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

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Lzfe of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. VIII

for the Registrarship of the University. To Lonsdale he
gives unstinted help and sympathy. His friendship with
Stanley is the closest possible; with Temple he is on an
intimate and affectionate footing, and when his friend
goes to London and engages in practical work, urges
upon Lingen the advisability of procuring for him
a higher salary. He is pressing forward every man's
interest except his own. When he goes with the
Lingens to see a review of the troops at Chobham,
they meet Bishop Wilberforce, who is on horseback,
while they are on foot. He greets them cheerfully, with
a jesting remark on the Church Militant.
In London the Oxford Tutor is respected and esteemed
by public men, such as Macaulay, and he is a contributor
to Dr. William Smith's Dictionaries of Antiquities and
of Classical Biography, in which the first scholars of
the country took part from 1842 to 1849. On the whole
he is swimming with the stream'. But a time was
approaching when these waters were to be troubled, and
his powers as a 'strong swimmer' would be put to the
test.
After the death of the old Master, Jowett seems for
a time to have looked upon the succession to the vacant
office as an open question, in which he had no immediate
concern. A letter of his to James Lonsdale-in which
he tries to rouse his friend's dormant ambition by saying,
'Perhaps you may be our new Master; who knows?
It would be a great happiness to me if you are 2 '-is
sufficient evidence of this. But in the course of a few
weeks, he found enough of favour amongst his colleagues
' Lord Lingen says (I895): 'Up its light over his presence among
to I855, his life was one of growing his friends.'
honour and success, which shed 2 Life of James Lonsdae, p. 45.