ' they that do the works shall know of the doctrine.' In the present state of the Christian world, especially at Oxford, it is a great consolation to think of this, if we do but begin at the right end by doing our duty first. To W. A. GEEENHILL. ILFRACOMBE, August 26, 1838. You will be surprised at receiving this letter from me from the place from which it is written, but before I tell you anything about my doings, I must beg you to forgive my long silence, which has been caused by close employment in reading, and teaching my two brothers. Whether you think this apology sufficient or no, I most sincerely hope that you will not interpret my neglect into unkindness or ingratitude. You do not like my saying much on the latter head the obligation to you which I have never sufficiently felt, and in comparison with which all your other kindness however Letters, 1837-1839 69 great is as nothing I mean your endeavour to keep me in the right way 1 . ... I came here three days since, and shall remain till the end of the week. Before I leave I purpose walking along the coast to Clovelly and back again, and from Linton to Bridg- water. We had a terrible passage here by the steamer, which, although the distance is but 80 miles, lasted two days. After lying to the greater part of the first day we attempted to proceed in the evening, but had not gone above a mile when we were struck by a Welsh steamer. The carrying away of the figurehead was the only injury we received, but as the sea was running high the captain was afraid to proceed. We arrived here after a stormy passage at six o'clock the next day. . . . Speaking of Newman, there is an article in the last Edinburgh on the life of Froude 2 in which, though gross in- justice is done to the subject of it, there are some striking and useful remarks. It is evidently written by a religious man, and would I think please, and certainly not displease you. How full religious people's minds are of what they term the popery of Oxford their violence against it being in exact proportion to their ignorance. I do not either agree with or understand many of Newman's principles, but cannot help thinking that they will have on the whole a salutary influence on the Protestant Church in bringing back men's minds to a class of duties which have been too much neglected. I fancy that in the ordinary divinity of the day, far too much stress is laid on words ; there is a sort of theological slang, if I may be excused the expression, a religious phraseology, in laying aside which you are supposed to be undermining 1 More than fifty years after days, and had troubles to which this, in writing to Dr. Greenhill, I was unequal, though I ought who had congratulated him on not to have been so. ... This his recovery from the almost fatal College has been a haven to me illness of 1891, he referred to for fifty-six, or, since I gained their intercourse at this time : a Fellowship, fifty-three years.' ' I shall always remember with 2 Edinburgh Review for July, gratitude your great kindness to 1838, 'Remains of Richard Hurrell me when I was a youth. I was Froude.' very weak and wayward in those 70 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, in the fundamentals of the Christian Faith. Thus, if you do not draw a very distinct line between faith and works you are supposed to be unsound in doctrine, a distinction which seems to me to have arisen very much from a wrong applica- tion of St. Paul's words, referring to the works of the law and the principles of the Gospel, an opposition which I do not understand when applied to the faith and practice of the Christian covenant. St. Paul's was not, I think, decided when you left. Kynaston was the successful candidate '. One circumstance gave me great pleasure. I was assured by an impartial person, that by far the best testimonial sent in was one for Massie, given by the Bishop of Llandaff without his application or knowledge. To W. A. GREENHILL. TENBY, July 2, 1839, Tuesday Morning. I should have written to you before this, but the two last days have been so full of trouble and anxiety that I am sure you will excuse it. My beloved sister is gone to her rest, nevermore to be disturbed by the cares and sorrows of this sinful world. The last two days of her life, it was the saddest scene I ever witnessed. At the beginning of the week there had been a great improvement, all symptoms of the disease having sub- sided. On Saturday morning a great change took place and the last struggle began. I am most thankful it is now all over ; although I never saw death before, I do not think it can be often seen in so dreadful a form. From the very beginning of her illness, with far more to attach her to life than most young persons, she did not wish to recover. We dwell very much on everything she said, as, from her being almost insensible during the last few weeks, she was unable to bear much testimony to the power of religion. While in health she read the Scriptures and prayed regularly, latterly visiting among the poor, and this gives me a far surer confidence than a few rapturous expressions on 1 Kynaston succeeded Sleath as High Master of St. Paul's School, in June, 1838. Letters, i8jj-i8jc> 7 1 a death-bed would have done. On Sunday afternoon she became more sensible, and after reading two prayers from the Visitation of the Sick I asked her if she felt happy ; she replied faintly that she did. I asked her to assure my mother that she was so (as the latter had made herself needlessly unhappy about it). She said she could hardly venture to do so. On Saturday, when in the greatest pain of body, she remembered the servant girl who waited upon her, requesting my elder sister to talk to her and have her taught to read the Scriptures. I could tell you a great deal more about her, but my heart is too full to go on. When I remember her form and dis- position, such as I never saw united in any one else, I feel persuaded that I can never again be so happy as I was before. I do not repine against Providence, but pray God that the scene of the last few days may for ever dwell in my mind and be a continual motive to love and serve Him. To me who feel my own weakness more and more contemptible, her strength of mind was quite extraordinary. But I feel I am running away into what I can hardly trust myself to speak of. Out of a family of nine there are now only five remaining, and I thank God that He has hitherto been pleased to take those who were best fitted to serve Him in heaven. Since these pages were in type, the following entry from the Balliol Boat Club Eecords has been supplied by the kindness of the Hon. A. Henley and Mr. A. L. Smith : Saturday, June 2, 1838. Sculling sweepstakes at ss. 6d. each, at 2 o'clock, from the top of the Long Reach, round the Island, up to Iffley. Order in rows, numbered as they came in. 3 17 Davy 1 8 J. Sumner 13 E. Hobhouse 15 C. Sumner n Swayne 12 Jowett 14 Moncrieff 2 2 Moberly Garnett Brodie Hardinge 4 Estcourt Trower Holbeck E. Hobhouse Xorthcote 5 Powys T. Farrer Pocock ist Prize, 2 IDS. ; 2nd Prize, i los. ; 3rd Prize, i ; 4th, recovered stake. Each row had an umpire, who arranged by lot the place of his men the starting-posts 10 paces apart boats started with their heads level with the post. N.B. 10 paces seemed barely enough. CHAPTER IV FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL. 1840-1846 (Aet. 23-29) W. G. WARD and A. P. Stanley Tract XC and the Thirty-nine Articles First foreign tour The Decade Assistant Tutorship Ordination The Paris libraries Appointment as Tutor (1842) College business With Stanley in Germany Hegel and Schelling Degradation of Ward Action of the 'Oxford Liberals' Projected work on the New Testament Archdeacon Palmer's reminiscences Letters. years from 1840 onwards, though outwardly * uneventful, were fertile in consequences. Jowett's increasing intercourse with Ward and Stanley, both of whom in different ways were leaders of the theological agitation then at its height, the commencement of his Tutorship, his own independent studies and reflections, to which the prospect of Ordination gave practical signifi- cance all