Frederick William Robertson

Frederick William Robertson (3 February 1816 – 15 August 1853), known as Robertson of Brighton, was an English divine.

Biography

Born in London, the first five years of his life were passed at Leith Fort, where his father, a captain in the Royal Artillery, was then resident. The military spirit entered into his blood, and throughout life he was characterised by the qualities of the ideal soldier. In 1821 Captain Robertson retired to Beverley, where the boy was educated. At the age of fourteen he spent a year at Tours, from which he returned to Scotland, and continued his education at the Edinburgh Academy and university.

In 1834 he was articled to a solicitor in Bury St Edmunds, but the uncongenial and sedentary employment soon broke down his health. He was anxious for a military career, and his name was placed upon the list of the 3rd Dragoons, then serving in India. For two years he worked hard in preparing for the army, but, by a singular conjunction of circumstances and at the sacrifice of his own natural bent to his father's wish, he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, just two weeks before his commission was put into his hands.

He did not find Oxford wholly congenial to his intensely earnest spirit, but he read hard, and, as he afterwards said, "Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards; passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution." At the same time he made a careful study of the Bible, committing to memory the entire New Testament both in English and in Greek. The Tractarian movement had no attraction for him, although he admired some of its leaders.