Benjamin Jowett

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Benjamin Jowett (modern version), a scholar and administrative reformer at Oxford University, was known as a respected tutor and scholar of Plato and Thucydides.

He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Early life

Jowett was born in Camberwell, London, as the third of nine children. His father was a furrier from a Yorkshire family who, for three generations, had been supporters of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, as well as the author of a metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms. Isabella Langhorne (1790–1869) was related to John Langhorne, the poet and translator of Plutarch. Jowett was hired on the foundation of St Paul's School (then in St Paul's Churchyard), where he quickly established himself as a precocious classical scholar. He was given an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he remained for the remainder of his life at the age of 18. He began his studies in 1836 and was quickly recognized as one of the top Oxford don's of his time, earning a Fellow as an undergraduate in 1838; he graduated with first-class distinctions in 1839. This was at the beginning of the Oxford Tractarian movement: he was drawn for a period in the direction of High Anglicanism through W. G. Ward's friendship, but the Arnold school, represented by A. P. Stanley, had a bigger and more lasting influence. Jowett was forced to move from High Table at college to Broad Street lodgings because of the scandal.

Later life and death

The vice-chancellorship's exhausting labours were followed by sickness (1887), but he had lost the chance of releasing any innovative fiction after this. His literary career was confined to a commentary on Plato's Republic and some Aristotle papers, which were supposed to appear in a companion volume to the Politics' translation. The essays that should have accompanied Thucydides' translation were never published. Jowett, a poet who never married, died in Oxford on October 1st 1893. The funeral was one of the most memorable in the city ever seen. The pall-bearers were seven heads of colleges and the Provost of Eton, all old students.

Jowett, theologian, tutor, and renowned Master of an Oxford college, was among the earliest representatives of a new generation's memory of his as a moral scholar. Many of the day's most popular Englishmen were his children, and they owe a great deal to his precept and example, his zealous rejection, and his unwearying friendship. Rarely have high aspirations been pursued so faithfully in the face of a lack of practical capabilities. "Dear (tho perfidious) Professor) Jowett's scholarly career was transitional; yet there is a touch of permanence in Plato; "Mr Jowett turned as much of his genius into Plato as Plato did into Mr Jowett." Florence Nightingale on her old friend.

"One of those deeply religious men who are being updated and branded in question, who are being asked to bring new life to theology by wider and more humane theories," a commentator said. He had been a zealous student of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel in earlier life, but he never stopped to foster the philosophic spirit, and instead sought to translate philosophy into life's wisdom. His scorn of littleness led him occasionally to minutiae neglect, but interpreting theories had the greatest benefit. He was referred to as a hero in the Balliol rhyme:

Jowett is buried in St Sepulchre's Cemetery off the main road in Oxford, off Walton Street.

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Oxford career

Jowett was appointed to the Regius Professorship of Greek in autumn 1855. He had been a tutor of Balliol and an Anglican cleric since 1842 and had devoted himself to the work of tuition: his pupils became his friends for life. He discerned their capabilities and taught them to know themselves. This made him a reputation as "the great tutor".

A great disappointment, his repulse for the mastership of Balliol, also in 1854, appears to have roused him into the completion of his book on The Epistles of St Paul. This work, described by one of his friends as "a miracle of boldness", is full of originality and suggestiveness, but its publication awakened against him a storm of theological opposition from the Orthodox Evangelicals, which followed him more or less through life. Instead of yielding to this, he joined with Henry Bristow Wilson and Rowland Williams, who had been similarly attacked, in the production of the volume known as Essays and Reviews. This appeared in 1860 and gave rise to a strong outbreak of criticism. Jowett's loyalty to those who were prosecuted on this account was no less characteristic than his persistent silence while the augmentation of his salary as Greek professor was withheld. This persecution was continued until 1865, when E. A. Freeman and Charles Elton discovered by historical research that a breach of the conditions of the professorship had occurred, and Christ Church, Oxford, raised the endowment from £40 a year to £500. Jowett was one of the recipients of Nightingale's three volume work Suggestions for Thought for proof-reading and criticism. In the third volume of Essays and Reviews he contributed On the Interpretation of Scripture in which he attempted to reconcile her assertion that religion was law and could be unified with science. Her radical thoughts on women's place in the home, and his departure from liberal Anglican theology helped to block for a decade his career advancement to the Mastership of Balliol. By 1860, he was already Regius Professor of Greek and a Fellow of Balliol, but an increase in his stipend was withheld. While the work gained fulsome praise from philosopher-politician John Stuart Mill, it profoundly shook the more traditional establishment's fervent belief that the working-classes would continue to worship in parish churches. Recognition that this was no longer so, was just one of the theological departures. In October 1862 he was invited to Oak Hill Park to offer Florence the sacrament. Accepting the prospect with relish, he nonetheless consulted with Archbishop Tait for permission. Many of his letters to her and Mrs Bracebridge have survived; their religion was tinged with a mutual respect for their shared common interests and intellectual gifts. Also included is an unflattering description of a middle-aged man.

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