em {11} to his friends. At the College Debate, of which he
became secretary and president in his second year, he was a frequent
and fluent speaker, with a remarkable command of language, though
sometimes his eloquence was more than half burlesque. His powers of
thought and real strength in argument were more often displayed in
private discussions, where irony and humour hardly veiled the depth of
earnestness below.'

[Illustration: Forbes Robinson (1887)]

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. He took his degree in the first class of the
Theological Tripos in 1890, and obtained a second class in the Moral
Science Tripos of 1891. The year which he spent in reading moral
science he afterwards looked back upon as one of the most useful in his
life. After he had been reading for some time in view of this Tripos,
he wrote to a friend: 'I have come to the conclusion that I know
nothing, and am an awful fool into the bargain. . . . The subject is
so utterly fresh to me, so completely unlike theology of any sort at
Cambridge, that I find it hard to do anything at it. In fact, I
chucked it up for about ten days in the middle of the term, and
determined to have nothing more to {12} do with it; but after that rest
I thought better and renewed the study. It is an excellent training
for the mind. I never distinctly remember thinking at all before this
term.'

Having learnt to _think_ himself, his desire was to help others by
teaching them to think. One who came under his influence several years
later says of him: 'I owe so much to him in every way. Above
everything else he taught me to _think_. I remember so well the first
time I went to him with a difficulty. I expected him to solve it for
me, instead of which, at the end of half an hour, I still found that I
had to think it out for myself. It was a revelation to me, and has
helped me in my dealings with men.' The same friend writes: 'I may
mention a conversation I once had with him. He had in front of him t