Letters to His Friends

Letters to His Friends, by Forbes
Robinson

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Title: Letters to His Friends
Author: Forbes Robinson
Release Date: February 11, 2007 [EBook #20560]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TO HIS FRIENDS ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Forbes Robinson]

LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS

BY
FORBES ROBINSON
LATE FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE AND
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SOUTHWELL

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTICE BY HIS BROTHER
CHARLES

SECOND EDITION

PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION BY
SPOTTISWOODE & CO. LTD., LONDON. 1904

NOTE
This volume has been printed for private circulation at the request of
many of Forbes Robinson's personal friends. The first edition having
been exhausted, a second has been prepared, in which are included six
additional letters (cf. pp. 151, 154, 164, 166, 167, 182). Copies of this
volume will be supplied (price 2s. 6d. post free) to all who desire to
obtain them, on application to the Rev. Canon Charles H. Robinson,
Hill Brow, Woking. The volume of College and Ordination Addresses
which will be published by Longmans in about two months' time can be
ordered through any bookseller.
October 1904.

[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