FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON.*
"IT is less difficult," says Dr. Johnson, "to write a volume of lines swelled with epithets, brightened by figures, and stiffened by transpositions than to produce a few couplets graced only by naked elegance and simple purity, which requires so much care and skill that I doubt whether any of our authors have yet been able, for twenty lines together, nicely to observe the true • Frederick Locker-Lampean: Character Sketch. By the Bight Ron. Augustine Buren. London : Constable and Co. (26s. net.] definition of easy poetry." No one realized the truth of this observation better than the author of London Lyrics. His total output of verse was small, but it was as nearly as possible impeccable. He spared no labour to make his work flawless ; he toiled over every line until he had smoothed away all harsh- neestee of expression, excised every redundant epithet and brought every phrase into its moat, natural and flowing order. Indeed, he carried the process of revision so far that he was sometimes in danger of sacrificing strength and point to mere prettiness. He was never banal ; at no time did he descend to the level of the Keepsake Album; as Thitekeray said to him once "I have a sixpenny talent and so have you—ours is small beer, but you see it is the right tap." No one who has read The Widow's Mite or Piccadilly will have any doubt that it was the right tap, but we may be allowed sometimes to regret that the pleasant acidity which gave piquancy to his charming prose was removed so rigorously from his studied poetry.
"Some of Cowper's short poems are inimitable. He writes so very like a gentleman." The remark is Locker-Lampson's own, and the praise is characteristic ; he could not expatiate on a favourite author, Mr. Birrell tells us, but he could recognise at once the quality that he loved and emulated. His fastidious- ness, his dislike for noise and exuberant rhetoric, his delight in neat effects and polished thrusts had a common origin in the feeling that a gentleman could not be blatant : repose without the suggestion of restraint was the keynote of his manners, literary and social alike. To this horror of anything that smacked of horse-play or boisterousness, his physical infirmity perhaps contributed. Without being either a chronic invalid or a valetudinarian, he had little of that animal vigour which makes the act of living an enjoyment in itself to the man of robust health. His normal condition was, so to speak, a little below par ; dyspepsia was for him a constant and vigilant enemy ; and the depression spread, as it always does, from the gastric centres and subdued the joyousness of his life. "Mr. Looker's chronic complaint was low spirits, or to refine a little on that phrase, an inborn depression of spirit. He could never shake it off, and thought all he had done, however well done, was contemptible, and all he was insignificant."
His ironic humour is seen to greatest advantage in his prose writings. As we turn the pages of My Confidences happy phrases and keen criticisms condensed into barbed sentences jump to our eyes and almost clamour for quotation, if anything created by Locker-Lampson could be said to advertise itself so violently. Who could forget Mr. Homeck, "an elderly clergyman, who must have been mature in dulness from his tenderest years," and who "was a strong but tedious converser" ? Or the school- mistress, Miss Griffin, who "had all the qualities of a kitchen poker, except its occasional warmth " ? Or Felix Carroll, the lyric poet, who "finds it exhausting to be amiable every day to the same human being"? Or Mr. Huggins, the bore, who "is now exceedingly old, but has yet to learn that an occasional absence has a charm " ? Who that has a weakness for telling anecdotes, and consequently falls into the inevitable mistake of telling them too often and to the same people, will not sym- pathise with the remark : "I hardly know which is the more trying to me—their languid endurance of a family story, or their inaccurate repetition of it" ? But if it pleased him now and again to underline the peculiarities of his acquaintances, he did not spare his own. "Last year Alfred Tennyson, speaking of my personal appearance, said that I 'looked like a famished and avaricious Jew.' Now I demur to this. I confess that I have tried to cultivate that fine old gentlemanly vice, but entirely without WILMS& I have never got beyond a timid and pitiful parsimony."
His attempts at parsimony were Indeed amateurish, for the keenest joys of his life were collecting beautiful things and making ingenious presents—two hobbies quite incompatible with the cultivation of a dexteroes frugality. Some men will willingly work for a friend and spend time and labour =grudg- ingly on his behalf so long as they are not called upon to spend money also I others, who are possibly in the majority, will open their cheque books without much reluctance if they are not expected to incur any personal trouble. Locker-Lampson was one of the few who give their money, their energy, and their time with equal alacrity. "Stronger even than his taste," says Mr. Birrell, "was his almost laborious kindness. He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs and mis- understandings; but he was not without his rewards. All down- hearted folk, sorrowful, disappointed people, the unlucky, the ill-considered, the mesestimes—those who found themselves con- demned to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society —turned instinctively to Mr. Locker-Lampson for a consolation, so softly administered that it was hard to say it was intended. He had friends everywhere, in all ranks of life, who found in him an infinity of solace, and for his friends there was nothing he would not do. It seemed as if he could not spare himself. I remember his calling at my chambers one hot day in July, when he happened to have with him some presents he was in course of delivering. Among them I noticed a bust of Voltaire and an unusually lively tortoise, generally half way out of a paper bag. . . . In later years any intimate friend of his daughter's could hardly escape wondering how she came to possess quite so many books of poetry and prose, all exquisitely bound, and in very early issues which appeared to have been presented to her by their authors, with suitable inscriptions on one or another of their numerous fly-leaves. Not indeed that it occurred to any of us as odd that so delectable a person should in her childhood have received beautiful gifts, but that authors and poets, some old and crusty, others lazy and self-absorbed, should have been at the pains of procuring editions of their works long out of print, and causing them to be bound in a taste beyond their own, and then of inscribing and presenting them as they did, could not but strike you as a little out of the way. . . . These were no author's gifts, but a father's. He it was who procured them, and caused them to be bound, and it was he who, producing them at the right moments out of his pocket, obtained, if he did not suggest, the delicately-worded inscriptions."
Mr. Birrell is always at his best when he is writing about some- thing or somebody that moves him to enthusiasm, and it is evident that he had and preserves for the subject of his present character-sketch a strong and merited affection. Nowhere has he gossiped more charmingly ; and if he cannot resist an occasional divagation from his main topic, his obiter dicta are as pleasant as ever. The notes on the books formerly in the Rowfant Library collected by Mr. Locker-Lampson are such as would make a bibliophile's mouth water ; but in these days of inflated prices, the treasure of early editions is not for those who must limit their desires by the leanness of their purses. The letters which are included in the volume are of more general interest, but of very varying value. Some of them appear to have been included for no better reason than that they were written by eminent men ; others, such as Calverley's and Locker .Lampson's own, are delightful in themselves. Amongst these last will be found thirteen admirable rules which all young poets should be compelled je learn by heart before attempting to construct a sonnet. Their observance would be a sure guarantee against slipshod work and the undisciplined careless- ness of the novice imitating the achieved freedom of the master
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