tended to promote the growth and con- solidation of his mind. Friendships with younger men were also formed, which lasted to his latest breath. Through Stanley he already came into contact with the great world. An influence of which no one anticipated the extent or depth had its commencement here. In the years which immediately followed his degree he seems to have spent part of the vacations in solitary William George Ward 73 rambles ; accepting lifts from bagmen, stopping at way- side inns, visiting Cathedral towns, and conversing with all and sundry as occasion served him. His familiar knowledge of English topography often surprised those who had only known him in the retirement of his study. Meanwhile in his own case that ' other work of education * ' of which he wrote in 1860 had begun. This may be roughly dated from the completion of his Latin Essay, which won the Chancellor's Prize in the spring of 1841. Stanley's efforts in favour of a large toleration had his entire sympathy, and their intercourse, even in the earlier years of Jowett's Fellowship, was pretty constant. But a more intense albeit temporary influence was working within the walls of Balliol. The strange and powerful individuality of William George "Ward had not yet taken its final bent, and the communication of his questionings and mental struggles in many a dialectic argument produced a strong effect upon young Jowett's mind. To Ward more than to any other man he probably owed his first initiation into meta- physical inquiry. It is true that the Scotchmen, especially John Campbell Shairp 2 , brought with them some Kantian enthusiasm, and that the prose writings of S. T. Coleridge were already attracting attention in Oxford ; but the fervid and incessant talk of a senior 1 'As he grows older he mixes St. Paul, 3rd edition, vol. ii. more and more with others ; first p. 57. with one or two who have great 2 Principal Shairp used to tell influence in the direction of how he had brought with him his mind. At length the world from Glasgow a copy of Kant's opens upon him ; another work Metaphysic of Ethic (probably in of education begins; and he Sernple's translation) and lent it learns to discern more truly the to Jowett, who afterwards went meaning of things and his rela- stamping about the quadrangle. tion to men in general.'' Essay as if to assure himself that the on Interpretation/ Epistles of solid earth was beneath his feet. 74 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv colleague so vivacious as Ward must have been far more influential. In a conversational intercourse that never flagged, difficulties raised by Bentham, John Stuart Mill, or Auguste Comte were laid by the authority of the Fathers. Such were the strange cross-currents of the time. Years afterwards Jowett used to speak of "Ward as a kind of Silenus-Socrates, whose delight it was to deliver young men of their doubts. For a brief while his influence drew Jowett powerfully in the direction of Newmanism l . 'I sometimes think,' said Jowett once (about 1856), 'that but for some divine providence I might have become a Koman Catholic. I had resolved to read through the Fathers, and if I found Puseyism there I was to become a Puseyite. It is not unlikely that I might have found it, but before I had gone through my task the vacation ended, and on returning to Oxford we found that Ward was going to be married ! After that the Tractarian impulse subsided, and while some of us took to German Philosophy, others turned to lobster suppers and champagne. They called that " being unworldly." ' Those words were lightly spoken, and at a later time. But in the early years of his Fellowship, with Ordination in prospect, theological difficulties had a serious practical import, especially in connexion with the then burning question of the meaning of Subscription. Tract XC 1 Some years after this, January, us German, and who considers 1849, he wrote to Stanley from human nature to be a sign of in- Bonn, with reference to young terrogation which finds its answer Cruickshank (see above, p. 21) : in the Church : and the other, ' I think there are two classes just the opposite class of persons, of persons who turn Roman whose feelings are too deep for Catholics: one, the rationalizers them ever to get on in the like Capes and Ward, of whom my highways of the world, and who present type is a student or rather find the Church a home for the Ph. D. who comes here to teach lonely.' 1840-1846] Tract XC and Subscription 75 appeared on January 25, 1841, and was immediately followed by an outburst of controversy. Jowett had formed the habit, recommended by Locke, of tabulating reasons for and against disputed propositions ; and on May 20 of this year he began a series of notes on the question of Subscription, which still remain amongst his papers. They are in pencil, and in a neat upright hand, not unlike that of his sister Emily. "While reflecting much of the intellectual perplexity that was rife in the Oxford of that day. these observations, which would occupy about four pages of small print, bear also the clear impress of an independent and finely balanced mind, and of the intrepid determination to thrash out the subject, not blinking any aspect of it, and to reach a decisive judgement as a basis of action. On the whole he seems to have been at the moment in favour of getting the Articles simplified and reimposed by the authority of the State. ' This seems really the practical thing to struggle for. If it be said, it would drive many good men from the Church, it can only be replied, that good men were driven out at the Kestora- tion, and that we are apt to estimate the evil to religion by the extent of evil to our personal friends. . . . ' ' The Articles may include as many as they do now only without danger to men's consciences those which are am- biguous now may be omitted the Articles at present are a sort of movable fence which may be shifted as far as you please the restraint they impose is purely imaginary. This ideal restraint may be really useful, until men begin to push at it ; afterwards it is worse than useless.' Under the existing conditions it seemed equally im- possible to admit a strict construction or an indefinite latitude. ' The original framers were not at one with themselves, or 76 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv with the second revisers, or with the Convocation which sanctioned, or with the last revisers who put forth the Articles.' ' It may be said ' ' Why not take them, as all good men do, in their obvious sense?" Because this is impossible. The Articles are irreconcilable with the Liturgy if both are taken in their most obvious sense : both being equally imposed on the clergy.' 'Again, it may not be denied that some licence is allowable it cannot be supposed that all the propositions in the Articles were to be taken in their fullest sense. But where can we draw the line about this licence, especially as every man sees the Articles through his own spectacles ? ' Once more, supposing the Articles to be imposed by the State ' We should be only obliged to take the test in the letter as we should obey a law. . . . No one can say we are bound to carry out in its full spirit a law we conceive to be indefensible. ' These notes are immediately followed by other dis- cussions, which throw considerable light on this transition phase of a cautiously comprehensive mind. On the Relation of Tradition to Scripture. ' There seem to be several views on this subject. ' i. Of the extreme ultra-Protestant, who takes the Bible and the Bible alone, without note or comment either of Fathers or any one else, and professes that by the agency of prayer and of the Holy Spirit he shall be guided into all truth. ' He would urge that the most ignorant people are capable of receiving the saving truths of the Gospel and getting comfort from them. And most truly so : but it must be remembered as one of the most wonderful parts of Christianity that it is a scheme which adapts itself not only to different ages, but to different ranks of mind and education. The poor man does not need a complete doctrinal