’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 would fill a volume.  I sometimes thought it would really be worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to subside into one of Lord Rowton’s homes in order to have the pleasure of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker.  How pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what small gifts?—­a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings!  How felicitous would have been his greeting!  How cordial his compliments!  How abiding the sense of his unpatronizing friendliness!  But it was not to be.  One can seldom choose one’s pleasures.

In his Patchwork Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon’s encomium on Charles James Fox.  Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit of Gibbon’s praise, he was indeed a good fellow.