It is not difficult to arrive at Pater’s view of Jowett; he regarded his qualities, both administrative and mental, with a considerable degree of admiration. He half envied and was half amused by the skilful way in which Jowett contrived, taught by adversity and opposition, to harmonise advanced religious views with popular conceptions, and to subordinate philosophical speculation to practical effectiveness. He considered him an excellent specimen of the best kind of virtuous sophist. A letter on the subject which he contributed in 1894 to the _Life of Jowett_ is interesting. Speaking of his own undergraduate days, he says that Jowett’s generosity in the matter of giving undergraduates help and encouragement in their work was unprecedented, “on the part of one whose fame among the youth, though he was then something of a recluse, was already established. Such fame rested on his great originality as a writer and thinker. He seemed to have taken the measure not merely of all opinions, but of all possible ones, and to have put the last refinements on literary expression. The charm of that was enhanced by a certain mystery about his own philosophic and other opinions. You know at that time his writings were thought by some to be obscure. These impressions of him had been derived from his Essays on St. Paul’s Epistles, which at that time were much read and pondered by the more intellectual sort of undergraduates. When he lectured on Plato, it was a fascinating thing to see those qualities as if in the act of creation, his lectures being informal, unwritten, and seemingly unpremeditated, but with many a long-remembered gem of expression, or delightfully novel idea, which seemed to be lying in wait whenever, at a loss for a moment in his somewhat hesitating discourse, he opened a book of loose notes. They passed very soon into other note-books all over the University; the larger part, but I think not all of them, into his published introductions to the _Dialogues_. Ever since I heard it, I have been longing to read a very dainty dialogue on language, which formed one of his lectures, a sort of ‘New Cratylus.’” At the same time Pater had no sort of inner sympathy with Jowett’s position as a priest of the Anglican Church, considering the opinions on the subject of Christian doctrine which he held, or which Pater believed him to hold. There is practically no doubt that in the review of _Robert Elsmere_ which Pater contributed to the _Guardian_, he had Jowett in his mind in the following passage:—