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 b

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

Though of Irish descent he only once visited Ireland. This was during his summer holidays in 1884, when he travelled round a good part of the north and west coasts. The only adventure of special interest was his unintended voyage across the Bay of Donegal, which was nearly attended with fatal consequences. He and his brother, the editor of this memoir, started in a small open sailing boat from the harbour of Killybegs, intending to return within a few minutes; but no sooner had they got outside

From this point forward the sketch of Forbes's life can be given almost entirely in the words of those who knew him at Cambridge. A writer in the Christ's College Magazine for the Lent term 1904 says: 'Many older friends will always think of him in his attic rooms, where he began to make his mark in our College society upon his first coming up. Only two other Freshmen had rooms in College, and Robinson's rooms became at once a centre for his year, and later a meeting-place where the gulfs betwee

During his first three years at Cambridge he read for the Theological Tripos. In the course of his first year he was elected a scholar of his College. At the beginning of his second year he won his first University distinction, the Carus prize for the Greek Testament. The other University prizes which he gained were the Jeremie prize for the Septuagint in 1889, the Burney prize essay in 1891, the Carus prize for Bachelors, the Hulsean prize essay, and the Crosse University Scholarship in 1892. H

In September 1891 Forbes was ordained as curate to his brother Armitage, who was at that time vicar of All Saints', Cambridge. Several of the letters which are given later refer to his thoughts and feelings at the time of his ordination. His connection with All Saints' did not last more than a year, as his brother resigned in the following spring. Forbes had already been licensed as chaplain to Emmanuel College. He received priest's orders in 1892. In 1895 he was appointed theological lecturer a

From the time that Forbes took his degree at Cambridge his health was far from strong. He suffered from time to time from a form of eczema which caused him a good deal of discomfort and pain. Many of his letters contain references to the fact that he had been unwell and had been unable to do as much work as he had hoped. In September 1897 he went with his brother Armitage on a visit to St. Petersburg and Moscow. He stayed in the house of a Russian priest at St. Petersburg, and was much intereste

And, doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal fruit In those great offices that suit The full-grown energies of heaven....

The two following sketches of Forbes Robinson's life at Cambridge have been contributed, the first by the Rev. T. C. Fitzpatrick, Fellow and Dean of Christ's College, and the second by the Rev. Digby B. Kittermaster, of Clare College, now Head of the Shrewsbury School Mission in Liverpool. Mr. Fitzpatrick writes: 'College life has changed a good deal since the days when a young graduate, on his election to a fellowship, was advised not to see too much of the undergraduate members of the College,

To A. V. R. Brislington Hill, Bristol: September 24, 1890. … I have been persuaded to try the Semitic Languages Tripos. I have been learning German and Syriac a little this Long with that aim in view.… I don't really know what to do. I am trying to do what will best fit me for my future work. It is hard to know what is right. … The only thing I want is not to develop into a mere bookworm.… The atmosphere of Cambridge so tends to deaden one, and to make one unsympathetic with humanity; and yet th

The following letter addressed to the Editor of this volume was received from the Rev. H. Bisseker, chaplain at the Leys School, Cambridge, too late for insertion in an earlier portion of the book: 'Your brother's friendship, as you must have heard so often during the past few months, was valued in Cambridge beyond that of most men, and I am probably only one of many who still look to that friendship as among the prominent facts of their time up here. Though personally I did not learn to know Mr