tion of the Scriptures, which could have no authority and would disturb many consecrated phrases, and thought very highly of Renan's Évangiles, and praised his book on Solomon's Song. Wished for a new book on Ecclesiastes.

'He told H. Cowper that he first turned his thoughts to politics when in quarantine at Malta for forty-two days. The consul had sent him two years' Galignanis to read, and from that time he began to understand politics. He liked Tancred the best of his works; and he always turned to it when he wished to refresh his knowledge of the East. He delighted in Pride and Prejudice, and had read it seventeen times.'

With G. F. Watts, to whom he is now sitting for his portrait, he discusses subjects of art.

'Watts thought that sculpture and painting produce the same effects, painting being the higher and more difficult art. Thus to his mind the sculpture of the Parthenon might well go along with Raphael's and Leonardo's pictures. Both painting and sculpture appeared to him nearly akin to music, for of both the ideal not the individual was the truth.

'He thought there was no future for art. The world had become analytical, and we could do nothing but imitate and preserve. Formerly art was a want, now it is only an amusement.

'Of Ruskin Watts said that he was excellent about clouds, forms of leaves, animals, &c., but the higher the art, the less he seemed capable of comprehending it. He had no sympathy with the human or divine; and was incapable of appreciating either Michael Angelo or Titian.'

Jowett suggested that Ruskin was putting small things in the place of great, which was a misfortune for art; and to this Watts agreed.

At other times he has much to say on metaphysics, the growing influence of which at Oxford, owing to the teaching of Green and others, he watched with alarm.

'Metaphysics exercise a fatal influence over the mind in destroying the power of observation and of acquiring knowledge.

"They make the mind too large to take in small things— like a sight of which the focus is disturbed, it disregards them, or tries to weave them into a larger whole, or distorts them. History and even common life are converted into metaphysics.

'They are the only branch of knowledge which has the power of inspiring enthusiasm'.'

'Never to the same extent has the human mind been dominated over by metaphysical conceptions as among ourselves. This plague of metaphysics is as bad as the plague of logic among the Greeks. The words law, force, necessity, evolution, development, cause and effect, the oppositions of mind, reason, and feeling, have the greatest power over us; and yet even philosophical writers have never asked themselves the meaning of them.

'These metaphysics are not so much the metaphysics of great writers as popular metaphysics filtered through language.'

'Metaphysics should be sparingly introduced into education, and not too soon: some boys want it, others are too much inclined to it.

"The power of thinking is equally destroyed by too much. or too little metaphysics. In the latter case there is no power of combining facts, or of getting rid of prejudices; in the former the holes of the sieve are too large to contain them [the facts].

'Formerly metaphysics had an elevating tendency. But this new sort of metaphysics, which pretends to be founded on observation and experience, lowers all human knowledge to the same level.

'Metaphysics can only be useful so far as they give increased power (1) of retaining and comprehending facts; (2) of clearly expressing them.

"There is a metaphysical fanaticism, i.e. an absorbing power of metaphysics, as well as a religious fanaticism.'

1 Cf. vol. i. p. 160.

always

Through all the note-books there runs the undertone of meditation on his own life :

:

'I always seem to be beginning life again, and may I ever seem to be beginning life again until the end! I have always the feeling that I have lost so much time that I can never have a holiday.

'I trust that during the last ten years I may work only from the highest motives.'

Vita Mea.

(a) Must be more alone, and get above phases of mind which come upon me in bad weather or when I am alone.

(b) To rely on no one but myself, and to rely on myself. All through life I have had a false sensitiveness and egotism. (c) I seem to have great power in thinking and in dealing privately with persons, but no power in public or society.'

'I remember P.1 calling upon me when in trouble about Essays and Reviews. He said that I should remember I was looked upon as very black by the University; they might forgive Congreve, but they would never forgive me! And he recommended me to go at once and submit, and to say that I [meant] nothing wrong. I had been misunderstood, &c. That is what he would do if he were in my place. Thank God I did not take his advice.'

'The greatest faults even with the best friends. Want of geniality. Geniality seems to be opposed to sympathy and even to tact. I never have anything to say to strangers.

'I have never had a proper force in acting publicly; have wasted in weakness and sensitiveness that which should have made itself felt in the world.'

In the spring (1877) Jowett had proposed to join Morier, who was now at Lisbon, and together they would visit some of the cathedrals of Spain; but he was unable to carry out his plan.

1 Cf. vol. i. p. 311.

On June 3 he writes to Morier:

'I have made up my mind with great reluctance that I cannot come to Lisbon at present. We have a Vacation Term here of six weeks, June 25 to August 6, and as it is an institution of my own, I ought to stay and take my part in it with the Tutors1. There is no one whom I more desire to see than you. But I feel that I must make the most of my life, as the years are getting fewer. I have given up visiting now except for a day at a time. I want to get rid of these necessary works-Thucydides and Aristotle's Politics-and to devote the rest of my days to something of a higher kind.

'Let me make a counter-proposal: Bowen talks of going abroad with me in September. Shall I bring him to you? We would stay for about a fortnight, then I hope that we should carry you away to see the cities in the south of Spain and Madrid, and spend a week in the Pyrenees coming home, where I suppose that we should be hardly able to carry you with us.

'I think that you know Bowen, but you hardly know all his merits. He always seems to me one of the most gentle and honourable men I have ever known-a man of genius converted, perhaps crushed, into a lawyer, and probably the greatest English lawyer of the day.'

But in July Morier was brought to England by the death of his father. Jowett writes to him from West Malvern :

'Not being certain whether I shall see you on Monday I write a few lines to assure you at this solemn time that nothing which is important to you can be unimportant to me.

'Your father was one of the best men I have known, simple,

1 Jowett

was exceedingly anxious to establish a 'Long Vacation Term' at Balliol. He started the plan in 1874; and attempted to give it new life by residing, as we see, for a part

of the time himself. The effort was not very successful, but he revived the scheme once more in 1889 under somewhat altered conditions; see below, p. 346.

unworldly, innocent. Though I could not agree in all his views about religion, I liked to hear him speak on such matters, because he was sincere; "il avait la religion bonne," as you once said to me. His enthusiasm was quite "youthful"; the last time I saw him he had bought a Portuguese grammar and was beginning to learn it.

'I am afraid that this will be a crushing blow to you. Yet perhaps you should sometimes think that it is well with him he had a very happy life, protracted beyond the usual term. And I feel confident that you and your wife and children and your distinction as a diplomatist were the greatest sources of his happiness in his later years. He used to like to see me because it reminded him of you; and he would say to me, "These two dear people have shown how well they were fitted for one another;" and would add stories about the children. I believe you and they were his first thought in the morning and his last at night. You had all become a part of him and were woven into his mind.'

A little later he writes again:

'My lads here are very clever fellows and do extremely well. I wish that you could have come and seen me here. It is twenty-nine years since we were settled at Oban together, twenty-eight years since we were at the Lakes. Those days will not come back; but I shall always feel that one of the great blessings of my life has been the friendship to which they gave occasion.

'I see you are "labouring in your vocation'." It is no sin for a man to be labouring in his vocation. I am sure that you are right about Russia. The great point is to reconcile the contending parties with honour, or the appearance of honour, to themselves. The war is horrible already, but will be horrible beyond description if continued another year. Were I a diplomatist I should think of nothing else.'

1 Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV. i. 2.

VOL. II.

I