An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that 'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable.
I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of his copy of Robinson Crusoe (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as a connoisseur.
The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, water-thieves, and land-thieves—I mean pirates; and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a difference.
Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the Golden Treasury Series. The London Lyrics are what they are. They have been well praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of good verse.
'Apollo made one April day
A new thing in the rhyming way;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear.
Then Momus gave a touch satiric,
And it became a London Lyric.'
AUSTIN DOBSON.
In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds:
'Or where discern a verse so neat,
So well-bred and so witty—
So finished in its least conceit,
So mixed of mirth and pity?'
'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease,
Praed buoyancy and banter;
What modern bard would learn from these?
Ah, tempora mutantur!'
Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and so happily expressed.
Some of the London Lyrics have, I think, achieved what we poor mortals call immortality—a strange word to apply to the piping of so slender a reed, to so slight a strain—yet
'In small proportions we just beauties see.'