Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/115

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LEWIS CARROLL
91

brilliant translator of Plato, and the deservedly loved master of Balliol, whose sermons in the little College Chapel were often attended by other than Balliol men, and whose reputation for learning was expressed in the well-known verse of "The Masque of Balliol":—

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 isn't knowledge.

But in 1861 he was anything but universally popular, and I am afraid that Mr. Dodgson, nothing if not a staunch Conservative, sided with the majority against him. Thus he wrote in his Diary:—

November 20th.—Promulgation, in Congregation, of the new statute to endow Jowett. The speaking took up the whole afternoon, and the two points at issue, the endowing a Regius Professorship, and the countenancing Jowett's theological opinions, got so inextricably mixed up that I rose to beg that they might be kept separate. Once on my feet, I said more than I at first meant, and defied them ever to tire out the opposition by perpetually bringing the question on (Mem.: if I ever speak again I will try to say no more than I had resolved before rising). This was my first speech in Congregation.

At the beginning of 1862 an "Index to In Memoriam," compiled by Mr. Dodgson and his