ar; and he drifted to the
bar. I don't think he ever made friends with anyone in his life--he is
constitutionally incapable of friendship. I have seen him in the
company of one or two unaccountably dreary men, himself the dreariest
of the party. He is long-winded, exact in statement, ponderous. He has
no sort of imagination, and no touch of humour. He can be depended upon
to give you a mass of detailed information on almost any point, and
every subject that he touches turns to lead before your eyes. One has a
sense of mental indigestion for a day or two after one has seen him,
until one has forgotten his statements. If I desired to think ill of a
writer, I should ask Gregory his opinion of him; he would extinguish
once and for all my interest in the subject. He has been wholly
unsuccessful at the bar; he lives in London lodgings, and I cannot
conceive how he employs his time. There is a club I sometimes visit (I
fear I should visit it oftener if Gregory were not a member), where he
sits like a moulting condor in a corner, or wanders about seeking a
receptacle for his information. I got him, as I have said, a piece of
legal work; it was done, I believe, admirably; but the solicitor whom I
referred to Gregory has since told me that he cannot employ him again.
"I simply have not the time," he said; "our consultations took longer
than I could have conceived possible; there was not a single
contingency in heaven and earth that Gregory did not foresee and
describe!"

This has gone on until Gregory has reached the mature age of
fifty-five. He has no work and no friend. His relations cannot tolerate
him. He is a deeply aggrieved man, bitterly conscious of his failure,
and the worst of it is that it has never yet occurred to him that he
may be himself to blame. He is so virtuous, so laborious, so just, so
entirely free from faults of every kind, that he cannot possibly have
even the grim satisfaction of self-censure. He has instinctively obeyed
every copy-book maxim that was ever written; he is one of the very few
men who cannot sincerely join in the Confession, because it is
impossible for him to say that he has done those things that he ought
not to have done; and yet, with all his powers and virtues, he is
simply a tragic failure. No one has a word to say for him; he can get
no work; he is an absolutely unnecessary person. Yet there are
positions which he could have held with credit. He would have been an
excellent clerk, an