The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

84

Life of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. IV

A sentence in the letter from Bonn, June 28, 1842 1,
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 manifested 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 I844 at the country house of
Sir Benjamin Brodie (Betchworth, Surrey2), 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 clergyman1 See p. iog. Brodie, M.D., the first baronet,
2 Broome Park, Betchworth, who died there in i862.
Surrey, was the seat of Sir B.