system, and therefore 1840-1846] Theological Notes, 1841 77 does not want the helps towards forming them from Scripture * ; but the educated man does, and ought to, form such a system. Further, it is impossible to say how much all men through very different channels get of tradition. '2. Of those who consider the Bible as the only inspired writing, but think that for the right understanding of it the same ordinary assistances are required as for the under- standing any other moral or religious system. ' (The second view \vould give quite a sufficient authority for all the doctrines and observances of the English Church.) ' 3. Of the Anglican, who holds the Bible to be in the highest sense inspired, but that the oral teaching of the Apostles has been preserved by the Fathers of the Church, whose writings, for this reason, have a claim to a secondary kind of inspiration. That their only authority springs from the preservation of Apostolical fragments, and that one only test of this original doctrine is its catholicity " Quod semper, quod ubique, quod apud omnes " counting the first three centuries as preferable to all others, because nearer the fountain-head. ' (The objection to this view seems to be the doubt whether such genuine remains can be traced ; they would be rather found in the form of the Church itself than in creeds and writings. ) ' 4. The view of the Eomanist, that the decrees of the Church represented by the Pope and a general Council (says the [Cismontane]), of the Pope singly (says the Ultramontane\ are the sole authority for the interpretation of Scripture, as well as an independent source from which new truth may flow. ' 5. There is an opinion which may be placed between these two, which denies the co-ordinate authority of the Church, but places no limit to the interpretation of Scripture. The Church may draw an important truth from a metaphor, a similitude, a single word, any of the various senses which . a particular passage might be made to bear. This seems only to differ from the former view in being dishonest ; it has the appearance of reverence to Scripture while it only perverts it. 1 This sympathy with the re- feature which reappears promi- ligious wants of the poor is a nently in the book on St. Paul. 78 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv It may prove purgatory from "every sacrifice, &c.," papal supremacy from the two swords of Peter, &c. This is a very different thing from the use of Scripture to prove Episcopacy. ' (Anglo-Catholic says that his view differs in an important respect from the papist, because it leads to the study of Scripture. Such a view would be grounded chiefly on the interpretation of the Old Testament by St. Paul and the practice of the early Fathers. ' It might be urged against the Eomanist that he gives much less weight to S. S. 1 than the early Fathers, to which he would reply that S. S. stands in a much less important place in respect to the whole body of revealed truth, now than then.) ' These notes sufficiently indicate his attitude at the moment towards the Tractarian School. Another entry, ' On Strauss's Theory of Christianity,' shows how far his mind was opening to speculations of a different nature. ' Strauss considers Christianity to have been the offspring of a mythical age, enlightened indeed by revelation but forming a slender groundwork of facts into a mythic history. (The a priori truth which is supposed to be self-evident and which all these systems are intended to support is the subordination of Christianity to German philosophy.) A male- factor named Christ who was put to death for religious enthusiasm might undoubtedly have existed ; he was brought into the mythic scheme of the Jews, just as Xuthus into the Pelasgic mythology, but the attributes given to him were not those of a person but of a principle : he became the embodied representative of a new system of belief. (Note. A much more plausible theory would speak of Christianity as an inspired myth.) The Gospels were written many years after his death : they are full of miracles and supernatural appearances which the common sense of mankind has agreed to reject Moreover they bear traces of two schools of mythic- lore, a Jewish and a Greek, and for this reason are as full of discrepancies as any confused mythology of the Ancients. The doctrines are the dry core of truth which they contain. 1 Scriptura Sancta. 1840-1846] Influence of W. G. Ward 79 These may be separated from the facts, as they rest too upon an internal evidence which the other cannot have.' A brief note on the evidence of prophecy 1 further indicates the direction in which his thoughts were moving : 'It is worth while considering in what the real evidence from prophecy consists not certainly in the exact fulfilment of minute details giving occasion for all sorts of phantasies a la Prideaux and Newton, nor in the application of most of them (except those referring to our Lord) to a particular individual or time ; but in their general applicability to the Phenomena of the world in these latter days. They may be interpreted on large and liberal principles, as the words of Him "with whom a thousand days are as one day, and one day as a thousand years." The same note-book contains the heads of similar dis- cussions on ' The Respect due to our Mother Church,' ' Prayers for the Dead,' ' Transubstantiation,' ' Internal and External Evidence,' ' Romanism and Rationalism V ' Romanism and Evangelicism,' ' The Patristic System,' ' The Power of the Keys,' ' Absolution,' ' The Via Media,' &c., all showing the drift of his thoughts and the resolu- tion to let no doctrine pass unchallenged. It is evident that when, through his intercourse with Ward, he was most powerfully drawn towards Tractarianism 3 , he was thinking actively and independently. The attraction was a strong one, however. Ward's influence in stimu- lating theological inquiry was not the less poignant and invasive, because of the many-sided activity of his 1 Cf. Remains of Rev. J. Davison, other of German Philosophy.' autnor of Discourses on Prophecy. 3 There is little evidence of 2 'Both Romanism and Ra- Jowett's having ever come directly tionalism are founded in a great under the spell which in these measure on metaphysical specula- years J. H. Newman exercised tions, one of the Schoolmen, the over many minds. 8o Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv intellect. Readers of that delightful book William George Ward and the Oxford Movement will not readily forget either Professor Jowett's recollections therein embodied (pp. 112-114, 428, 439) or the picture of Ward as improvising a ballet d 'action, in which he impersonated the Master (Jeiikyns), mimicking the well-known voice and demeanour and 'pirouetting 1 .' It was probably to one who literally could have ' acted Falstaff without padding,' that Jowett owed his more intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare which began about this time. He certainly always knew his Shakespeare best upon the comic side, seldom quoting any serious passages except from the Tempest -, and now and then a familiar phrase from Hamlet or Macbeth. His junior contemporary John Duke Coleridge was also noted as a Shakespearian scholar and reciter. But the enthusiasm of Coleridge, Shairp, and other friends for Wordsworth 3 and Tennyson, had in these earlier days little effect on Jowett. After long separation, he met his old friend at Fresh- water, in the Isle of Wight : this was about 1868, during one of his many visits to Farringford. He was delighted, 1 W. G. Ward, fyc., p. 40. 2 On September 5, 1846, he Jowett's words to Stanley a year wrote to R. R. W. Lingen : ' I or two after Ward's admission to have been reading Shakespeare the Church of Rome, call up a pic- daily. The Tempest strikes me ture of the man : ' I cannot resist as one of the most remarkable the charms of the fat fellow when- and least understood plays. Is ever I get into his company. You it not a sort of English Faust ? ' like him as you like a Newfound- 3 He said of one who was land dog. He is such a large, known amongst his comrades as jolly, shaggy creature. Though he 'the poet' (1846): 'He is a very is not yet changed into an Italian clever fellow and with consider- greyhound, the shagginess is be- able powers of mind, but obscured ginning to wear off with the in- a little by the haze of Emerson fluences of a Southern climate/ and Wordsworth.' 