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

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Life of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. V

him during vacation, he would constantly devote some weeks
of the Long to study in some pleasant place, with any
undergraduate he had noticed as of promise, though disposed
not to make the most of himself. These efforts, of course,
were not always enduringly successful. Yet there must be,
or have been, not a few, perhaps, who could look back to
these vacations as forming, more or less, a critical moment in
their lives, a "choice of Hercules." This, indeed, throughout
his own life was (it has always seemed to me) one of the
most admirable points in his character. The kind counselwise, if not always applicable-to work while yet it was day,
to do all that a man could-a doctrine wherein he may
have been encouraged by Dr. Johnson's example-friends
old and young never failed to receive from him at all times
and seasons. Onfe might sometimes have been tempted to
pray that his precious balms might not break one's head, if
the clear candour, good sense, and deep affectionate interest,
of the adviser had not been always obvious. Even Tennyson,
between whom and the Master there was equal love and
reverence for some forty years, although he surely had done
a complete man's work, Jowett would still urge, after the
Idylls had appeared, to attempt some new and greater song.
Let us now whisper " Requiescant in pace."'
Jowett's stay at Oban with Morier, in 1848, unlike
some tutorial engagements in previous years, was a purely
voluntary arrangement on both sides. They had been
together at Paris in the previous spring, witnessing scenes
of revolution, and their life-long friendship was already
begun. They were again together in the Long Vacation
of I849, occupying a farm-house at Grange in Borrowdale; but the season was unpropitious, and Jowett began
to lose faith in the refreshing qualities of the Lake
country in comparison with Scotland. Accordingly, in
August, I850, he returned to Oban, this time with a party
of four, comprising Arthur Peel 1, T. Fremantle 2, Henry

1 Lord Peel.

2 Lord Cottesloe.