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

396

Life of Benjamin Jowelt

[CHAP. XI[

pressed upon him the expediency of remitting somewhat
the intensity of his continuous labour. 'I perceive,' he
wrote, 'that you will keep me living and thinking to
the utmost of my power. And I am very glad to have
a friend who can help me to do this. Twenty years
of life probably remain to both of us, and how much
might be done in that time, with the experience that we
already have and the increasing influence that time gives.'
He yielded to his friend's advice in promising to cease
from study always at midnight; and when this did
not prove sufficient, he cut down his work for a time
to three hours a day. Writing from Alderley Edge in
March, 1867, he says:'I am not going to work hard, but only three hours a day,
and never more than an hour at a time, or after eleven o'clock
at night. I think that you are partly right and have done me
a great service.'
'But I mean to do more in three hours than I used to
do in six,' he said to me. He had given similar advice
to pupils who suffered from overwork, as early as I853.
'I owe him,' says one, ' what I consider the most valuable
piece of practical advice which I ever received: to limit
my reading to five hours a day, including lectures, but
always to read with concentrated attention 1.'
This change in his habits was on the whole maintained,
although the late hours were after a while replaced by
an hour or more every morning before breakfast. In
the course of I867 he hit upon another plan for easing
his labours. His College servant, Knight, had a son,
Matthew 2, now aged fourteen, to whose education Jowett
had given attention personally: making him repeat the
Latin Grammar and lines of Virgil at odd times (for
example, while his dinner, brought from the kitchen half
1 Cf. p. 203. 2 See vol. ii. p. 3, &c.