Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., late Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh / by George Wilson and Archibald Geikie.

Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., late Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh / by George Wilson and Archibald Geikie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    CIIAP. III. in October. I think, after all that had passed, shame prevented them from agreeing to this, and so I left Edward behind me. He went to Edinburgh in October. I do not think that he ever turned his mind seriously to medicine. Natural History was in short his main pursuit.” In another letter, Mr. Garvin says, “ I do not think that Sass entertained any very high opinion of Edward Forbes’s artistic talents. Consequently he scarcely liked to encourage him to make Art his profession. I know [the italics are Mr. Garvin’s] he told him it would take a long time to get rid of the bad habits he had acquired. When I parted with Edward he was much discouraged, and but for shame would have been glad to return with me.” Mr. Garvin further refers to there having been “ a good deal of soreness and disappointment, and no little mortification, that hopes and expectations were not realized,” but that Edward was quite reconciled to the abandonment of Aid as a profession. The fruitless issue of the art-journey to London can excite no surprise. No one familiar with Edward Forbes’s later sketches will doubt that he had in him some of the highest elements of a great painter, and would have be- come one had he devoted himself to Art with a single eye to success in it. But after deducting the time spent in school, and in preparing for it, the constant employ- ment of his pen on songs, paraphrases, valentines, tra- gedies, and what not, and the very large portion of his leisure occupied in the pursuits of Natural History, there remains but an insignificant residue to allot to Art. That residue, moreover, was spent or misspent under the