5917. Benjamin Jowett to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 213–214.
[Oxford]
June 20 [sic, for 19] [1867] [1]
My dear Browning
Since returning here I have seen John Griffiths [2] the Keeper of the Archives who proposed in the Council the M.A. by Diploma. He begs me to assure you that this is not a lower but a much higher honour than the D.C.L. hardly given since Dr Johnson’s [3] time except to Kings & Royal Personages. (see Vol 1 of Boswell under the year 1755 [4] & you will see the sort of thing which wh[en] I talked to you I hardly understood). The Diploma makes you a member of Convocation while the D.C.L. would not. It will be passed in the Convocation of Tuesday (not at the Commemorate) & you are not expected to be present as you will receive it & under the circumstances (of which we had better say nothing more)[.] I think it will be more proper that you should be absent and also because this is customary in such cases. I very much regret that we should not see you at Commemoration, but I hope that you will make many other occasions of visiting “your” own University.
Give my kind regards to your Son & tell him not to get tired of his work. He must have difficulties for not having a sufficient stimulus: that is what he really suffers from. I shall hope to see him in about 3 weeks, & shall expect him to have a good portion of Thucydides ready[.]
I shall hope to introduce you to (the Revd) John Griffiths of Wadham when you next come. He has been very kind in the matter & if you would write him a few words of thanks he would be pleased– Believe me
My dear Browning
Ever yours
B Jowett
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 19 Warwick Crescent / Harrow Road nr London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Worcester College.
1. Correct day and year provided by postmark.
2. John Griffiths (1806–85), Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1830 to 1854 and Keeper of the Archives at Oxford from 1857 until his death.
4. In James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D (3 vols., 1791), I, 150–156.
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