362 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1867. freedom and progress, but his influence, which was con- 

 Mr.Crabb siderable, had been felt chiefly in his conversation and 



Robinson. m * 



social intercourse with other minds, for his writings were 

 few and comparatively unimportant. In December 1866 

 he had voted in the minority in the Council on the ques- 

 tion of Mr. Martineau's appointment, and on the next 

 meeting, when the cause was lost by a majority of one, 

 the chairman giving the casting vote, Mr. Robinson was 

 absent from illness. This, and the adaptation of principle 

 which afterwards ensued, was a cause of great concern to 

 him. During the winter of 1865-66 Mr. De Morgan 

 helped him in the task of arranging and sorting his books, 

 a miscellaneous but very valuable collection. My hus- 

 band, who was interested in the work, said that it was a 

 very slow process, because every book or pamphlet looked 

 at gave occasion for some literary or historical anecdote, 

 and this sort of gossip was pleasant to his hearer, who 

 knew much of books and of men ; for Mr. Robinson had 

 been the contemporary of all the friend of many of the 

 eminent, political, and literary characters whose life and 

 work made the history of the end of the eighteenth 

 and much of the nineteenth centuries. He had been 

 the friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. He 

 remembered and knew the political trials of Home Tooke 

 and his friends, and told me incidents connected with my 

 father's trial at Cambridge of which I had never heard. 1 

 His Sunday morning breakfasts were, I suppose, occasions 

 of much pleasant intercourse among many intellectual 

 men of various opinions. At these my husband used to 

 meet the Rev. F. D. Maurice, the Rev. J. J. Tayler, the 

 Rev. J. Martineau, and many others ; and it was at these 

 parties of friends that his acquaintance with Mr. Mar- 

 tineau was chiefly formed. 



Early in 1867, shortly after the trouble at the College, 

 the kind-hearted, consistent old man left this world. Mr. 



1 I first saw Mr. C. Robinson at Mrs. Barbauld's. I wa3 then 

 twelve years old. 