1840-1846] The Decade 81 as he told me, to find that his former comrade cherished warmly the recollection of earlier days. Mr. Lecky, who was present, witnessed the joyous eagerness of their re- greetings. ' He (Ward) reminded me, ' says Jowett, ' that I charged him with shallow logic, and that he retorted on me with "misty metaphysics." This perhaps was not an unfair account of the state of the controversy between us 1 .' An outlet for the intellectual activity with which Jowett was brimming over at this time was afforded by a small debating society called the Decade. This is mentioned in a letter of George Butler's in 1841 2 , which throws a welcome light on Jowett's relations with other contemporaries and on his position in the University. It appears that Jowett had proposed that Butler should be a member of this little club. ' I see Jowett occasionally ; I like him very much. He is very quiet in manner, and does not show off to advantage in a roomful of men, but he is a very agreeable companion. He has made me an exceedingly kind offer, which I think you would like me to accept. He is a member of a debating society called the " Decade." I think there are twelve members now. They meet at each other's rooms for discussion on a subject previously announced. Among the members are Jowett himself, Lake (a Fellow of Balliol), Arthur Stanley (son of Bishop Stanley and Fellow of University College), Coleridge, Prichard, Matthew Arnold (eldest son of Dr. Arnold), Blackett 3 , and a few others. They elect members without their know- ledge, and then ask them to join the society, which precludes all canvassing. I am pleased beyond measure at the prospect of getting into such an excellent set, consisting, as you may see, of the picked men of the University.' 1 W. G. Ward, $c., p. 438. s John F. B. Blackett, Fellow 2 Recollections of George Sutler of Merton, afterwards M.P. for by his wife, Josephine Butler, p. 31. Newcastle. He died in 1856. VOL. I. G 82 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv In the summer of 1841, Jowett made what seems to have been his first foreign tour, in company with a friend whose initials are J. P. Entering the Continent at Ostend, they visited Antwerp, Brussels, Malines, Ghent, Liege, and other Cathedral towns in Belgium, Treves and the valley of the Moselle, Coblentz, the Rhine, Mayence, and Heidelberg. He makes careful notes of the archi- tecture of the Cathedrals, the sculptures in wood and marble, the chief pictures, and the religious habits of the people ; also of the Roman remains at Treves ; and he gives a picturesque description of the scenery of the Moselle. He had already commenced the serious study of Political Economy, and one page is filled with observations ' On the state of the poor Schwal- bach.' On another page there is a list of works on Political Economy to be got for the College Library, and also a series of acute general remarks on the New Science, on the Industrial Revolution which had given rise to it, on the importance of the subject, its relation to morality, and the uncertainties attending it. Two extracts from the notes of this tour may serve to show how his speculative thoughts were balanced with an active habit of intelligent observation : ' The Moselle, a muddy, rapid stream running between hills clad with vines and underwood sometimes rugged and pre- cipitous sometimes shelving down in layers to the water's edge at others opening into a sort of amphitheatre, at the foot of which the river takes its winding course. In many places it has the appearance of a lake seeming to spring from the successive ranges of hills which cross one another until lost in the vista. Sometimes scenery varied by the cornfields which wave on the very top of the steep. The vines in many places stretch as far as the eye can reach. ' Low down on the river the rocks become more craggy and terrible, gradually closing in so as to conceal the river from 1840-1846] Ordination 83 view : the ruins of old castles raised on eminences greatly increase the picturesqueness of the scene. ' Another feature of the river is the villages with which the bank is studded each with its church and school and picturesque houses with wooden frameworks.' ' The Church of St. Paulinus (Treves). Italian architecture, the sides of the interior ornamented with pilasters terminated by coloured capitals with projecting entablature, intended to harmonize with the painted roof, a very curious piece of work executed about a hundred years ago. It is intended to represent the martyrdom of 40,000 Christians who perished at Treves in the Diocletian persecution. At one end of the picture the work of slaughter has commenced, the waters of the Rhine are flowing red : about the centre Christ and the Father are represented with the cross.' When he returned to Balliol in October, 1841, although not yet Tutor, he began to take a share in the teaching of the College. This is evidenced by notes for lectures on Aristotle and Butler, long strings of questions, and subjects for essays, and other hints for classical in- struction, in the note-book of which so much has here been said. He appears as 'Assistant Tutor' in the Oxford Calendar of 1842 (brought up to date for December, 1841). In 1842 he took Deacon's Orders. From the dry light of speculation which, shines through the disquisitions above quoted, it is not to be inferred that, at this time, his emotional nature was not also deeply stirred. The truth comes out in his letters to his friend Greenhill (inserted at the end of this chapter), with whom for a time he seems to have indulged in an interchange of ' religious sympathy.' There are traces in them of some inequalities of health and spirits perhaps also of inward struggles. G 2 84 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv A sentence in the letter from Bonn, June 28, 1842 J , in which he deprecates further correspondence on this subject, is characteristic and biographically important. Like every act of his life, his Ordination vows were realized by him with deep intensity. This was mani- fested not only by increasing devotion to his pupils, but by single incidents, in which he boldly broke through conventionality, in accordance with the spirit of his profession, and overcame his natural shyness. From that moment, and to the end of his life, he was in the truest sense a 'son of consolation.' Sir Henry Acland has favoured us with the following account of a fact in his own experience which exemplifies this : 'I first saw Mr. Jowett in 1844 at the country house of Sir Benjamin Brodie (Betchworth, Surrey 2 ), the grandfather of the present Baronet. ' Mr. Jowett was a close friend of the eldest son, afterwards Professor of Chemistry here, and was on a visit to Sir Benjamin. I was weak and ill, and one night when Jowett heard I was sleepless, he came quietly into my room, sat by the bedside, and said in that small voice, once heard never to be forgotten, " You are very unwell, I will read to you " : and he read in the same voice the fourteenth chapter of St. John, and said, " I hope you will feel better," and went away, and often, often have I thought of this during Oxford controversies.' His sense of his vocation in another aspect may be illustrated by the following anecdote. When staying at a country house, amongst men of great literary reputation, when the host, then but slightly known to him, made use of some Rabelaisian expression unaware perhaps for the moment that he was entertaining a clergyman 1 See p. 109. Brodie, M.D., the first baronet, 2 Broome Park, Betchworth, who died there in 1862. Surrey, was the seat of Sir B. i8 4 o-i8 4 6] Religious Attitude 85 Jowett said quite simply, ' Mr. - , I do not think myself better than you, but I feel bound to disapprove of that remark.' This attitude was maintained consistently