Letters to His Friends

[Transcriber's note: The book contains a number of short Greek phrases, all of which have been transliterated according to Project Gutenberg's "Greek How-To". A more detailed transliteration note follows each paragraph or article where the Greek phrase occurs.]

[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. In the HTML version of this book, page numbers are placed in the left margin.]

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

CHAPTER. PAGE

I. SCHOOLDAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. LIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE . . . . 10 III. WORK AT CAMBRIDGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 IV. THE LAST FEW MONTHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 V. TWO APPRECIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

ILLUSTRATIONS

Forbes Robinson . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

Forbes Robinson (1880)

Forbes Robinson (1887)

{1}

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

CHAPTER I

SCHOOLDAYS

Forbes Robinson was born on November 13, 1867, in the vicarage of Keynsham, a village in Somerset lying between Bristol and Bath. He was the eleventh child in a family of thirteen, of whom eight were sons and five daughters. His parents were both from the north of Ireland, and his Christian name had been his mother's surname. The motto attached to his father's family crest was 'Non nobis solum sed toti mundo nati.' Before he was three years old his father moved to Liverpool and became incumbent of St. Augustine's, Everton. He died before Forbes was thirteen, but the memory of his holy life remained as an abiding influence. Thus he writes of him in 1903:

'The old memories form a kind of sacred history urging me onwards and upwards. I like to feel that I reap the prayers and thanksgivings of my father, that God blesses the son of such a father. The same work, the same God, the same promises, the same hope, the same sure and certain reward. I thank God and take courage.'

{2} As a boy he was never robust and might even be regarded as delicate. After attending one or two private schools he was entered, at the age of twelve, at Liverpool College, where five of his brothers had been. When his father died in February 1881, the house in Liverpool was given up and Forbes was sent to Rossall. He continued at Rossall till he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1887.

The photograph which is inserted on p. 4 was taken just before he went to Rossall. He was then a shy retiring boy, fonder of reading than of athletic exercise. One who was in the same house with him at Rossall, and who is now vicar of a parish in Lancashire, writes:

'His life at Rossall was not an outwardly eventful one. Not being athletic, he lived rather apart from and above the rest of us in a world of books. The walls of his study used to be almost covered with extracts, largely, I think, from the poets, copied on to scraps of paper and pinned up all round, partly to be learnt by heart and partly, I think, for companionship. He was much older than the rest of us whose years were the same as his. His school life was a time of retirement and preparation for the wider life among men at Cambridge. Though my memory of him as a quiet studious member of the house, more often alone than not, and quite happy to be alone so long as his books were near him, is very distinct, I can recall almost nothing of the nature of incident or about which one can write.'