one of the crowd if he has no slightest hope of making for himself any
name in the intellectual world, to commend him to the leaders of
thought at Cambridge. And this knowledge is to many a Cambridge boy,
playing at being a man, a matter of real, if unconfessed, grief.

'But "there is no such thing as the average man, or at least as the
average undergraduate." This was the belief which Forbes Robinson held
with increasing conviction as his life went on. And it was this belief
which accounted to some extent for the very large part which his
friendship undoubtedly played in the life of many a Cambridge
undergraduate.

'For a man condemned by his fellows and himself to the position of the
"ordinary man" found himself in the presence of Forbes (as all of us
universally called him) to be no such thing. Gradually and with
genuine surprise he learned from him--not by any definite {44} word of
teaching--that though it might cost him efforts painful and many to get
the better of his "special," and though athletic fame knew him not at
all, yet the possibilities of his own peculiar personal life were
wonderful and great. For here was one who compelled men by his genuine
unaffected interest in their lives and work to be themselves genuinely
interested in them too. A man could not know Forbes for long and not
be quickly conscious of a new sense of the value of himself, which made
him believe that his own personality and life were things of great
importance. For "He is interested in me" is what almost every man felt
from the start of his acquaintance with Forbes. "He is interested in
me" we felt when he passed us in the street with his quaint humorous
smile of recognition; we felt the same when we entered his room, to be
received often without a word but with the same half smile: we felt the
same again if we knew that he was watching the progress of a football
match or boat race in which we were taking part. And "he is interested
in me"--most wonderful of all--we felt as we listened to him in the
lecture room, and were compelled to attention; for his interest in the
men in front of him, coupled with his interest in his subject, forced
us all--pass men and honours men alike--to listen to the history of
Church and Doctrine and Creeds. It was this unfeigned interest in men,
simply as men, that in the first instance gave him the influence which
he certainly exercised over all sorts of men, including the kind of men
whom the