stanza in the poem as published in 1893 is
purified of such tricks. These alterations are characteristic of
Locker's literary method. He was keenly critical of himself--"never,"
says Mr Birrell, "could mistake good verses for bad"--and was therefore
always changing and polishing his work, adding here, pruning there. Thus
only eight poems from the 1857 volume form part of the "London Lyrics" of
1893, and only five of these--"Bramble-Rise," "Piccadilly," "The Pilgrims
of Pall Mall," "Circumstance," "The Widow's Mite"--have maintained their
footing throughout in all intervening editions: the three others are, as
it were, "rusticated" from the very severely edited selection of 1881.
The variety of forms under which his verses appear at different periods
will probably make the poet's works a happy hunting-ground for the future
commentator, who will no doubt assign this "lay" (as he will probably
call it) to Locker, that to Lampson, that again to the Lockeridae or the
Lampsonschule. The method is familiar. No one, probably, ever was so
careful of the "limae labor." "He took," we are told, "great pains with
his verses," always aiming at a more perfect finish, with no loss of that
naturalness which, as has been said, characterises all his work.
According to the saying quoted by Matthew Arnold of Joubert, he
"s'inquietait de perfection." Perfection, to him, implied an appearance
of spontaneity: what _looked_ laboured or artificial must be elaborated
till it _looked_ spontaneous--as it was in thought if not altogether in
development. His critical sense seems to have grown keener with his
interest in the making of verses: "he was a great student of verse," Mr
Birrell says, and a student especially of that kind of verse of which he
was himself one of the masters. In 1867 he published the well-known
collection "Lyra Elegantiarum," assisted by Mr Kernahan: the preface,
written by Locker, contains some excellent rules for "light verse," from
which the selections are made. This anthology ranges over the whole
field of English poetry, and, like everything else of Locker's, it shows
the man. "Its charm," writes the editor's collaborator, "is entirely of
the editor's individuality"--at least, from his favourites in literature,
one may make a very fair guess at some part of his character. So, too,
"Patchwork"--a kind of scrap-book, a collection of miscellaneous
anecdotes, mostly humorous, but not as a rule broadly or farcically