Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/419

 purchase to a stranger), and on the death of John Forbes he succeeded in 1781 to the whole. He improved the estate exceedingly; laid out the village of New Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire, in 1783, and did much in subsequent years to advance the interests of the villagers as well as of the tenantry. Forbes became known for his public spirit in Edinburgh. The High School, the Merchant Company, the Morningside Lunatic Asylum, and the Blind Asylum all owe much of their present excellence to his sagacity. Forbes shares with his partner, Hunter Blair, the credit due for the formation of the South Bridge. He also succeeded in giving the Scottish episcopalians a real and sure standing in Edinburgh. (1757-1839) [q. v.] was brought to the city at his suggestion, and in Alison's published discourses there is a touching funeral sermon to his memory.

Forbes steadily declined invitations to stand for parliament. His refined literary tastes brought him into contact with the best society of the time both in Scotland and in London. He was a member of Johnson's literary club, and he receives honourable mention in Boswell's ‘Tour to the Hebrides.’ His long and familiar friendship with the poet Beattie enabled him to produce ‘An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D., including many of his Original Letters.’ This appeared in two quarto volumes in 1806, and was republished in three octavo volumes the following year. Forbes had written before this the tribute to his mother, which remained in manuscript till 1875, another portion of the same manuscript, not hitherto printed, being devoted to the memory of his wife. Lady Forbes, for the benefit of whose health he made his only lengthened visit to the continent in 1792–3, died in 1802, and he was never the same man afterwards. He died 12 Nov. 1806, a few months after the appearance of his ‘Life of Beattie.’ This work, in spite of Jeffrey's strictures in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for April 1807, is a valuable record of the times, though too ponderous. Jeffrey's article as it originally appeared in the ‘Review’ was about three times longer than in the collected ‘Essays,’ and opened with a lofty and eloquent tribute to the worth of Forbes. Scott speaks of him with equal warmth in the introduction to the fourth canto of ‘Marmion.’ Forbes left four sons and five daughters. To his eldest son, William, who succeeded him in the baronetcy, he addressed in 1803 his interesting autobiographical work, ‘Memoirs of a Banking House.’ The second son, [q. v.], rose to be a judge in the court of session as Lord Medwyn; the third was named George, and went into his father's business; and Charles, the fourth son, was in the navy.

 FORBES, WILLIAM ALEXANDER (1855–1883), zoologist, second son of Mr. John Staats Forbes, chairman of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company, was born at Cheltenham on 24 June 1855, and educated at Kensington school and Winchester College. Leaving Winchester in 1872 he studied in succession at Edinburgh University (1873–1875) and University College, London (1875–1876), as a medical student; but he early showed great powers of acquirement in biology, to which he finally devoted himself. Entering at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1876, he gained a first class in the natural sciences tripos of 1879, and was subsequently elected a fellow of his college. In the same year he was appointed prosector to the Zoological Society of London on the death of his friend, Professor [q. v.], whose literary executor he became. He also lectured on comparative anatomy at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. During the three following years his work at the society's gardens produced a rich harvest of original and valuable papers, those on the muscular structure and voice organs of birds being especially notable. In the summer of 1880 Forbes made a short excursion to Pernambuco, of which he published an account in the ‘Ibis’ for 1881, and in July 1882 he left England to investigate the fauna of eastern tropical Africa, starting from the mouth of the Niger. Being detained at Shonga, four hundred miles up the Niger, by the breaking down of his communications, Forbes died of dysentery on 14 Jan. 1883. His remains were brought to England and buried, 1 April 1884, in the churchyard of Wickham in Kent.

Forbes was an excellent worker, possessed of much personal attractiveness, and gave promise of being one of the leading zoologists of his time. His collected papers have been published in a memorial volume edited by his successor as prosector, Mr. F. E. Beddard, 1885. His principal papers were ‘On the Anatomy of the Passerine Birds’ (‘Proc. Zool. Soc.’ 1880, 1881, 1882); ‘On the Contributions to the Anatomy and Classification of Birds made by Professor Garrod’ (‘Ibis,’ 1881); and ‘On the Anatomy of the