his works that has not been suggested by some object actually before his eyes, or by some real occurrence, or by the thoughts of other men; but he adds, 'I can make other men's thoughts breed.' He can not, he says, like Byron, pour out thoughts from within, for his mind is exterior, the mind of his own eyes.' That he is a very ordinary person (who, by the earnest study of the best models, has learned to write a good style in prose and verse) is proved by phrenology, his head being shaped like a turnip, and a boy's hat fitting it. My genius,' says he, if I have any, is a compound of earnest perseverance, restless observation, and instinctive or habitual hatred of oppression. He is thought by many to be a coarse and careless writer; but that is a mistake. He never printed a careless line. Moore himself, with his instinct of elegant versification, could not,' he says, improve my roughest Corn Law Rhymes.' Of his political poems, They met in Heaven is the best. The Recording Angel,' written on the final departure of Sultan George from the harem, is the best lyric. Of his long poems, The Exile' is the most pathetic. Withered Wild Flowers' is his favorite; it is a perfect epic in three books, and the idea of telling a story in a funeral sermon is new. But his masterpiece, both as a poem and as a character, is the 'Village Patriarch,' the incarnation of a century of changes and misrule, on which he has stamped his individuality. The critics say he succeeds best in lyric poetry; he thinks he ought to have written a national epic, and if he had time he would yet make the attempt. He thinks also there is merit in his dramatic sketch of Kehonah,' particularly in the character of Nidarius, and the dramatic introduction of the supposed executioner of King Charles.”

66

6

The ancestors of Ebenezer Elliott were 66 canny Elliots" of the Border, whose derring deeds" were warning proverbs in the debatable land; border thieves they were, who "lived on the cattle they stole." His father, who, for his eccentricities and ultra" religious" views, was named "Devil Elliott," had been appren ticed to an iron-monger at Newcastleupon-Tyne, after which he became a clerk in the celebrated cannon foundry

of Messrs. Walker, at Masbrough, near Rotherham. He soon left that situation, and went as a servant to the "New Foundry" in the same town; and there the poet was born, and baptized either by his father or by "one Tommy Wright," a Barnsley tinker and brother Berean. Ebenezer was one of seven children, three sons and four daughters, of a father bearing the same baptismal name. His first book lessons, after those of his mother, were with an Unitarian schoolmaster of the name of Ramsbottom, of whom he has made grateful mention in one of his poems. But he had the anxiety of a curious and ingenious child to see something of the world beyond the foundry and his teacher's garden. "My ninth year," says he, in a letter I copy," was an era in my life. My father had cast a great pan, weighing some tons, for my uncle at Thurlstone, and I determined to go thither in it, without acquainting my parents with my intention. A truck with assistants having been sent for it, I got into it, about sunset, unperceived, hiding myself beneath some hay which it contained, and we proceeded on our journey. I have not forgotten how much I was excited by the solemnity of the night and its shooting stars, until I arrived at Thurlstone about four in the morning. I had not been there many days before I wished myself at home again, for my heart was with my mother. If I could have found my way back I should certainly have returned, and my inability to do so shows, I think, that I really must have been a dull child. My uncle sent me to Penistone school,* where I made some little progress. When I got home from school I spent my evenings in looking from the back of my uncle's house to Hayland Swaine for I had discovered that Masbrough lay beyond that village; and ever, when the sun went down, I felt as if some great wrong had been done me. At length, in about a year and a half, my father came for me; and so ended my first irruption into the great world. Is it not strange that a man who from his

*The house is still standing at Thurlstone in which was born, in 1682, the celebrated blind mathematician, Dr. Nicholas Sanderson, who learnt to read by feeling the letters on the gravestones in the churchyard of the adjacent town of Penistone.

childhood has dreamed of visiting foreign countries, and yet, at the age of sixty, believes that he shall see the Falls of Niagara, has never been twenty miles out of England, and has yet to see for the first time the beautiful scenery of Cumberland, Wales, and Scotland?"

But school days with Elliott, as with his more or less hopeful companions, came to an end; the iron-casting shop awaited him, and from his sixteenth to his twentythird year he worked for his father, "hard as any day-laborer, and without wages."

According to his own account, he had been a dull and idle boy, but poetry, instead of nourishing his faults, stimulated him to industry as well as thought. Thus, while his early days were spent amid the disheartening influences of an ascetic home and defective education, nature not only spoke to his senses, but worked within him,

"His books were rivers, woods, and skies, The meadow and the moor!"

In all his sentiments and sympathies, from first to last, he was emphatically one of the people, illustrating his whole life long, by precept and example,

"The nobility of labor, the long pedigree of toil!'

How far, or whether at all, the tastes of the son were influenced in any way favorably by those of the father, who was spoken of under the above ugly appellation, does not appear; but it is worthy of remark that the elder Elliott himself was a rhymester. "In 1792," says Mr. Holland, in his "Poets of Yorkshire," "he published a Poetical Paraphrase of the Book of Job,' agreeable to the meaning of the sacred text."

Long afterwards, Ebenezer, in writing of his father, says,"Under the room where I was born, in a little parlor, like the cabin of a ship, which was yearly painted green, and blessed with a beautiful thoroughfare of light-for there was no window tax in those days-my father used to preach, every fourth Sunday, to persons who came from distances of twelve to fourteen miles to hear his tremendous doctrines of ultra-Calvinism. On other days, pointing to the aquatint pictures on the walls, he delighted to de

claim on the virtues of slandered Cromwell and of Washington the rebel."

