A gaunt, hollow-eyed man was he, worn to a thread by diabetes; and to keep the disease in check, strictly dieted.  His appearance was so suggestive of illness, that whenever he was present the conversation always turned on what he might eat and what he must refrain from touching.  A large, gray-skinned man, handsome somewhat like a figure of Melancholy carved out of limestone.  Since he had left Oxford, where he had taken a double first, he had failed—­at the bar, in literature, and in love.  It was said that he had once written an absurd letter asking a lady, who hoped to marry a duke, to go to South America with him.  This letter had been his only adventure.

He was like a bookcase, a store of silent learning, with this difference—­from the bookcase much may be extracted, from Mr. Edmund Collier nothing.  He reminded you of a dry well, a London fog, an abandoned quarry, the desert of Sahara, and the North Pole; of all dull and lugubrious things he seemed the type.  Nature had not afflicted him with passions nor any original thought, he therefore lived an exemplary existence, his mind fortified with exemplary opinions, doctrines, and old saws.

“I wonder if he is alive,” Mike had once said.

“He, he, tout au plus,” Harding had replied, sardonically.

Collier was now learning Sanscrit and writing an article for the Quarterly.  L’Estrange used, as he said, “to dig at him,” and after many exhausting efforts brought up interesting facts to the effect that he had just finished his treatise on the Greek participle, and was about to launch a volume of verses mainly addressed to children.

Collier had once possessed considerable property, but he had invested some in a newspaper of which he was editor, and he had squandered much in vague speculation.  From the account he gave of his losses it was difficult to decide whether he had been moved by mercenary or charitable temptations.  Now only the merest competence remained.  He lived in a small garret where no solicitor had penetrated, studying uninteresting literatures, dimly interested in all that the world did not care for.  He lived in the gloom of present failure, embittered by the memory of past successes, wearied with long illness, and therefore constrained to live like a hermit, never appearing anywhere except in Hall’s rooms.

Even Mr. Horace Baird, the recluse of the Temple, was sometimes met in Hall’s chambers.  When he lifted his hat, the white locks growing amid the black, magnificent masses of hair caught the eye, and set the mind thinking on the brevity of youth, or wondering what ill-fortune had thus done the work of time.  A passing glance told you that he was unsuccessful in his profession and unfortunate in his life, and if you spoke to him, an affected gaiety of manner confirmed the truth of the first impression.  Near him sat a patriarchal barrister who had travelled in the colonies, had had political appointments, and in vague hopes of further political appointments professed advanced views, which he endeavoured to redeem with flavourless humour.  There were also two young men who shared chambers and took in pupils.  Fine tales their laundress told of the state of their sitting-room in the morning, the furniture thrown about, the table-cloth drenched in whiskey.