“Give me the pen.”

His essay on The Interpretation of Scripture, which came out in 1860 in the famous volume, Essays and Reviews, increased the cry of heterodoxy against him; and the Canons of Christ Church, including Dr. Pusey, persisted in withholding from him an extra salary, without which the endowment of the Greek Chair was worth L40.  This scandal was not removed till 1864, after he had been excluded from the university pulpit.  He continued working hard at his translation of the whole of Plato; he had already published notes on the Republic and analyses of the dialogue.  This took up all his time till 1878, when he became Master of Balliol.

The worst of the Essays and Reviews controversy was that it did an injustice to Jowett’s reputation.  For years people thought that he was a great heresiarch presiding over a college of infidels and heretics.  His impeached article on The Interpretation of Scripture might to-day be published by any clergyman.  His crime lay in saying that the Bible should be criticised like other books.

In his introduction to the Republic of Plato he expresses the same thought: 

A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the question whether his religion was an historical fact. ...Men only began to suspect that the narratives of Homer and Hesiod were fictions when they recognised them to be immoral.  And so in all religions:  the consideration of their morality comes first, afterwards the truth of the documents in which they are recorded, or of the events, natural or supernatural, which are told of them.  But in modern times, and in Protestant countries perhaps more than Catholic, we have been too much inclined to identify the historical with the moral; and some have refused to believe in religion at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was discerned in every part of the record.  The facts of an ancient or religious history are amongst the most important of all facts, but they are frequently uncertain, and we only learn the true lesson which is to be gathered from them when we place ourselves above them.

Some one writes in the Literary Supplement of the Times to-day, 11th December, 1919: 

“An almost animal indifference to mental refinement characterises our great public.”

This is quite true, and presumably was true in Jowett’s day, not only of the great public but of the Established Church.

Catherine Marsh, the author of The Life of Hedley Vicars, wrote to Jowett assuring him of her complete belief in the sincerity of his religious views and expressing indignation that he should have had to sign the thirty-nine Articles again.  I give his reply.  The postscript is characteristic of his kindliness, gentle temper and practical wisdom.

March 16th, 1864.  Dear madam,

Accept my best thanks for your kind letter, and for the books you have been so good as to send me.