It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. Locker's strains are never precisely simple. The gay enchantment of the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the unpretentiousness of a London Lyric is akin to simplicity.
His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it gave him more pain than pleasure.
I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of Locker's paraphrase of one of Clément Marot's Epigrammes; and as the lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase:
'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET
'Elle a très bien ceste gorge d'albastre,
Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx:
Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre,
C'est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieulx;
Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux
Où elle passé à plaisir inciter;
Et si ennuy me venoit contrister
Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue,
Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter
Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.'
'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs!
What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm!
And yet methinks that little laugh of hers—
That little laugh—is still her crowning charm.
Where'er she passes, countryside or town,
The streets make festa and the fields rejoice.
Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down,
Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice,
Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me—
That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.'
'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in The Way of the World! 'I would rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel Irving's Millamant, dulce ridentem, and it was that little giddy laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them.
In 1867 Mr. Locker published his Lyra Elegantiarun. A Collection of Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Société and Vers d'Occasion in the English Languages by Deceased Authors. In his preface Locker gave what may now be fairly called the 'classical' definition of the verses he was collecting. 'Vers de société and vers d'occasion should' (so he wrote) 'be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for however trivial the subject-matter may be—indeed, rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced. The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as vers de société, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that species of poetry. The ballad of "John Gilpin," for example, is too broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift's "Lines on the Death of Marlborough," and Byron's "Windsor Poetics," are too savage and truculent; Cowper's "My Mary" is far too pathetic; Herrick's lyrics to "Blossoms" and "Daffodils" are too elevated; "Sally in our Alley" is too homely and too entirely simple and natural; while the "Rape of the Lock," which would otherwise be one of the finest specimens of vers de société in any language, must be excluded on account of its length, which renders it much too important.'
I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism.
Lyra Elegantiarum is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. Locker was a great student of verse. There was hardly a stanza of any English poet, unless it was Spenser, for whom he had no great affection, which he had not pondered over and clearly considered as does a lawyer his cases. He delighted in a complete success, and grieved over any lapse from the fold of metrical virtue, over any ill-sounding rhyme or unhappy expression. The circulation of Lyra Elegantiarum was somewhat interfered with by a 'copyright' question. Mr. Locker had a great admiration for Landor's short poems, and included no less than forty-one of them, which he chose with the utmost care. Publishers are slow to perceive that the best chance of getting rid of their poetical wares (and Landor was not popular) is to have attention called to the artificer who produced them. The Landorian publisher objected, and the Lyra had to be 'suppressed'—a fine word full of hidden meanings. The second-hand booksellers, a wily race, were quick to perceive the significance of this, and have for more than thirty years obtained inflated prices for their early copies, being able to vend them as possessing the Suppressed Verses. There is a great deal of Locker in this collection. To turn its pages is to renew intercourse with its editor.
In 1879 another little volume instinct with his personality came into existence and made friends for itself. He called it Patchwork, and to have given it any other name would have severely taxed his inventiveness. It is a collection of stories, of ana, of quotations in verse and prose, of original matter, of character-sketches, of small adventures, of table-talk, and of other things besides, if other things, indeed, there be. If you know Patchwork by heart you are well equipped. It is intensely original throughout, and never more original than when its matter is borrowed. Readers of Patchwork had heard of Mr. Creevey long before Sir Herbert Maxwell once again let that politician loose upon an unlettered society.
The book had no great sale, but copies evidently fell into the hands of the more judicious of the pressmen, who kept it by their sides, and every now and again