12 s. viii. MAY 14, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 397 PUBLICATIONS or FREDERICK LOCKER- LAMPSON (12 S. viii. 307, 335). MB. PICKERING, quite rightly, counting by titles, i.e., including ' London Rhymes,' credits Fred Locker with six works. I expect that the reason why Mr. Birrell does riot count ' London Rhymes ' as a separate book is due to the following fact. Locker collected his scattered poems and issued them in a single volume in 1857 under the title ' London Lyrics.' A keen critic of his own work, as new editions w^ere called for (I can remember, I think, twelve) he had a knack of adding new poems and discarding old ones ; of altering or discarding verses ; of sometimes grafting a passage from one poem to do duty as a heading to another with the result that no two editions are alike, although the size of the book remains the same. The privately printed edition of 1881, produced to present to his friends (100 copies only), was a selection of the 4 London Lyrics ' made at Locker's request by his old friend Austin Dobson, who prefixed to it the friendly little sextain commencing " Apollo made one April day." In the copy given to me by Fred Locker in 1885 I have made a note to this effect ; also that, with the presumption of youth, I had remarked to him that in my opinion Austin Dobson had rejected some of his most characteristic verse. I remember how with a smile Locker said : " Yes, perhaps so. Very well, you shall have a copy of
- London Rhymes.' " This was the privately
printed edition of those ' London Lyrics ' which had not been included in the Dobson selection. There is much that is Fred Locker in his verse, in its wit, refinement and restraint ; but as memory carries me back through the years the poet is lost in the man, so great was his personal charm. He was one of the most lovable creatures that God has made. RORY FLETCHER. 'THE TOMAHAWK.' (11 S. vii. 369 413 ; 12 S. viii. 335.). The purchaser of the complete set of this extinct periodical will be a lucky man. The set in the British Museum Library is, or was, very incom- plete, and the only two full sets I have heard of are contained (1) in a public library in New York, U.S.A., and (2) in our own London Library, to which I had the honour of presenting it a short time ago. SURREY. WILLIAM CONGREVE (10 S. iv. 148). It is stated there that Congreve lived at one time at Merley in Dorset, and subsequently at Aldermaston in Berks. The statement was made first by the Rev. John Duncan, who was in 1787 minister of the Independent Church at Wimborne and claimed Congreve and " his family " as members in the past of that congregation. In his Life of Con- greve Mr. Gosse says that in early life the dramatist had a house at Northall in Bucks, but does not indicate that he had after- wards a house in the country. It seems to me possible that Duncan has confounded the dramatist with a contemporary of the same name, Colonel William Congreve, who is mentioned by the dramatist in his will. He was then residing at Highgate. The dramatist was a godfather of the Colonel's son, but does not claim the Colonel as a kinsman. F. ELRINGTON BALL. GHOST STORIES] CONNECTED WITH OLD LONDON BRIDGE (12 S. viii. 330). MR. JACOBS in his inquiry says, " Dickens, in ' The Pickwick Papers,' when describing the George Inn in the Borough," &c. May I point out that Dickens did not describe the George in ' Pickwick,' or in any other of his books, though there is a bare mention of that inn in ' Little Dorrit ' Book I., chap. xxii. In chap. x. of ' Pickwick ' Dickens named the White Hart as the scene of the first appearance of Mr. Samuel Weller, and there is no justification whatever for as- suming that he did not mean exactly what he said. The first suggestion that, although the White Hart was named, the George was really intended, came from the late Mr. J. Ashby S terry, who, in an article on ' Charles Dickens in Southwark,' published in The English Illustrated Magazine for Nov., 1888, states that "it is said that Dickens changed the sign in order that the place should not be too closely identified." In view of the number of inns mentioned by name in ' Pickwick ' not always in the most compli- mentary terms the identity of which has not been questioned, there does not appear to have been the least reason for trans- ferring the sign of the White Hart to the George. This subject is fully discussed in ' The George Inn, Southwark,' by Mr. B. W. Matz, published by Chapman and Hall, 1918. T. W. TYRRELL. St. Elmo, Sidmouth.