in later life, but with differences of method, in accordance with his increasing knowledge of men and things. At a Scotch shooting lodge, somewhere in the sixties, he insisted on going down to the smoking-room with the others at a late hour, and when the conversation of the younger men took a doubtful turn, the small voice that had been silent hitherto, was suddenly heard ' There is more dirt than wit in that story, I think.' Once again, in the eighties, when at Balliol after dinner some old companion ventured on dangerous ground, he quietly said, ' Shall we continue this conversation with the ladies ? ' and rose to go l . From this epoch also may be dated a marked ex- pansion of that cheerful helpfulness which had always characterized him, but received a new impulse from his Ordination vow. No minister of Christ ever more fully realized the precepts, 'Strengthen thy brethren,' ' Support the weak,' ' It is more blessed to give than to receive.' Many of his best thoughts on Law, Political Economy, Statesmanship, the management of an estate, the conduct of a public office, were drawn from him by his practical sympathy with friends whose position was most unlike his own, and whose opportunities, difficulties, and responsibilities he sought to understand in order to advise them better. His own work, already sufficiently heavy, was often multiplied by taking on himself the duties of others who were temporarily disabled. A letter to B. C. Brodie, written in October, 1844, shows his feeling on the subject of religion in the years following his Ordination. Brodie's scientific studies had led him 1 Cf. Benjamin Jowett, by L. A. Tollemache, p. 116. 86 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv to express opinions which to Jowett's mind savoured of materialism. : 'What appears to me to make the greatest gulph between us, is not your taking a rationalistic or mythic view of the Bible, or difficulties about miracles, or even prayer, but that you do not leave any place for religion at all, so that although you may hold the being of God as the Author of the Universe, I do not see how you would be worse off morally if Atheism were proved to demonstration. What would you lose but a little poetry, which is a very weak motive to holiness of life ? And having shut yourself out from any moral relation to God as an incentive to Duty, does this moral Atheism satisfy human nature ? ' Behind all ecclesiastical obligations, all speculative difficulties, were the realities in which he afterwards summed up the influences of religion ' the Power of God, the Love of Christ, the efficacy of Prayer 1 .' And at the centre of his religious life, both then and afterwards, was his conception of the Person of Christ, the divine image of the Father, the Elder Brother, the Sinless One, the Friend of sinners, who went about doing good ; never sparing rebuke, yet to whom all would soonest go for confession ; who called His chosen ones not servants but friends, and having loved His own, loved them, to the end. The Summer Term of 1842 seems to have been spent in Paris, where he passed much time in the great libraries, pursuing eagerly an ambitious course of study. From Paris he went to Bonn with a pupil, and made the acquaintance of Nitzsch, the great Homeric scholar. It was here that he received from A. C. Tait the news of Dr. Arnold's death. He had been greatly impressed with Arnold's inaugural lecture in the previous December, 1 Epistles of St. Paul, 3rd edition, vol. ii. p. 126. 1840-1846] Tutor of Balliol 87 and had also seen him in the Balliol Common Eoom, where he witnessed the meeting of Arnold with W. G. Ward after some passages of arms between them ] . These visits to Paris and Bonn prepared the way for his parents' residence in the Rue Madeleine from 1846 onwards, and their temporary retirement to Bonn during the disturbances of 1848. In October, 1842, soon after Tait's appointment to succeed Dr. Arnold at Rugby, Jowett became a Tutor of the College. The old Master hesitated about giving the Tutorship, vacated by Lonsdale 2 , to so young a man. But he was prevailed upon by the urgency of Wooll- combe. The standard of a College Tutor's work at Oxford had been considerably raised since the commencement of the century 3 : first by the Tutors of Oriel, amongst whom were Richard Whately 4 and J. H. Newman, and still more at Balliol by Jowett's predecessor, Archibald Campbell Tait. The following entry from Tait's private Journal 5 speaks volumes as to the ideal which he had set before him: ' Nov. 16, 1839. Memorandum. What can be done ... to make more of a pastoral connexion between the Tutors and 1 W. G. Ward and the Oxford James Lonsdale, p. 23). Movement, p. 438. s Cyril Jackson (d. 1819), who 2 Earlier in the same year preferred the Deanery of Christ Lonsdale had written to his Church to a Bishopric and did mother : ' You laugh at my pope so much to promote the Oxford Jowett, but really I know of Honours system, seems to have nobody so clever. Several here stood almost alone amongst his look upon him and Stanley as contemporaries as an educator of quite the cleverest persons here, young men. The only fault in them both is 4 Afterwards Archbishop of that they are too purely intel- Dublin. lectual, and rack their brains 5 Life of Archibald Campbell from morning to night ' (Life of Tait, 3rd ed. 1891, vol. i. p. 72. 88 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv their pupils ? What can be done for making the Tutor more fully superintend his individual pupil's reading, without mere reference to the Schools? What for reviving provisions to enable the lower classes to profit by the Universities, as they did when Servitorship existed l ? ' Jowett entered upon the task, as thus conceived, with all the freshness and ardour of youthful devotion. But some time passed before he began to reap the reward of his labours. In the years from 1841 to 1844 inclusive, Balliol was not very fortunate in the Schools. For whatever reasons, both Arthur Clough and Matthew Arnold were placed in the Second Class ; and the only Balliol Firsts of these years, in eight Class Lists, were Constantine Prichard in Michaelmas Term, 1841, and Frederick Fanshawe and Frederick Temple in Easter Term, 1842. Jowett's power as a teacher did not at once fully assert itself. His reputation in those early days rested more upon Scholarship than on Philosophy. All admired the beauty of his Latin prose, and generally the felicity and grace of his literary expression. It was only towards the end of the period now under consideration, that he commenced those lectures on the History of Philosophy which first revealed to a select number of his pupils the larger scope of his thoughts. This was probably after his return from Germany in 1844. Such men as Clough and Matthew Arnold were too conscious of their own powers to see what lay beneath their youth- ful teacher's quiet but rather peremptory manner; and in return, while dough's personality certainly impressed him, for he reverted to it in his last days on earth, it was not until long afterwards that he learned to take 1 On the position and work of see Mozley's Reminiscences, vol. i. an Oxford Tutor in 1825-1835, p. 33 if. 1840-1846] Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 89 Matthew Arnold seriously. His closer intimacy with F. Temple dates from somewhat later, when Temple had become a Junior Fellow. From the Easter Term of 1845 onwards Balliol Scholars again take First Classes, as a matter of course ; and it is at this point that Jowett's success as a College Tutor becomes established. The honours gained by James Biddell and Edwin Palmer 1 , both in 1845, mark the commencement of a fresh series of Balliol successes ; and the degree in which this was referable to Jowett may be gathered from Archdeacon Palmer's reminiscences 2 . Jowett's position amongst his colleagues appears from a recollection of Lord Lingen's, who had been elected to a Fellowship in 1841, and was present at a College meeting in 1844, when plans for the rebuilding of the College, sent in by Pugin and other architects, were under discussion. The Master (Jenkyns) had given his opinion in a knock-me-down style, and Lingen imagined that no one was likely to 'take the bull by the horns.' His surprise when the youthful Tutor began to speak was equalled by his admiration of the calm, firm, and clear manner in which Jowett expressed an opposite opinion. If this period begins with Ward, it ends with Arthur Stanley. It appears from Ward's Life 3 that while pre- paring his Ideal of a Christian Church in 1844, he had withdrawn from close habitual intercourse with the more liberal amongst his former friends. In the summer of that year Jowett joined with Stanley in a tour 1 The late Venerable Edwin to their intercourse, says, ' I am Palmer, Archdeacon of Oxford. speaking chiefly of the years 2 See p. 102. between 1840 and 1844.' 