Then hand in hand they'll sit them down
Right cheerfully, and let the town—

This foolish town-go by them.

Dinky, I must resign the toys
I've loved so well to finer boys,

For I have had due warning.
Farewell to all this dear delight,
Content am I to say good-night,

And hope for better morning

III

If self-consciousness denote under-breeding, as not many will deny, and if the essence of all good writing, as of good manners be, as Mr. George Saintsbury has told us, ease-then was Mr. Locker most assuredly of the aristocracy of letters. Just as in the man who comes of gentle blood, and who is also a citizen of the world in the best sense, we see perfect self-possession combined with unaffected grace of manners, so in the work of the writer who holds a corresponding place in the world of letters, we find unstudied ease and distinction of style which are recognisable at a glance.

And though Mr. Locker had his literary limitations-though his work was not marked by dramatic or creative power, any more than by originality of thought-the grace of 'style' dignifies everything to which he put his hand. It is apparent even in the books which he edited, as well as in the books which he wrote. The charm of his anthology of social verse, Lyra Elegantiarum, is entirely of the editor's individuality. Its very want of method in arrangement-as a rule a most serious defect in an anthology-reminds one of Herrick's 'sweet disorder' that does

More bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

And what is true of Lyra Elegantiarum—the recent edition of which would have been more satisfactory had the circumstances permitted the distribution of the old type, and the setting up of the book anew-is true of his book of promiscuous selections, Patchwork. Absolutely without method as it is, and dealing with such widely differing subjects as 'Tight Boots' and 'Patriotism,' Public Worship and Excuses for Drinking,' the volume is the most delightful of desultory reading. The editor's Notes,' like the editor's preface to Lyra Elegantiarum, are especially attractive, for few writers of his day could give point to an epigram or turn a sentence more prettily than he. So pellucid are some of the happiest passages in his prose, so crisply conversational, and yet so courtly in the phrasing, that one might well fancy they had been recorded, not by means of commonplace pen, paper, and ink, but had been found diamonded upon the

window-pane of some old Elizabethan castle. And of Mr. Locker, Fénelon's hackneyed saying that a man's style is nearly as much a part of himself as his physiognomy or his figure was exceptionally true. With him many might be intimate, but none familiar. And yet his gift of adaptability was so great that he could, by his kingly courtesy and singular sweetness of disposition, as easily charm a churlish old print-seller into civility as he could, by some graceful compliment, make bright the eyes of a society beauty. He has been called the Du Maurier of Song; but, singer of society and man of fashion as he was, his sympathies and his choice of subject were not narrowed by social distinctions. In his tender and graceful poem, 'The Housemaid,' he shows how sincerely he can enter into humble joys and sorrows. Everybody knows the lyric, but I will venture, by way of reminder, to quote the last three verses:

Oft on a cloudless afternoon

Of budding May and leafy June,

Fit Sunday weather,

I pass thy window by design,

And wish thy Sunday out and mine
Might fall together.

For sweet it were thy lot to dower

With one brief joy: a white-robed flower

That prude or preacher

Hardly could deem it were unmeet

To lay on thy poor path, thou sweet,

Forlorn young Creature.

But if her thought on wooing run,
And if her Sunday Swain is one

Who's fond of strolling,

She'd like my nonsense less than his,

And so it's better as it is

And that's consoling.

Mr. Locker's accomplished relative, Mr. Augustine Birrell, is, I believe, responsible for the phrase sentiment, that odious onion,' but Mr. Birrell is not more keen to distinguish between the simple sincerity of pathos and the parade and assumption of sentiment than was the author of London Lyrics. The way in which, at the close of the poem, he turns aside from what might seem like an approach to the neighbourhood of sentiment, by playfully satirising himself in his self-assumed rôle of consoler, is very skilful. But the man who takes his soundings by the fathom-line of humour is not likely to drift upon the quicksands of sentiment; and to say that humour was one of Mr. Locker's most marked characteristics would be to state the case inaccurately. Humour-keen, kindly, and playful-was of the very framework of his being. It was humour which made his sight so clear, his judgments so generous; and humour was the secret alike

of his light-heartedness and of his occasional tender melancholy. For the lips of Humour may smile at human folly, but when we look into her eyes, we see them sad at the thought of human sorrow.

