collect

He is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can collect to whom he is speaking; he...

I feel the sentence in bold lacks something? I am not familiar with the usage of collect here. It seems that it doesn't mean "remember" here?

Please help me with it?

Many thanks in advance.

Might it be "recollect?"

No, in English the word for rememberance is 'recollect'.
I looked on dictionary.com, and what I think is that here it means 'collect' as in 'to collect oneself'-- that is, what the author means is that this man that the sentence refers to makes people calm and 'collected'-- more sensible and at ease-- by talking to them.
Hope that helps!