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Updated: June 27, 2025
The discovery and publication of the Trau manuscript brought about a literary controversy which has had few parallels, and which has not entirely died out to this day, although the best authorities ascribe the work to Caius Petronius, the Arbiter Elegantiarum at the court of Nero. Nor does anyone doubt the identity of its author and the Arbiter Elegantiarum of Nero, whose end Tacitus relates."
I have made this long quotation because it is an excellent example of Mr. Locker's way of talking about poets and poetry, and of his intimate, searching, and unaffected criticism. Lyra Elegantiarum is a real, not a bookseller's collection. Mr. Locker was a great student of verse.
It is impossible to give any fair sample of them here, but the London Times' leader of April 8th may serve, perhaps, as a good specimen: "Barnum is gone. That fine flower of Western civilization, that arbiter elegantiarum to Demos, has lived. At the age of eighty, after a life of restless energy and incessant publicity, the great showman has lain down to rest.
But the last symptoms in the literature show us that the Stoicism is not sufficient for our generation, not satisfied with Marcus Aurelius's gospel, which was not sufficient even to that brilliant Sienkiewicz's Roman arbiter elegantiarum, the over-refined patrician Petronius.
Such was the appearance of Mr Apollo Johnson, whom the ladies considered as the ne plus ultra of fashion, and the arbiter elegantiarum. His bow-tick, or fiddle-stick, was his wand, whose magic rap on the fiddle produced immediate obedience to his mandates. "Ladies and gentle, take your seats." All started up. "Miss Eurydice, you open de ball."
The great man had hoped to form an integral part of the new household, to be the organizer of festivities, the 'arbiter elegantiarum'. Instead of which, Sidonie received him very coldly, and Risler no longer even took him to the brewery. However, the actor did not complain too loud, and whenever he met his friend he overwhelmed him with attentions and flattery; for he had need of him.
Some, seeing him thus, were alarmed in spirit lest they had shown him indifference too early. Cæsar, however, feigned not to see him, and did not return his obeisance, pretending to be occupied in conversation. But Tigellinus approached and said, "Good evening, Arbiter Elegantiarum. Dost thou assert still that it was not the Christians who burnt Rome?"
He wrote a number of clever vers de societé, which were coll. as London Lyrics . He also compiled Lyra Elegantiarum, an anthology of similar verse by former authors, and Patchwork, a book of extracts, and wrote an autobiography, My Confidences . Novelist and biographer, s. of a minister of the Church of Scotland of good family, was b. at Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, and ed. at Glasgow and Oxf.
For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the London of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane.
Nero was angry and irritated, since the spectacle had ended quite differently from what he had planned. At first he did not wish even to look at Petronius; but the latter, without losing cool blood, approached him, with all the freedom of the "arbiter elegantiarum," and said, "Dost thou know, divinity, what occurs to me?
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