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

1817-1836]

St. Paul's

4I

at St. Paul's School, and I saw nothing more of him till he came
into residence at Balliol.'
When in December, 1835, he returned to London,
bringing with him the 'blue ribbon' of Oxford, an
honour which no Pauline had at that time won, young
Jowett at St. Paul's was a distinguished figure. There
are contemporaries who still remember how, after his
return, he used to be assailed from all sides whenever
he passed among the younger boys in school, with cries
of 'Give us a construe,' a request with which he complied as far as he could 1. Now also he must have taken
a leading place in the little debating society to which
he belonged, and which met somewhere about St. Paul's
Churchyard 2
The school was under the shadow of the great cathedral,
and one lasting impression, which may be with confidence referred to this early period, was his love of
classical architecture, and in particular his reverence for
Sir Christopher Wren 3. Nothing delighted him more in
after years than to take his guests to the Library of All
Souls, Oxford, and to go over with them the various

1 G. R. Kingdon, S.J., in The
Pauline, I884: 'The eighth were
supposedto have so many books in
use that their ownlockers were not
enough for them. Consequently
they were allowed the use of the
unoccupied ones on the bottom
bench of some of the lower forms.
I remember when I was in the
second, the boys on the bench
just above the bottom used to take
advantage of a monitor's coming
down to his locker, and coax him
to translate a lesson for them.
I can almost hear myself now,
when stooping under the desk

I would urge my petition: " I say
Jowett, give us a con., there's a
good fellow!" Jowett was captain
at the time. He was always too
good-natured to refuse, and with
his locker open would translate
Valpy's Delectus for me "straight
off," to my great satisfaction.'
2 He is also said to have spent
much time over difficult games of
chess.
8 He once heard Sydney Smith
preach in St. Paul's. See Benjamin Jowett, by L. A. Tollemache,
p. 14.