It is not material in this brief notice of the "Corn-Law Rhymer," to trace him from his father's foundry, at Masbrough, to his own shop, as a steel-seller, in Sheffield, nor to describe his earliest efforts in verse. His poem of "Love" attracted no attention from readers of any class; while his "Night "-the scene of which is the picturesque spot identified with the legend of "The Dragon of Wantley "- -was declared by one reviewer to be "in the very worst style of ultra-German bombast and horror!" But his taste rapidly improved, and that-strange as it may appear-under the stimulus of the intensest Radical politics! There was, in fact, a touch of the morbid in his temperamenta dramatic taste for the horrible in fictionas witness his own "Bothwell" with a special dislike of hereditary pride or grandeur. But though almost insane in his denunciation of the aristocracy, and absolutely rabid at times, both in his conversation and his writings, there was in his heart an innate love of the graceful and the beautiful in nature; the fiercer passions evaporated in a green lane, and wrath was effectually subdued by the gentle breezes of the hill-side. His stronglymarked countenance bespoke deep and stern thought; his pale grey eyes, restless activity; his every look and motion indicated an enthusiastic temperament; his overhanging brow was stern, perhaps forbidding; but the lower portions of his face betokened mildness and benevolence; and his smile, when not sarcastic, was a most sweet and redeeming grace.

"The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm,
He feared to corn or hate;
But honoring in a peasant's form

The equal of the great!"

William Howitt describes him as "one of the gentlest and most tender-hearted of men;" yet his mind seemed incapable of reasoning when the higher orders of society were praised; he could not tolerate even the delicate hint of Mr. Howitt, that "among them were some amiable men." He at once "blazed up," exclaiming furiously, "Amiable inen! amiable robbers, thieves, murderers!"

Yes, on that subject he was absolutely insane. The stern, bitter, irrational, and unnatural hatred, was the staple of his

mastering passion-the direct theme of some of his most spirited lyrics, the topic of his common conversation, no less than the spell of genius, and in pursuance of which he adopted the significant appellation "Corn-Law Rhymer." This subject, it need scarcely be added, while it was the mainspring of his popularity with one party of political economists, including all the working men of his day, was, at the same time, still more powerful in exciting the dislike of other classes of the community, and especially all those connected with the agricultural interest. This position of personal as well as poetical hostility towards a large, wealthy, influential, and respectable section of his countrymen, was rendered less enviable by the general bitterness of style and harshness of epithet by which his "rhymes" were but too commonly characterized. But "gentle arguments are not suited for stearn work:" while, therefore, it is impossible to read many of his most powerful pieces without a mixture of admiration for the skill of the poet, and of regret for the violence of the partisan, it should not be forgotten that much of the interest of these compositions has passed away-by the signal triumphs of the doctrine which they originally illustrated and enforced. For, whatever may be the opinions entertained at this moment by any person or party in this country, relative to the abolition of the corn laws, there can be no doubt but that the popular and energetic struggle which issued in that event was effectually aided by the genius of Ebenezer Elliott.

On the other hand, let it not be imagined that Ebenezer Elliott was made a victim, or made himself a martyr, of the "bread tax," otherwise than in his "rhymes:" he was, in fact, a shrewd, active, and successful man of business; and notwithstanding he tells us, in terms which formed so long and so loudly the burden of his song, that

"Dear sugar, dear tea, and dear corn,

Conspired with dear representation
To laugh worth and honor to scorn,

And beggar the whole British nation." he was fortunate enough to outmatch the "four dears," as he calls them-to give up business-to leave Sheffield for the enjoyment of a country retreat, in a NEW SERIES-Vol. II., No. 5.

good house of his own at Hargot Hill, in the vicinity of Barnsley. But an insidious complaint was slowly, yet surely, stopping his vital powers. He "depart ed this life" on the 1st of December, 1849, and is buried in the churchyard of the beautiful little village of Darfield.* The church may be seen from the house in which he died.

It was not by his own desire he was laid in consecrated ground. Not long before his death he pointed out to a friend a tree in one of the pleasant dells that environ black and busy Sheffield, and said, "Under this tree I mean to be buried; I shall sleep well enough here; and who knows but I may feel the daisies growing over my grave, and hear the birds sing to me in my winding sheet?"

He was dying, when his faculties were suddenly roused by a robin singing in the garden underneath his chamber window; he had strength enough to write these lines-they were his last :

"Thy notes, sweet robin, soft as dew, Heard soon or late, are dear to me; To music I could bid adieu,

But not to thee.

When from my eyes this lifefull throng
Has pass'd away, no more to be,
Then, autumn's primrose, robin's song,
Return to me."

His character is thus summed up by his friend, Mr. Searle :-" He was a farseeing, much-enduring, hard-working,

*The village of Darfield is nearly a mile from its railway station, on the North Midland line. The church, equally plain in its design and architecture, looks pretty at a distance, from its elevated situation, and the group of fine trees with which it is flanked. The tower contains a peal of very musical bells, the ringing of which is duly appre ciated by the inhabitants of the valley of the is unmarked, except by a plain stone, nearly Deane. The grave of the "Corn-Law Rhymer" level with the grass, and thus inscribed lengthwise:-"Ebenezer Elliott, died December 1, 1849, aged 68 years." On the other half of the stone, Fanny Elliott, his wife, died December 4, 1856, aged 75 years. A plain gravestone adjoining bears, "Sacred to the memory of John Watkins, late of London, Son of Francis and Christiana Watkins, of Whitby, and Son-in-law of Ebenezer Elliott, who died Sept. 22, 1850, aged 40 years.' It may be mentioned that in this secluded churchyard there is a conspicuous obelisk, which, as we learn from an inscription on the pedestal, was "Erected to commemorate the Sundhill (Colliery) Explosion of Feb. 9, 1852, in which 192 men and boys lost their lives, of whose bodies 146 are buried near this place."

37

66