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

CHAPTER XII

REFORMS AT BALLIOL. I865-1870
(Aet. 48-53)
IMPROVED circumstances-Reforms in Balliol and the University - Effects of experience - Characteristics - Speculation and
action-Health impaired-Mr. Robert Lowe-The poet BrowningMeeting with Mr. Gladstone-Death of his mother-Second series
of Essays and Reviews-Why never completed-Scott made Dean of
Rochester-The Mastership in view.
'pROSPERITY is the blessing of the Old Testament,
adversity of the New. Still that Old Testament
blessing would do a great deal of good to some of us.'
So Jowett had written to Mrs. Tennyson in November,
i861. A portion of 'that Old Testament blessing' was
now his. And as good fortune, like bad, sometimes comes
'not single,' the grant of the salary was shortly followed
by his becoming the owner of the small estate in the
West Riding of Yorkshire which derived to him from
his grandmother's familyl. To a friend meeting him
in the north of England about this time he said,
'I am going to look after my estate; you did not
know that I was a landed proprietor!' Years passed,
however, before the settlement of certain legal complications enabled him to enter fully into his inheritance,
and, by realizing, to shake off that burden. The estate
(at Birstwith and Telliscliffe, in the forest of Knaresborough) was finally sold for about ~5,500.
1 See p. 9.