LOCKERBIE  , a municipal and

police burgh of Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in the district of Annandale, 141 m . E.N.E. of Dumfries by the Caledonian railway . Pop . (19o1) 2358 . It has long been famous for its cattle and sheep sales, but more particularly for the great August lamb fair, the largest in Scotland, at which as many as 126,000 lambs have been sold . The town hall and Easton institute are in the Scottish Baronial style . The police station is partly accommodated in an ancient square tower, once the stronghold of the Johnstones, for a long period the ruling family under whose protection the town gradually grew up . At Dryfe Sands, about 2 M. to the W., a bloody encounter took place in 1593 between the Johnstones and Maxwells . The Maxwells were pursued into Lockerbie and almost exterminated; hence " Lockerbie Lick " became a proverbial expression, signifying an overwhelming defeat . LOCKER-LAMPSON, FREDERICK (1821-1895), English man of letters, was born, on the 29th of May 1821, at Greenwich Hospital . His father, who was Civil Commissioner of the Hospital, was Edward Hawke Locker, youngest son of that Captain William Locker who gave Nelson the memorable advice " to lay a Frenchman close, and beat him." His mother, Eleanor Mary Elizabeth Boucher, was a daughter of the Rev . Jonathan Boucher, vicar of Epsom and friend of George Washing-ton .

After a desultory

education, Frederick Locker began life in a colonial broker's office . Soon deserting this uncongenial calling, he obtained a clerkship in Somerset House, whence he was transferred to Lord Haddington's private office at the Admiralty . Here he became deputy-reader and precis writer . In 185o he married Lady Charlotte Bruce, daughter of the Lord Elgin who brought the famous marbles to England, and. sister of Lady Augusta Stanley . After his marriage he left the Civil Service, in consequence of ill-health . In 1857 he published London Lyrics, a slender volume of 90 pages, which, with subsequent extensions, constitutes his poetical legacy . Lyra Elegantiarum (1867), an anthology of light and familiar verse, and Patchwork (1879), a book of extracts, were his only other publications . In 1872 Lady Charlotte Locker died . Two years later Locker married Miss Hannah Jane Lampson, the only daughter of Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson, Bart., of Rowfant, Sussex, and in 1885 took his wife's surname . At Rowfant he died on the 3oth of May 1895 . Chronic ill-health debarred Locker from any active part in life, but it did not prevent his delighting a wide circle of friends by his gifts as a host and raconteur, and from accumulating many treasures as a connoisseur . His books are catalogued in the volume called the Rowfant Library (1886), to which an appendix (1900) was added, after his death, under the superintendence of his eldest son .

As'a poet, Locker belongs to the

choir who deal with the gay rather than the grave in verse—with the polished and witty rather than the lofty or emotional . His good taste kept him as far from the broadly comic on the one side as his kind heart saved him from the purely cynical on the other . To something of Prior, of Praed and of Hood he added qualities of his own which lent his work distinction—a distinction in no wise diminished by his unwearied endeavour after directness and simplicity . A posthumous volume of Memoirs, entitled My Confidences (1896), and edited by his son-in-law, Mr Augustine Birrell, gives an interesting, idea of his personality and a too modest estimate of his gifts as a poet . (A .