3 p. 438. Jowett, in referring 90 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv to Germany J . An entry in one of the Master's note-books, shortly after the death of the Dean of "Westminster, records the fact that at this time, more than ever before or after- wards, he poured out his whole heart to Stanley. They had already been reading Hebrew together, and Stanley mentions that in the course of the journey the travellers ' supported their weary minds by alternate reading, analyzing, and catechizing, on Kant's Pure Reason! Jowett's familiarity with German is clearly shown by his writing more than once in that language at some length to Arthur Stanley, out of mere playfulness, in 1844-6. The interest of the tour did not culminate for both companions at the same point. Not the Holy Coat at Treves nor the antiquities at Nuremberg, but the Congress of Philologers at Dresden 'one of the most uninteresting places,' says Stanley, ' that I ever saw ' made the deepest impression upon Jowett's mind. To converse with Gottfried Hermann 2 , with Lachmann, Immanuel Bekker, and Ewald, made an era in his intellectual life. It was probably here also that the two friends consulted J. E. Erdmann of Halle 3 , the Hegelian disciple, on the best manner of approaching the works of Hegel. The introductions which Stanley had brought with him, due to the friendship between Dr. Arnold and the Chevalier Bunsen, must have greatly facilitated all such intercourse. Nor is the performance of the Medea before the Philologers, presumably in Greek, to be regarded as a wholly insignificant circumstance. 1 Life of Dean Stanley, vol. i. of Nitzsch, Brandis, and Corner, pp. 326 ff. 3 Erdmann was born in 1805. 2 To Stanley from Bonn, Janu- His Geschichte der Philosophic was ary, 1849 : ' Do you know, Her- in course of publication at this mann died last week, " der frische time, and the Jubilee of his Pro- lebendige Mann " ? ' At Bonn fessorship at Halle was celebrated Jowett made the acquaintance in 1889. Z840-I846] Tour in Germany 91 In a letter to B. C. Brodie, where he sums up the impressions derived from the tour, he mentions this congress as especially memorable : ' November 5, 1844. ' I hardly know whether our tour will much interest you : it went as far as Vienna, and with some disagreeables was eminently successful. An infinite quantity of talk was one result, for which there was some excuse, as we had nothing else to do. . . . We returned by Dresden, where we saw old Hermann, who seemed to be undergoing a sort of apothe- osis at the hands of a great Philological Association who dined and feted him in every possible way. Various others, Zumpt's Latin Grammar, Thiersch's Greek Grammar, Wunder's Sophocles, Lachmann's Greek Testament, who were formerly supposed to be myths, also sprang up into life and reality.' Though Stanley was the more enthusiastic traveller, his companion appears to have had a chief part in planning the details of the tour. Stanley would have spent the whole of every day in sight-seeing, but Jowett insisted on reserving certain hours for study : he had brought the still recent Liddell and Scott amongst his luggage ; Stanley nicknamed this ' the monster grievance,' in allusion to a phrase of O'Connell's, and dubbed his friend ' the inexorable Jowett.' Although the posthumous influence of Hegel in his own country had already culminated and was beginning to decline, it was still powerful with many students of Philosophy, and had begun to exercise a wide influence upon Theology. The complete edition of his works and his Life by Rosenkranz had lately appeared, and from this visit to Germany, repeated in the following year, Jowett' s more intimate acquaintance with this special phase of German philosophy may be dated 1 . For several 1 Professor W. Wallace re- Mainz absorbed in Hegel's Preface members Jowett telling him how to the Encyclopadie. he once stood on a bridge at 92 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv years after this he remained an ardent, though still an independent, student of Hegel 1 . How critically he studied the philosophy even when most absorbed in it appears, however, from a letter to Stanley of August 20, 1846, in which he says : 'Hegel is untrue, I sometimes fancy, not in the sense of being erroneous, but practically, because it is a consciousness of truth, becoming thereby error. It is very difficult to express what I mean, for it is something which does not make me value Hegel the less as a philosophy. The problem of dX^eta TrpaKTiKTJ. Truth idealized and yet in action, he does not seem to me to have solved ; the Gospel of St. John does. Hegel seems to me, not the perfect philosophy, but the perfect self- consciousness of philosophy.' Dr. Whyte's Professorship of Moral Philosophy was vacated by Sacheverell Johnson in the autumn of 1844, and Jowett allowed his name to be sent in for the post : ' Because I feel,' he writes 2 , ' that it would suit me better than any other Chair.' He does not consider himself a serious candidate if H. H. Vaughan should stand : ' I would much sooner hear him than teach myself.' But he thinks that Vaughan' s theological opinions may possibly stand in his way. The Chair was ultimately conferred on H. GL Liddell, who held it only for a year. In the excitement which followed Newman's retirement to Littlemore and the publication of the Ideal of a Christian Church, Stanley and Jowett were intimately associated, and while the elder man took the more active part, as at this time his position in the University was much more prominent, he found no small support and help from consultation with Jowett, who in November, 1 ' One must go on or perish in any other system after you have the attempt, that is to say, give begun with this.' Letter to B. C. up Metaphysics altogether. It is Brodie, September 28, 1845. impossible to be satisfied with 2 To B. C. Brodie, October 15. 1840-1846] Degradation of Ward 93 1844, was already assisting him in the preparation of a Protest on the subject. They were together at the scene of the degradation of Ward in February, 1845 l . The events of that day have often been described, but no- where more graphically than by Dean Stanley and in the Memoir of Dean Church, who, as Junior Proctor, took a memorable part in the proceedings. The latter work contains a graphic piece of description at first hand which may be quoted here. 'Mr. Church's youngest brother, then an undergraduate at Oriel . . . had stationed himself at a window in Broad Street, in order better to view the proceedings ; and he recalls the excitement of the moment, the sight of the crowd, which still, after the procession had entered, lingered round the railings that enclose the Theatre the dull roar of the shouting which could be heard at intervals from within the building itself and at last the appearance of the assemblage streaming out through the snow, the big figure of Ward emerging among the earliest, with his papers under his arm, to be greeted with shouts and cheers, which passed into laughter as, in his hurry, he slipped and fell headlong in the snow, his papers flying in every direction 2 .' The scene within the Theatre was vividly described by Jowett in a letter to Brodie written a day or two after the great event : ' . . . The is 6 Fevrier came off last Thursday, a most tragic scene which the inclemency of the weather contributed to heighten. 