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

William George Ward

73

rambles;-accepting lifts from bagmen, stopping at wayside inns, visiting Cathedral towns, and conversing with
all and sundry as occasion served him. His familiar
knowledge of English topography often surprised those
who had only known him in the retirement of his study.
Meanwhile in his own case that 'other work of
education1' of which he wrote in i860 had begun. This
may be roughly dated from the completion of his Latin
Essay, which won the Chancellor's Prize in the spring of
1841. Stanley's efforts in favour of a large toleration had
his entire sympathy, and their intercourse, even in the
earlier years of Jowett's Fellowship, was pretty constant.
But a more intense albeit temporary influence was
working within the walls of Balliol. The strange and
powerful individuality of William George Ward had
not yet taken its final bent, and the communication
of his questionings and mental struggles in many
a dialectic argument produced a strong effect upon
young Jowett's mind. To Ward more than to any
other man he probably owed his first initiation into metaphysical inquiry. It is true that the Scotchmen,
especially John Campbell Shairp2, brought with them
some Kantian enthusiasm, and that the prose writings
of S. T. Coleridge were already attracting attention in
Oxford; but the fervid and incessant talk of a senior

1 'As he grows older he mixes
more and more with others; first
with one or two who have great
influence in the direction of
his mind. At length the world
opens upon him; another work
of education begins; and he
learns to discern more truly the
meaning of things and his relation to men in general.' —' Essay
on Interpretation,' Epistles of

St. Paul, 3rd edition, vol. ii.
P. 57.
2 Principal Shairp used to tell
how he had brought with him
from Glasgow a copy of Kant's
Metaphysic of Ethic (probably in
Semple's translation) and lent it
to Jowett, who afterwards went
stamping about the quadrangle,
as if to assure himself that the
solid earth was beneath his feet.