native country. And certainly, if he were a "missionary of English poetry in Germany," he was also a missionary of German literature in England. This is amply acknowledged in the "Memoirs of Frederick Perthes."[1] Besser, the partner of Perthes, writing from England in 1814, says: "Such men as Robinson are of rare occurrence in England. A better medium than this remarkable and most attractive man it would be impossible for Germany to find. I unconsciously place him, in my mind, by the side of Villers, and then the different influence which a thorough German education has had on the Frenchman and on the Englishman is very striking."
Mr. Robinson's breakfast and dinner-parties were characteristically interesting. He did not seek to gather about him either the lions or the wits of the day. There were witty men and eminent men at his table, but not as stick were they invited. None were allowed to come there who showed themselves to be either intolerant or subservient. He liked to gather around him cultivated and earnest representatives of various phases of political and religious thought. "His house" (Mr. Tayler said in his address at Highgate) "was a centre of attraction for minds from the most opposite points in the wide horizon of opinion. Softened by his genial spirit, and animated by his cheerful flow of kindly and interesting talk, Tories and Liberals, High-Churchmen and Dissenters, found themselves side by side at his hospitable board, without suspecting that they were enemies, and learned there,
- ↑ Vol. I., ch. xix., p. 258.
