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

I850-I854]

The Old Master

2I5

how early Jowett had conceived the idea which was realized
in the establishment of the Balliol Recreation Ground. This
search must have taken place in I85I or I852.'
The Public Examinership, which came to him in I849,
and was renewed under the changed Statute in 1851,
compelled him to relinquish the Bursarship for a while.
This was another serious interruption to study; although
the burden of the Examination was less heavy then than it
is now. Jowett felt the responsibility of reorganizing the
Final Examination in Classics, especially in the direction of
encouraging the study of Plato, the History of Philosophy,
and the illustration of Ancient Philosophy by Modern.
On March 6, I854, the old Master died, and was
buried at Wells, of which he had held the Deanery
since I845. He was one of those men whom, when
placed in authority, their juniors at once like, and
laugh at. In his reminiscences of Ward, Jowett has
given a vivid picture of his eccentric predecessor1:'He was a gentleman of the old school, in whom were
represented old manners, old traditions, old prejudices; a Tory
and a Churchman, high and dry, without much literature,
but having a good deal of character. He filled a great space
in the eyes of the undergraduates. "His young men," as
he termed them, speaking in an accent which we all remember,
were never tired of mimicking his voice, drawing his portrait,
and inventing stories about what he said and did.... His
sermon on the "Sin that doth so easily beset us," by which,
as he said in emphatic and almost acrid tones, he meant "the
habit of contracting debts," will never be forgotten by those
who heard it. Nor, indeed, have I ever seen a whole congregation dissolved in laughter for several minutes except on that
remarkable occasion. The ridiculousness of the effect was
heightened by the old-fashioned pronunciation of certain words,
such as "rayther," "wounded," (which he pronounced like
"wow" in "bow-wow ").... It was sometimes doubted
1 W. G. Ward, 8fC., p. 440 ff.