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

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Lzfe of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. XII

which he had been subjected, and the effort involved
in acting as if they were not, had given to his mental
constitution the touch of iron. To be independent of
all persons, never to worry, to listen more to what
his enemies said of him than to his friends, to find
a modus vivendi with everybody, and above all 'never
quarrel 2, were among the rules which he laid down for
himself. He perceived that he had resented some things
too keenly, and that his opinions of persons and their
acts had been too much influenced by his own feelings;
also that he had been too free and open in criticizing
persons to one another 3.
In looking round on his acquaintance he had been
amazed to think of the amount of promise and capability
which they had shown in youth, compared with the
inadequacy of their performances, whether the failure
arose from mistaking their career or from the fatal indul

1 What did his enemies say?
I may be permitted here to quote
an advocatus diaboli who shall be
nameless: 'With a singleness of
mind which is more than merely
Christian, he has an element of
bitterness, which nothing but his
solitary character can have prevented him from struggling
against and which makes it notoriously difficult for most of his
equals in age to get on with him.
With all his goodness he is a
tyrant and careless of giving pain,
or rather can't help giving it.'
2 This was a piece of advice
which Jeune, when Master of
Pembroke, had been in the habit
of giving to undergraduates. A
young relative who had been
pushing his fortunes abroad was

entertained by Jowett on his
return. In giving an account of
his proceedings he happened to
say, 'When a man insults me, I
always ask him to dinner.' Jowett
burst into loud laughter and,
rubbing his hands, exclaimed,
'You'll do, my dear boy, you will
do!'
s The motive of this 'defect of
his quality' appears in an early
letter to Stanley: 'Here I am at
my old trade, Detraction! I think
the greatest evil of the present
day insincerity, half moral, half
intellectual.' His later feeling
was, 'I want to know people as
they are, but to have expressed
my thoughts about them sometimes makes me helpless in dealing with them.'