IV

That the excellence of technique and of taste, and the ease, grace, and restraint which are never absent from Mr. Locker's work, entitle him to rank among the best writers of Occasional Verse, few will deny. As compared with his contemporaries, it will generally be conceded that he shares with Mr. Austin Dobson the highest place. Mr. Lang, Mr. Gosse, and Mr. Henley have written occasional poems which may challenge comparison with the best; but when the-it is to be hoped, far distant-time comes to draw the final line under the list of their works, and to add up the column, they will be judged by another standard than as writers of vers de société. Between Mr. Dobson and Mr. Locker, then, the honours may be equally divided, and between these brothers in friendship, as in song, no comparison of merits need be instituted. Each has his individual note; each his individual charm. The elder poet is more English and more modern in his choice of subjects than the younger. He sings the nineteenth century in preference to the eighteenth, London in preference to the Luxembourg or the Louvre. But though, like Mr. Dobson, he does not affect the Puritan, and would not deny

A winning wave, deserving note

In the tempestuous petticoat,

his poems of gallantry, like Mr. Dobson's, are the happiest examples of work which touches upon the sweet allurements of sex with absolute delicacy and supreme good taste. Like Mr. Dobson, too, he is always simple, urbane, and spontaneous. He is innocent of the poetic frenzy, and, except for the grimly sarcastic note which he struck in the heading to 'Beggars,' he manifests no desire to use a phrase of Mr. George Meredith's- to lash the ages.'

That his poetic equipment is slender-consisting, as it does, of one small volume which, since it was first published, has been so ruthlessly winnowed and edited that it can be carried in a sidepocket-is not to be gainsaid. But if our gratitude for the exquisite songs he has sung to us is not a little tempered by regretful thought of the songs which remain unsung, as well as of the daintily worded, diamond-pointed essays which are written only upon the chamber walls of a brain which will throb with thought no more-we owe it to him to remember that, in these days of diffuseness and over-production, he has given us only his best. That he elected to don the cap and bells when he might have worn the singing robes of the poet; that he preferred to be a perfect lyrist rather than an indifferent

organist, is not to be denied; but that we have any just cause for quarrel with him on that score one fails to see. If he was a 'minor' poet, he was at least a master of the instrument he touched, which cannot be said of all who would be accounted 'major.' And if he trained the winged steed Pegasus to amble like any lady's palfrey in the 'Row,' rather than enter him for the Laureate stakes, Mr. Locker has at least spared us the competitive Elegy and the Jubilee Ode.

COULSON KERNAHAN.

IN GERMANY-A SKETCH

THE light of a breathless July evening shimmers over the broad yellow country. In the far distance a haze thrown by the pitiless heat quivers against woods that make patchwork of the undulating hills; the black trail of a luggage-train lumbers through the foreground, as it passes the 'ting-tang' in the signal-box panting to Cassel.

Down where the white villas are grouped all is silence—the sunblinds drawn, the windows open. Presently, when it is dark, and the great swollen frothy clouds coming up with the night will break in thunder and torrential rain, there will be a rustling stampede and clatter on the balconies, to secure fastenings and heavy shutters against the sweep of storm-fury; then all will grow silent again, until the dawn.

Among the motionless trees, the Bade- Häuser 'lie like disused vaults. This morning in the corridors everything was movement and eagerness. The miserable, weak, and pale-faced came with sharp short breath of pain, seeking health in waters that surge thickly or bubble translucently for five-ten-twenty minutes, as 'der Herr Doctor' shall command.

6

'So-o-o,' with long drawn inspiration, cries the cheerful Frau, turning off the last tap in the bath-room, to patter, velvet-slippered, to the door, Lassen Sie sich's gut bekommen!'-and with that magic blessing she vanishes, the waters close up to your neck, and a new warmth steals through every vein. However, for to-day that is over, and, with firmer tread and heightened colour, we wonder if the evening breeze will be met along the high road that stretches, by farmstead and garden-plot and cultivated fields, to the Taunus Bergen. Up at the 'Kursaal' the band is playing, and men are drinking beer. Curious, these fat, placid-looking Germans, how they love the scraping of the fiddle, the tootling of the trumpet-and good scraping and good tootling to boot! What sense, so unapparent, does it arouse, or more possibly does it soothe? Heavily they sit on chairs, wreathed in tobacco smoke, and blink and muse, and soak and soak, with slow enjoyment, the light and golden liquid from tall white glasses. The band-master, with red rosette in button-hole, waves his bâton, and mops his heated brow, while the musicians glide