If ever there was a beneficent despotism, it was Jowett's rule as master. Since 1866 his authority in Balliol had been really paramount, and various reforms in college had been due to his initiative. The opposing minority were now powerless, and the younger fellows who had been his pupils were more inclined to follow him than others would have been. There was no obstacle to the continued exercise of his firm and reasonable will. He still knew the undergraduates individually, and watched their progress with a vigilant eye. His influence in the university was less assured. The pulpit of St Mary's was no longer closed to him, but the success of Balliol in the schools gave rise to jealousy in other colleges, and old prejudices did not suddenly give way; while a new movement in favour of "the endowment of research" ran counter to his immediate purposes. Meanwhile, the tutorships in other colleges, and some of the headships also, were being filled with Balliol men, and Jowett's former pupils were prominent in both houses of parliament and at the bar. He continued the practice, which he had commenced in 1848, of taking with him a small party of undergraduates in vacation time, and working with them in one of his favourite haunts, at Askrigg in Wensleydale, or Tummel Bridge, or later at West Malvern. The new hall (1876), the organ there, entirely his gift (1885), and the cricket ground (1889), remain as external monuments of the master's activity. Neither business nor the many claims of friendship interrupted literary work. The six or seven weeks of the long vacation, during which he had pupils with him, were mainly employed in writing. The translation of Aristotle's _Politics_, the revision of Plato, and, above all, the translation of Thucydides many times revised, occupied several years. The edition of the _Republic_, undertaken in 1856, remained unfinished, but was continued with the help of Professor Lewis Campbell. Other literary schemes of larger scope and deeper interest were long in contemplation, but were not destined to take effect--an _Essay on the Religions of the World, a Commentary on the Gospels_, a _Life of Christ_, a volume on _Moral Ideas_. Such plans were frustrated, not only by his practical avocations, but by his determination to finish what he had begun, and the fastidious self-criticism which it took so long to satisfy. The book on Morals might, however, have been written but for the heavy burden of the vice-chancellorship, which he was induced to accept in 1882, by the hope, only partially fulfilled, of securing many improvements for the university. The vice-chancellor was _ex officio_ a delegate of the press, where he hoped to effect much; and a plan for draining the Thames Valley, which he had now the power of initiating, was one on which his mind had dwelt for many years. The exhausting labours of the vice-chancellorship were followed by an illness (1887); and after this he relinquished the hope of producing any great original writing. His literary industry was thenceforth confined to his commentary on the _Republic_ of Plato, and some essays on Aristotle which were to have formed a companion volume to the translation of the _Politics_. The essays which should have accompanied the translation of Thucydides were never written. Jowett, who never married, died on the 1st of October 1893. The funeral was one of the most impressive ever seen in Oxford. The pall-bearers were seven heads of colleges and the provost of Eton, all old pupils.