Bucknell University - L Agenda Yearbook (Lewisburg, PA)

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;4 e(ida JANE BROWN Editor ROBERT BELL Business Manager Buckiiell University Lewisbiirg, Pennsylvania

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DR. HARRY W. ROBBINS ♦ ♦ ♦ Beneath the seeming New England austerity tliat is characteristic of Dr. I larry W. Robbins lies a Frostian humour, a gentle understanding of the minds of men, and a scholarly mind rich in literature and in life. During his seventy years, Rob- bie has been a football player and a journeyman printer, an army captain, a high school teacher, and, for the past thirty years, a professor of English. He reads a French or German te.xt or an old Anglo-Saxon manuscript with the same ease with which he attacks a problem in semantics. Those of us who have heard him describe nightingales in an early English dawn believe that he is a poet; those of us who have spoken to him o f life and its problems know that he is a philosopher. Dr. Robbins was graduated from Brown Uni ' crsitv in 1908, and received the deoree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Llniversity of Minnesota in 1923. He has been chairman of the Buckncll Department of English for thirty years, during which time he has been on numerous important faculty committees, a foundation member and president of the Bucknell chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and an advisor to Sigma Tau Delta. He is a member of the American Association of University Professors, the Modern Language Association, the Early English Text Society, and Le Societe des Anciens Textes Francais. Best known as the co-editor of the widclv printed WesXevn WorlA Literature, for which he completed several translations. Dr. Robbins has also published Le Miroir de Seinte Eglise, Ricluinl Rollc ' s ' Devout Meditacioiiiii, ' and worked on a translation of The Hoiiiance of The Rose. The rigors of academic duties ha ' c ne ' cr succeeded in hiding the twinkle in his eyes, his almost boyish satisfaction over a good bridge hand, or the dry wit ex- pressed in muted asides. Students who j enetrate the Vermont severity discover that Robbie is both warm and kind, and that he has a keen awareness and an under- standing that can spring only from years of studying, of reading, and of living.