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

296

Life of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. X

insert into the volume a few passages sufficiently questionable
in their tendency to call down his diocesan, and his little
ones will be fed. Is any would-be popular preacher languishing under a sense of neglected talent? Let him spice high
with heterodoxy, and he is a famous man.'
Such words, in looking back upon them, only provoke
a smile; but they caused some anger at the time; not in
Jowett himself, who attributed them to 'a fit of indigestion' on the part of the writer, but in his friend Charles
Bowen2, who withdrew from the staff of the Saturday
Review in consequence of them. Yet the writer of the
first article made an important admission: 'The book
has a conservative as well as a destructive side, which it
is not fair or wise to overlook.' Had this conservative
purpose been carefully weighed by those ecclesiastics, who,
like Dean Church, were not unaware of the difficulties
involved, the Church might have profited by a controversy, which, as it was, had only a desolating effect 3.
I mean for the time. For that the joint endeavour
of the seven Essayists was fruitless, it is idle to affirm 4.
To say that they formed no party is wholly to mis

1 Saturday Review, March 23,
I86i.
2 The late Lord Bowen.
' The Spectator of those days
formed an honourable exception
to the spirit of panic which had
seized on the periodical press.
In reviewing the Essays on April
7, i860 ('Open Teaching in the
Church of England'), it spoke of
the book as a 'splendid example
of sincerity, of courage and truthfulness in action'; and the writer
of an article on May 25, i86i,
pleaded against legal measures as
unwise: 'Opendiscussionisbetter

than secret propagandism. Free
speech, indeed, is not truth; but
it is the condition of securing
truth.'
4 Cf. Lecky's Democracy and
Liberty, vol. i. p. 425: 'The first
very marked change in this respect followed, I think, the publication in i86o of the Essays and
Reviews; and the effect of this
book in making the religious
questions which it discussed familiar to the great body of educated men was probably by far
the most important of its consequences.'