Born in humble circumstances, he was a self-taught scholar who learnt to speak French by frequenting Slaughter's Coffee House.
His inoffensive character procured for him the name of the ‘Lamb.’ but when ‘Hesiod’ Cooke abused his poetry, Lockman retorted, ‘It may be so; but, thank God!
Both poems and herrings, he declared, were ‘most graciously accepted.’[1] He died in Brownlow Street, Long Acre, on 2 February 1771, leaving a widow, Mary.
[1] Lockman worked on the General Dictionary, Historical and Critical including a life of Samuel Butler.
He established that the entire "Letters" had in fact been written in French and then translated into English (Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 2001:10).