Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/158

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146
STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

love for the scene so intimately associated with boyish aspirations and manly energies. Jowett's love of Balliol was equally intense, and is the most characteristic part of his career. Balliol had absorbed him. 'The college,' he said, 'is the great good and comfort of my life.' 'Make the college beautiful,' was one of his last sayings. Some men have joined equal devotion to a college to a really low ideal of its true functions, but Jowett's ideal was worthy of a man of keen intellectual interest in the great problems of his day. His college deserved devotion; it had an almost unique position; and, as outsiders must grant, had 'produced' a longer list of eminent men than almost any rival that can be mentioned. The phrase 'produced,' too, had more than its usual propriety. It is generally equivalent to 'not extinguished,' but it is undeniable that Jowett somehow acted as a positive and lasting stimulant upon his pupils.

This dominant passion seems to explain and to reconcile us to Jowett's obvious foibles. To the old dons of the narrower variety the college became an ultimate end; if it taught young men, it deserved gratitude for undertaking a troublesome and strictly superfluous duty; and any