In his Oxford life Robert surrendered himself to the best and most stimulating influences of the place, just as he had done at school.

He was a youth of many friends, by virtue of a natural gift of sympathy, which was no doubt often abused, and by no means invariably profitable to its owner, but wherein, at any rate, his power over his fellows, like the power of half the potent men in the world's history always lay rooted.

He had his mother's delight in living.

He loved the cricket-field, he loved the river; his athletic instincts and his athletic friends were always fighting in him with his literary instincts and the friends who appealed primarily to the intellectual and moral side of him.

He made many mistakes alike in friends and in pursuits; in the freshness of a young and roving curiosity he had great difficulty in submitting himself to the intellectual routine of the University, a difficulty which ultimately cost him much; but at the bottom of the lad, all the time, there was a strength of will, a force and even tyranny of conscience, which kept his charm and pliancy from degenerating into weakness, and made it not only delightful, but profitable to love him.
He knew that his mother was bound up in him, and his being was set to satisfy, so far as he could, all her honorable ambitions.
His many undergraduate friends, strong as their influence must have been in the aggregate on a nature so receptive, hardly concern us here.