See _Forbes's Life and Letters_, by Principal Shairp, Professor P.G. Tait and A. Adams-Reilly (1873); _Professor Forbes and his Biographers_, by J. Tyndall (1873).
FORBES, SIR JOHN (1787-1861), British physician, was born at Cuttlebrae, Banffshire, in 1787. He attended the grammar school at Aberdeen, and afterwards entered Marischal College. After serving for nine years as a surgeon in the navy, he graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1817, and then began to practise in Penzance, whence he removed to Chichester in 1822. He took up his residence in London in 1840, and in the following year was appointed physician to the royal household. He was knighted in 1853, and died on the 13th of November 1861 at Whitchurch in Berkshire. Sir John Forbes was better known as an author and editor than as a practical physician. His works include the following:--_Original Cases ... illustrating the Use of the Stethoscope and Percussion in the Diagnosis of Diseases of the Chest_ (1824); _Illustrations of Modern Mesmerism_ (1845); _A Physician's Holiday_ (1st ed., 1849); _Memorandums made in Ireland in the Autumn of 1852_ (2 vols., 1853); _Sightseeing in Germany and the Tyrol in the Autumn of 1855_ (1856). He was joint editor with A. Tweedie and J. Conolly of _The Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine_ (4 vols., 1833-1835); and in 1836 he founded the _British and Foreign Medical Review_, which, after a period of prosperity, involved its editor in pecuniary loss, and was discontinued in 1847, partly in consequence of the advocacy in its later numbers of doctrines obnoxious to the profession.
FORBES, a municipal town of Ashburnham county, New South Wales, Australia, 289 m. W. by N. from Sydney, on the Lachlan river, and with a station on the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 4313. Its importance as a commercial centre is due to its advantageous position between the northern and southern markets. It has steam-sawing and flour-mills, breweries and wool-scouring establishments; while the surrounding country produces good quantities of cereals, lucerne, wine and fruit.
FORBES-ROBERTSON, JOHNSTON (1853- ), English actor, was the son of John Forbes-Robertson of Aberdeen, an art critic. He was educated at Charterhouse, and studied at the Royal Academy schools with a view to becoming a painter. But though he kept up his interest in that art, in 1874 he turned to the theatre, making his first appearance in London as Chastelard, in _Mary, Queen of Scots_. He studied under Samuel Phelps, from whom he learnt the traditions of the tragic stage. He played with the Bancrofts and with John Hare, supported Miss Mary Anderson in both England and America, and also acted at different times with Sir Henry Irving. His refined and artistic style, and beautiful voice and elocution made him a marked man on the English stage, and in Pinero's _The Profligate_ at the Garrick theatre (1889), under Hare's management, he established his position as one of the most individual of London actors. In 1895 he started under his own management at the Lyceum with Mrs Patrick Campbell, producing _Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_ and also some modern plays; his impersonation as Hamlet was especially fine, and his capacity as a romantic actor was shown to great advantage also in John Davidson's _For the Crown_ and in Maeterlinck's _Pelléas and Mélisande_. In 1900 he married the actress Gertrude Elliott, with whom, as his leading lady, he appeared at various theatres, producing in subsequent years _The Light that Failed_, Madeleine Lucette Riley's _Mice and Men_, and G. Bernard Shaw's _Caesar and Cleopatra_, Jerome K. Jerome's _Passing of the Third Floor Back_, &c. His brothers, Ian Robertson (b. 1858) and Norman Forbes (b. 1859), had also been well-known actors from about 1878 onwards.