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

252

Lzfe of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. VIII

Mr. Jowett's dated 'The Norton, Tenby, October 9,'
is curiously significant:'Benjamin has just spent five days with us, but he has been
so taciturn that I think everything he has said might have been
said perhaps in five minutes. He is certainly much occupied,
but this need not prevent him from unbending a little. I had
for my portion one brief question on business, and the monosyllable " No," in answer to a question. I am happy to say that
he appears to be carefully revising his work, which certainly
needed it.'
Yet the old man was keenly alive to any shadow
of outward success. Towards the end of 1857 an attempt
was made to have Jowett elected as a representative of
the Professoriate on the new Hebdomadal Council. He
was not elected, but the minority was a strong one, and
he was touched and moved by the expression of sympathy.
When Henry Smith and others went to see him on the
declaration of the result: 'My old pupils! My old
pupils!' in a voice broken with emotion, was all that he
was able to say.
On this subject Mr. Jowett wrote to his son Alfred in
India:'The contest was creditable for your brother, though not
successful. Macbride had sixty-four votes, Benjamin sixty-one.
At one part of the day Benjamin, by the newspapers, was
likely to get in,'
This was the year of the Indian Mutiny, and there
was naturally much anxiety on Alfred's account. Though
not in immediate danger, he was constantly transferred
from station to station, and was liable to much harassing
overwork. His death in i858 was a blow from which
the father never recovered.
1 He was also really much in- St. Paul, and copied out long
terested in his son's book on passages of it for Alfred's benefit