1300 wild country parsons are calculated to have come up to do battle on the occasion : the Theatre was crammed ; Ward in the rostrum with Oakeley for prompter. The V. C. and Hebdomadals take their places. Ward requests leave to speak in English, which is granted ; and then began an oration containing some of the unpleasantest words to the ears of country clergy that were ever spoken. He supposed there 1 Life of Dean Stanley, vol. i. 2 Dean Church's Life and Let- p. 340. tens, p. 55. 94 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv were men of all parties present High Church, Evangelicals, &c., and compared the first with the Articles, the second with the Liturgy. Their difficulties were obvious, but neither party had the least conception of them. He then supposed the Evangelical to become High Churchman in what a new light all things would present themselves ! his view of the Articles would vary with his opinions. He himself took the Articles in a non-natural sense, as they all did, and what he wanted to show was that they were not all dishonest but all honest together. The rest of his speech was a complaint of the unfitness of the Court, and the impossibility of making any real defence before them. In conclusion, he warned them of the present state of the Church of England, which might last as a framework to hold them all, but if they pulled out a single stone would fall together. ' I cannot give you any idea of his manner. He was as much at home with his audience as he is in the C. R. 1 after dinner. He read a passage from a pamphlet of Maurice's to prove some point, which spoke of himself in a manner far from compli- mentary, interjecting " He means me, he has no very good opinion of me, "he says he would rather go to a dame's school and be a dustman than do what I have done." Another time he threw in a parenthesis " Believing as I do the whole cycle of Roman doctrine " which threw his audience into a titter by the extreme simplicity with which it was said. At the end he stood forth with prophetic voice and told us of what was to happen in "the latter days." ' The vote of censure was passed by a majority of 770 to 380. Ward again made a short speech in arrest of judgement, but he was condemned by 570 to 510. Only the drawing and quarter- ing was remitted. For the "Horrendum Carmen," a fragment preserved in the statute de dcgradatione, runs as follows : Hereticum vicecancellarius iudicet. Si ad convocatidnem provocatur Provocations certanto, Si vincent, pileum exiiito : Capiiceum, togam detrahito : Combiirito intra vel extra Universitatem. 1 The Balliol Common-room. 1840-1846] The Proctors' Veto 95 'We returned home with the feelings of men who had witnessed an execution or rather had themselves been execu- tioners at an Auto da Fe. Perhaps you will wonder at my levity in treating of the whole affair, but it is the only way I can revenge myself for having looked upon it seriously a week ago. 'The tragedy is now at an end, and the comedy or what I must call the tragi-comedy is about to begin ; but the curtain is not yet drawn up for the public. Do you remember the end of the Beggars' Opera where, after the feelings of the spectators are wrought to the highest pitch, a sort of [dramatic revolution] takes place and by poetic justice the execution is turned into a WEDDING? Between the first and second acts of the above-mentioned tragedy, letters were brought to the prisoner in his cell, written in a fair Italian hand, And whiter far than that whereon it wrote Was the fair hand that writ. ' In a word, our Confessor is going to be married. ' I do not of course blame Ward for this in itself, but I think he is very much to blame for recklessly writing a book which has thrown us into confusion and then doing precisely the thing most inconsistent with his own principles, and lastly, instead of retiring from the contest as he ought under the circumstances, he has fought it out to the last. Either he felt himself called to announce a high and important truth or his book is absolutely indefensible. A man in love is not exactly the person to breathe the spirit of Hildebrand or Innocent. I believe he has not the least conception of the ludicrous point of view which he will present to a mocking world, and am truly sorry for it for his sake.' Stanley always claimed for the little band of Oxford Liberals, including himself, Jowett,Donkin, and Greenhill, the merit of having moderated the violence of that day's proceedings, not only by the moral support they gave the Proctors (H. P. Guillemard of Trinity and E. W. Church of Oriel) in the courageous act of vetoing the condemna- tion of Tract XC, but still more by their strenuous 96 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv opposition to the proposal 'that the Vice-Chancellor should have power at any time to require a member of the University, in order to prove his orthodoxy, to sub- scribe the Articles in the sense in which they were both first published and were now imposed ' which motion was withdrawn within a few days of the meeting of Convocation, partly in consequence of an opinion of counsel which Stanley and others had obtained \ This claim on Stanley's part was admitted thirty-one years afterwards by the person most competent to speak of it, when Dean Church wrote to Dean Stanley in 1876. 'It was a very generous as well as wise action on your part and that of the men who joined with you V With what alacrity Jowett had thrown himself into this course of action, what part he took both in stimu- lating and guiding it, how he realized the full significance of the situation, especially as it affected the future of the Church of England, is made apparent by a letter to Stanley written in the Christmas vacation preceding the event, which vividly reflects both the sanguine eagerness of the writer and the persons of most account in Oxford at that critical time. It will also be observed that the chief stress is laid, not on "Ward's danger, but on the principle involved in the ' New Test.' ' It is difficult to choose out of the medley of opinions you sent me. I am glad that Liddell signs. In a sense I agree with them. all. ' I agree with Milman in thinking that the short protest might advantageously be worked up into an eloquent docu- ment, when you have felt the temper of the people who are going to sign it. Meanwhile in its prosaic form it is already printed. I should send it round in MS. to likely persons as something like the document in its poetic form which they 1 Life of Dean Stanley, vol. i. p. 335. 2 Life of Dean Church, p. 58. i8 4 o-i8 4 6] Second Tour in Germany 97 are hereafter to have. This latter it would be an appropriate compliment to Milman to ask him to assist in writing, as he seems to have ideas upon the subject. ' I think persons innumerable should be written to with respect to the Test exclusively. What Lake says is quite true Ward's case is comparatively unimportant and very unpopular. Besides the protest there are clearly only two things to be done, a shower of pamphlets to be written by all sorts of persons putting the matter in every different light also private letters to all one's old College friends, &c. Will you write to Blackett, Congreve, and Donkin, urging them to canvass against the Test immediately ; also to Tait, dropping the Wardian part of the question ? 