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

30

Lzfe of Benjamin Jowett

LCHAP. II

up for the removal to Liverpool1. In the years which
followed it is unlikely that the boy owed much to
any one except his mother. No doubt there were visits
to his uncle Henry Langhorne at Mitcham, whose good
looks he was supposed to inherit, and to the Courthopes'
house at Blackheath Hill. There he was seen by some
who long remembered it, 'a bright and merry child,
running about on Blackheath Common.' An early recollection, which came back to him in his last years, although
of trivial import, may be touched in passing. He remembered that when a child, he had been made to
stand upon the table after dinner and to repeat poetry
for the entertainment of the guests. At Mitcham, as
the years went on, he also received some of his
earlier lessons in Latin and Greek from the tutor who
was employed in teaching his cousins. Miss Langhorne (H. Langhorne's daughter) writes: 'He was a
pale, delicate-looking boy, of unusual mental precocity,
and he learned for a while with my brothers' tutor,
Mr. Richardson. I have heard them say that they had
no chance against him in their Greek lessons.' At
other times it is said that his father used to instruct
him 2. The visits to Blackheath Hill were of a more
holiday kind; but sometimes, while the other children
were at play, young Benjamin would be stretched upon
the hearth-rug with Pope's Homer or a volume of Rollin's
Ancient History.
If there were bright memories associated with those
early playmates, there were also sad ones. Four of the
Courthope cousins, Jane, Fanny, Emma, and Harriet,
died before reaching the age of twenty-five. Emma
1 9. hithe, who told it to her grandson,
2 The authority for this is Mrs. the Rev. R. B. Gardiner, now a
Thomas Courthope, of Rother- master at St. Paul's School.