ny to its helpfulness. It was only the other day that I was
reading it afresh, for I had just recovered it, when I feared that the
copy he gave me was hopelessly lost and irreplaceable, from South
Africa, where a friend to whom I had lent it had taken it among his
books. Among Forbes Robinson's later activities were a work on the
Coptic Apocryphal Gospels ("the subject," he wrote to me, "was so
technical and uninteresting that I did not send you a copy"), and the
editing of a Sahidic fragment of the Gospels.

'But his value to Cambridge and to his college lay mainly in the
influence for good which he was able to exert over undergraduates.
Again and again I have been told {9} there how great this was; and it
was no little achievement for one whose very modesty and
humble-mindedness must have made it difficult. But his heart was in
the work, and in the maintaining of Christian influences in university
life. It is hard to over-estimate the loss which his death at so early
an age implies alike to students of theology and to those among whom he
was more immediately working. But he has left us the example of a
simple and devoted life and the consecration of great and growing
powers to his Master's service. "God buries His workmen, but carries
on His work."'

{10}

CHAPTER II

LIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE

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 between higher and lower years were bridged over. A little
older than most men of his year, he was considerably their senior in
character and in intellect. He showed at once the qualities which he
retained to such a unique degree in later years--an inexhaustible power
of making friends with all sorts and conditions of men, and an
insatiable interest in all sides of College life; the most serious
things were from the first not beyond his comprehension, and the most
trivial did not appear to bore him, even when their freshness had worn
off. His love of books was catholic; he possessed a great many and
read th