If ever there was a beneficent despotism, it was Jowett's rule as master. Since 1866 his authority in Balliol had been really paramount, and various reforms in college had been due to his initiative. The opposing minority were now powerless, and the younger fellows who had been his pupils were more inclined to follow him than others would have been. There was no obstacle to the continued exercise of his firm and reasonable will. He still knew the undergraduates individually, and watched their pro gress with a vigilant eye. His influence in the university was less assured. The pulpit of St. Mary's was no longer closed to him, but the success of Balliol in the schools gave rise to jealousy in other colleges, and old prejudices did not suddenly give way ; while a new movement in favour of "the endowment of research" ran counter to his immediate purposes. Meanwhile, the tutorships in other colleges, and some of the headships also, were being filled with Balliol men, and Jowett's former pupils were promi nent in both houses of parliament and at the bar. He continued the practice, which he had commenced in 1848, of taking with him a small party of undergraduates in vacation time, and work ing with them in one of his favourite haunts, at Askrigg in Wensleydale, or Tummel Bridge, or later at West Malvern. The new hall (1876), the organ there, entirely his gift (1885) and the cricket ground (1889), remain as external monuments of the master's activity. Neither business nor the many claims of friend ship interrupted literary work. The six or seven weeks of the long vacation, during which he had pupils with him, were mainly employed in writing. The translation of Aristotle's Politics, the revision of Plato, and, above all, the translation of Thucydides many times revised, occupied several years. The edition of the
Republic, undertaken in 1856, remained unfinished, but was con tinued with the help of Lewis Campbell.
In 1882 Jowett accepted the vice-chancellorship of the uni versity, in the hope of securing various reforms. The exhausting labours of the vice-chancellorship were followed by an illness (1887) ; and after this he relinquished the hope of producing any great original writing, contenting himself with his commentary on the Republic of Plato, and some essays on Aristotle which were to have formed a companion volume to the translation of the Politics. Jowett died on Oct. 1,1893.
Theologian, tutor, university reformer, a great master of a college, Jowett's best claim to the remembrance of succeeding generations was his greatness as a moral teacher. Many of the most prominent Englishmen of the day were his pupils, and owed much of what they were to his precept and example, his penetrative sympathy, his insistent criticism, and his unwearying friendship. Seldom have ideal aims been so steadily pursued with so clear a recognition of practical limitations. Jowett's theological work was transitional, and yet has an element of permanence. In earlier life he had been a zealous student of Kant and Hegel, and to the end he never ceased to cultivate the philosophic spirit ; but he had little confidence in metaphysical systems, and sought rather to translate philosophy into the wisdom of life. His place in literature rests really on the essays in his Plato.
See The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, by E. A. Abbott and Lewis Campbell (1897) ; Benjamin Jowett, by Lionel Tollemache