'Could any Oxford Bishop, Longley, or Denison, be got to express his opinion on the Test before it comes on? Would it not be worth while to write to Hamilton 1 and put a view of the case before him ? Get Lake to write to Burrows and Trench and so ascend to Archdeacon Samuel 2 . . . . Write to H. Vaughan 3 . Might he not be got to write something? it ought to touch heterodox laymen to the quick. I trust we shall never have any more agitation. I suppose it to be a duty, but, as I have often said, I feel peculiarly unfit for it and, what is more, people think that I am going out of my place, which is not the case with you.' In the Long Vacation of 1845, after visiting Lake in Germany 4 , he again travelled with Stanley, whose sister joined them at Ischl. The two friends had spent some weeks together at Berlin, where Jowett observed curiously the state of Prussian politics, the King's ' idea of government being to tread in the steps of Frederick the Great and preserve Prussia as he had raised it, by 1 Afterwards Bishop of Salis- 4 A letter from E. Bastard to bury. F. T. Palgrave, July 20, 1845 2 Samuel Wilberforce became mentions that Lake was in Ger- Bishop of Oxford in 1845. many on account of health, and 3 Henry Halford Vaughan, Jowett had joined him there, afterwards Professor of Modern ' much to his comfort,' as he had History. been very solitary before. VOL. I. H 98 Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv a military despotism.' There also he had the interviews with Schelling and Neander of which he afterwards spoke. He wrote to Brodie (September 28) : ' I must say I was very much pleased with the old " twaddler" Schelling. He was exceedingly kind, and thoroughly modest and unassuming. We saw him several times, when he talked about Coleridge, who he said was unfairly attacked for plagiarism from himself in BlacJcwood's Magazim. He struck me as having more of the poet than of the philosopher about him and far more genius than strength of character. I do not know anything about his philosophy, and to judge from Schelling's face it is probably somewhat dreamy, but it was evident that there is so much party spirit that it was impossible to form a judgement of what you heard, and it is in his favour that Steffens, who was universally respected, was his follower to the last.' With reference to this tour Mrs. Vaughan (then Catherine Stanley) writes (1894): ' My sister and I went out alone to Ischl where we met him and my brother and where we remained with them a fortnight. After which, we went on our way but what that "way "was, I am ashamed to say I cannot remember. I know we went across Bohemia, and we were most anxious to get into Italy by the Stelvio ; but were prevented by my brother's inability to get up early enough to accomplish it in the only time at our disposal. He and B. J. were deep in those days in the study of Hebrew, and could hardly be persuaded to look up from their books and contemplate the beauties of the scenery through which we passed. We used to exclaim, "Oh, do look! how beautiful!" and they would hastily raise their eyes, cry out, "Yes, very fine," and as hastily return to the contemplation of their Grammar. In those days B. J. was, as I have said, the most charming friend and companion it was possible to have : never out of temper, never depressed, never looking weary or discontented always full of the most interesting subjects of conversation. He was delightful. 1 i8 4 o-i8 4 6] Hebrew Theological Essays 99 The Hebrew Grammar *, with Jowett' s name written in ink over Stanley's in pencil, and with pencilled annota- tions by B. J. (chiefly a running analysis of the Hebrew syntax), is now in the possession of Lady Lingen, to whom Jowett gave it when he had himself relinquished the study at the end of 1846, finding that to be a critical Hebrew scholar required more time than he could give. He always said that even a smattering of Hebrew was worth while : ' it gave you a new idea of language.' He was studying the Hebrew Bible in the autumn of 1846, when, according to a letter of E. Bastard to F. T. Palgrave, he had been working very hard at Hebrew : ' The day he went away from here, he was reading (as we afterwards heard) the Hebrew Bible as he went along, and ended by leaving it in the coach V Shortly before this, while working at Ewald's Hebrew Grammar, he had written to Stanley, ' I am hard at work at Hebrew and really begin to find some enjoyment in reading it.' But at the opening of 1847 he wrote, ' I find Hebrew too trying to the eyes to be pursued to any great extent, and am accordingly reading the Republic for lectures next Term.' His letters to Stanley, a few of which are appended to this chapter, make it manifest that the influence of the elder upon the younger friend was more than reciprocated. When Stanley was preparing his sermons on the Apostolic Age, Jowett was consulted at every step, and his letters reveal in a remarkable way the character and working of his own mind. He was ordained priest in 1845. Earlier in that year, he had been occupied in writing some Theological Essays; 1 Gesenius, ed. Rodiger, Leip- reading party who visited Jowett zig, 1845. and his pupil at Beaumaris, 2 Bastard was one of Riddell's August 16, 1846. H 2 ioo Life of Benjamin Jowett [CHAP, iv and in 1846 his systematic study of the New Testament was stimulated by an idea which Stanley had suggested to him, that he should contribute a series of Essays to the volume which his friend was preparing for the press. This particular design was not carried out, as Jowett ultimately declined to publish in this way ; but it was agreed that they should produce a joint work in Theology at some future time. Meanwhile, in what he afterwards called their 'furious' correspondence he communicates his anxious thoughts on New Testament criticism. Stanley, in his Life of Dr. Arnold (1844), had laid special stress on the importance which his master at- tached to the critical study of Theology, and his intention of setting on foot a ' Rugby Edition ' of St. Paul's Epistles under his own superintendence 1 . There can be no reasonable doubt that the work now undertaken had some reference to this unfulfilled design of the great Head Master. In one of their afternoon walks, the two friends were caught in a heavy shower of rain and driven to take refuge in a quarry. It was under these circum- stances, as Jowett afterwards told W. L. Newman, that in eager conversation the plan of the work was sketched in outline. Nine years elapsed before the publication in part of what was then projected. The plan was more than once modified after its main outlines had been agreed upon, and at one time it was enlarged to a scheme for a complete work on the New Testament. In a letter of 1846, Jowett writes to Stanley : 'I have been thinking a good deal about our Opus Magnum, and trust that by God's blessing we may be able to bring it to some result. I propose to divide it into two portions, (a) the Gospels, and (6) the Acts and Epistles, to be preceded respec- tively by two long prefaces, the first containing the hypothesis 1 Arnold's Life and Correspondence, p. 163 of sixth edition. 1840-1846] Jozvett and Stanley IOT of the Gospels, and a theory of inspiration to be deduced from it; the second to contain the "subjective mind' 5 of the Apo- stolic age, liistoriscli-psychologiscli dargestellt. I think it should also contain essays on such subjects as "eschatology," "the demoniacs," &c., which cannot be properly effigiated in notes.' In the autumn of 1846 he had a vision of a ' flight to Ireland with Stanley, to examine into the constitution and Revenues of Trinity College, &c.,' which was broken off by some change in Stanley's plans. The letters to Stanley belonging to this period which are preserved are very numerous, and they dwell on many points of merely temporary interest. But those not here included contain some morsels which it would be a pity to lose : as this on self- improvement (1846) : 'Can any summary rule be given more than this, every day and every hour to frame yourself with a view to getting over a weakness ? How a person does this can only be learnt from experience, not, I think, to be intruded on by others. But the line you quote in the Preface to Arnold's Life, "That moveth all together if it move at all V' seems to me ever to be borne in mind in all these things. If a defect be anything more than a trick, character is too elastic to admit of any mechanical contrivance for getting rid of it.' Or again this passing remark on the words 'I, if I be lifted up from the earth,' ' Does it not seem as if the Crucifixion and the glory of Christ were absolutely identical in St. John's Gospel ? ' From another letter (December, 1846) it appears how much he built on having Stanley at his side in Oxford : ' I am delighted to think that you are committed to Oxford, as you say : . . . KaTa