some clear subtle liquid; one felt it could flow round anything and
overcome nothing. And its nimble eddies were wonderful! Or again I
recall him drinking port with little muscular movements in his neck
and cheek and chin and his brows knit--very judicial, very
concentrated, preparing to say the apt just thing; it was the last
thing he would have told a lie about.

When I think of Codger I am reminded of an inscription I saw on some
occasion in Regent's Park above two eyes scarcely more limpidly
innocent than his--"Born in the Menagerie." Never once since Codger
began to display the early promise of scholarship at the age of
eight or more, had he been outside the bars. His utmost travel had
been to lecture here and lecture there. His student phase had
culminated in papers of quite exceptional brilliance, and he had
gone on to lecture with a cheerful combination of wit and mannerism
that had made him a success from the beginning. He has lectured
ever since. He lectures still. Year by year he has become plumper,
more rubicund and more and more of an item for the intelligent
visitor to see. Even in my time he was pointed out to people as
part of our innumerable enrichments, and obviously he knew it. He
has become now almost the leading Character in a little donnish
world of much too intensely appreciated Characters.

He boasted he took no exercise, and also of his knowledge of port
wine. Of other wines he confessed quite frankly he had no "special
knowledge." Beyond these things he had little pride except that he
claimed to have read every novel by a woman writer that had ever
entered the Union Library. This, however, he held to be remarkable
rather than ennobling, and such boasts as he made of it were tinged
with playfulness. Certainly he had a scholar's knowledge of the