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

I2

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 observations of the Rev. 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 spiritless. The salt had lost its savour-and the religious
"movement," as it has been called, was nearly spent 1.'
Benjamin Jowett, I788-I859.
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.'