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

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Shyness and Reserve

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ever approached him in the depth and extent of his pastoral
supervision, if I may so call it, of young thinkers; and it
may truly be said that in his pupil-room, thirty, forty, and
fifty years ago, were disciplined many of the minds which are
now exercising a wide influence over the nation.'
Even amongst the Balliol undergraduates, however,
Jowett was not universally popular. He had no false
dignity, but he had an adequate sense of his position',
and his native shyness had not worn off. His long
silences were felt as an awkward bar to conversation
by those who did not understand that he himself was
hardly aware of them, as the intervals were filled with
active thought. He was apt to disclaim this when taxed
with it, and to declare that he was thinking of nothing 2,
but the fact was often proved by the pregnancy of the
few words that followed the silence. It seemed as if the
thought had to make a long circuit through his capacious
brain before the result, brief, terse, and pointed, was evolved 3.
To interrupt this silent process by starting a fresh
topic was often to provoke a snub. This was partly due,
as a friend remarks, 'to his absorption in his work, but
also to a natural shyness and aversion to the commonplaces
of society. As he never made an unmeaning remark himself, he was impatient of unmeaning remarks from others.'
In an early letter to Stanley he speaks of the.
'idiosyncrasy' which led to these awkward silences:
'Cromer is such an immense distance that it rather appals
He was said to have rebuked was so perfectly expressed as to
Riddell for being too familiar seem final. This made the give
with the undergraduates. and take of conversation difficult.
2 Life of J. A. Symonds, vol. i. He seemed to be holding up an
p. 227. ideal, but one could not breathe
3 A shrewd observer remarked freely in that high air. It was
long afterwards on his conversa- true elevation however, and not
tion at high table: 'Everything the donnishness of an academihe said had an edge on it; and cal poseur.'