ABSTRACT
In 1875 the College was at the height of the reputation to which Benjamin Jowett, now Regius Professor of Greek, had raised it since his election as Master five years before. Jowett was known throughout the University and far beyond it as the author of The Epistles of St. Paul, a work that seemed to one of his friends “a miracle of boldness,” as a leader in the production of the famous Essays and Reviews which had appeared in 1860 and as the translator of the Dialogues of Plato which had been published in four volumes in 1871. To him more than to any other individual had been owed the abolition (through the passing of the University Tests Act of 1871) of the theological test, that had been still required for the M.A. and other degrees and for university and college offices. By this time many of his pupils held fellowships in other colleges, while others either already occupied high places in the Church, in Parliament and in the Law Courts or were on their way to them. Henry Asquith had gone down two years before, Charles Gore had just left, Alfred Milner was still up, carrying everything before him as a scholar in the University and as by far the weightiest speaker in the Union. We already knew him as marked out for the highest offices and for the highest kind of influence in the State, whatever line he might take.
