Sir William Anson, who died somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly just before our last Balliol dinner, making a sadly conspicuous gap in our narrowing circle, was one of my oldest and most valued friends. We saw a great deal of one another from our boyhood onwards. We went up to Eton at the same time, and were neighbours at home in Kent. There was a half-way house where we frequently met: Bedgbury, the hospitable seat of Alexander Beresford-Hope, the Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor, whose criticism of the ‘Caucasian Mystery’ invited Disraeli’s retort about his ‘Batavian grace.’ Anson was a great favourite with Lady Mildred, who had much of the ability and sarcastic humour of her brother Lord Salisbury, whom she greatly resembled also in personal appearance. After Eton, we were contemporaries at Balliol, where we matriculated on the same day, although I, being nearly two years younger, did not actually come up till a term later. I was a candidate for the All Souls Fellowship on the occasion when he and the present Lord Justice Phillimore were elected on the foundation over which he afterwards presided with such eminent success, and shortly afterward was a fellow pupil with him of the great Thomas Chitty, the pleader, in whose chambers so many sucking lawyers destined to become great legal luminaries, from Lord Chancellor Cairns to A. L. Smith, Master of the Rolls, learnt the elements of pleading before the Common Law Procedure Act put a final end to declarations and demurrers. We were a merry as well as an industrious party, and I remember a game of cricket in which Anson took part, played with two volumes of Blackburn and Ellis for bat and wicket, and some crumpled sheets of draft paper for a ball. Even the long-suffering Chitty sent up his clerk to request us to make a little less noise.