I certainly hope (though conscious of how little I am able to do) that I shall devote my life to the service of God, and of the youths of Oxford, whom I desire to regard as a trust which He has given me.  But I am afraid, if I may judge from the tenour of your letter, that I should not express myself altogether as you do on religious subjects.  Perhaps the difference may be more than one of words.  I will not, therefore, enter further into the grave question suggested by you, except to say that I am sure I shall be the better for your kind wishes and reading your books.

The recent matter of Oxford is of no real consequence, and is not worth speaking about, though I am very grately to you and others for feeling “indignant” at the refusal.

With sincere respect for your labours, Believe me, dear Madam,

Most truly yours,

B. Jowett.

P.S.—­I have read your letter again!  I think that I ought to tell you that, unless you had been a complete stranger, you would not have had so good an opinion of me.  I feel the kindness of your letter, but at the same time, if I believed what you say of me, I should soon become a “very complete rascal.”  Any letter like yours, which is written with such earnestness, and in a time of illness, is a serious call to think about religion.  I do not intend to neglect this because I am not inclined to use the same language.

When Jowett became Master, his pupils and friends gathered round him and overcame the Church chatter.  He was the hardest-working tutor, Vice-Chancellor and Master that Oxford ever had.  Balliol, under his regime, grew in numbers and produced more scholars, more thinkers and more political men of note than any other college in the university.  He had authority and a unique prestige.  It was said of Dr. Whewell of Trinity that “knowledge was his forte and omniscience his foible”; the same might have been said of the Master and was expressed in a college epigram, written by an undergraduate.  After Jowett’s death I cut the following from an Oxford magazine: 

The author of a famous and often misquoted verse upon Professor Jowett has written me a note upon his lines which may be appropriately inserted here.  “Several versions,” he writes, “have appeared lately, and my vanity does not consider them improvements.  The lines were written: 

    ’First come I, my name is Jowett,
    There’s no knowledge but I know it. 
    I am Master of this College,
    What I don’t know—­is not knowledge.’

“The ‘First come I’ referred to its being a masque of the College in which fellows, scholars, etc., appeared in order.  The short, disconnected sentences were intentional, as being characteristic.  Such a line as ‘All that can be known I know it’ (which some newspapers substituted for line 2) would express a rather vulgar, Whewellian foible of omniscience, which was quite foreign to the Master’s