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

Letters, 1865-1870

42I

again till January 15, and feel as unwilling to work as any
negro.
Now I am putting your doctrines into practice, you must
occasionally enforce them by your own example, or I shall
relapse. I am changing my views of life and begin to think
that rest and recreation are really required if I am to last for
twenty years longer. And I mean to get younger as I get
older, even sans hair, sans teeth, and, what is worse, sans
memory, and sans everything. And I am hoping that ten
years hence, according to your advice, I shall succeed in
making myself disagreeable to somebody. Will you adopt my
view?.
The worst of planning anything for Gorgias is that the
execution, even if he could be got to take it up, requires not
more ability, but more policy, more reticence and management
of mankind, than he seems to be capable of. He is the quickest,
the clearest, the ablest, and one of the most public-spirited men
(really) whom I have ever known, but he wants to do everything by force. He is the only man that I see who would
fearlessly attempt great administrative reforms. But when
he came to have a whole profession, the Army, Church, arrayed
against him, and he came to be deserted by his colleagues, he
would be likely to sink under the load of unpopularity.
I trust that you never allow yourself to doubt that you can
still complete your life (lives, like pictures, lose more than
half their value by being unfinished), and that in the greatest
suffering you are in the hands of God, who has thus far made
you His instrument.
To DR. GREENHILL, AT HASTINGS.
BALLIOL COLLEGE, April 3, [I867].
MY DEAR GREENHILL,
It may be, as you say, that in what remains of life we
shall not see much of one another. For our work has to be
done in different places, and probably we have got to look
at many things in very different ways. But I shall always
remember with pleasure and gratitude that old kindness of
thirty years ago. I have since found the blessing and the good