Letters to His Friends

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 them {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