them a sale large enough, at any rate, to recoup the cost of
publication. Yet, despite these names, Mr. Locker's book is completely
unlike the modern memoir. Beneath a carefully-constructed, and
perhaps slightly artificially maintained, frivolity of tone, the book
is written in deadly earnest. Not for nothing did its author choose as
one of the mottoes for its title-page, 'Ce ne sont mes gestes que
j'ecrie; c'est moy.' It may be said of this book, as of Senancour's
_Oberman_:

'A fever in these pages burns;
Beneath the calm they feign,
A wounded human spirit turns
Here on its bed of pain.'

The still small voice of its author whispers through _My Confidences_.
Like Montaigne's _Essays_, the book is one of entire good faith, and
strangely uncovers a personality.

As a tiny child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir
Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the
home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his
grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In _My
Confidences_ there are traces of this quality.

Clearly enough the author of _London Lyrics_, the editor of _Lyra
Elegantiarum_, of _Patchwork_, and the whimsical but sincere compiler
of _My Confidences_ was more than a mere connoisseur, however much
connoisseurship entered into a character in which taste played so
dominant a part.

Stronger even than taste was his almost laborious love of kindness.
He really took too much pains about it, exposing himself to rebuffs
and misunderstandings; 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 condemned
to discharge uncongenial duties in unsympathetic society, turned
instinctively to Mr. Locker 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.
Wherever he went he found occasion for kindness, and his whimsical
adventures w