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A., RECTOR OP BURTON, NEAR LINCOLN; AND CHAPLAIN TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE, THE LORD MONSON J THE FOLLOWING MEMOIR OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT IS DEDICATED, BY HIS FAITHFUL AND AFFECTIONATE FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. 804.608 PKEFACE. THE substance of the following volume was delivered before the Leeds Mechanics' Institute and Literary Society, as a lecture; and is now presented as such, with additions and emen- dations. It is to be regarded therefore, not as a professed Life of Elliott, but as a mere sketch of his character and writings. LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, OP EBENEZEE ELLIOTT, PART I. Review of Ebenezer Elliott's Mind and Writings. I HAVE to speak in this paper upon the genius and character of Ebenezer Elliott, whose stormy life is now ended, and whose great musical heart lies still and silent in the grave. And although, if I consulted my own feelings, the love which I bore the departed poet would prompt me to write a threnody over his ashes, rather than a cool analysis of his mind and writings, yet I will endeavour to merge all private sympathies in this discourse, and treat my subject in a Catholic spirit, from the historical point of view alone. Fortunately, the materials for this work are near at hand ; and the poet has not been long 14 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, enough dead to have passed into the perplexing regions either of mythology or tradition. Indeed it was but yesterday that I conversed with him in his own house, heard him read his own poems, and joined with his fair daughters in singing the beautiful melodies which, at their request, ho \vrota and adapted to some of our most popular airs. And when I think of the good and brave old -man with his venerable grey hairs his kind eyes, now beaming with love, and now flashing with indignant fire, as he spoke of human wrong and misery I can scarcely reconcile myself to the idea that he is gone for ever from the world. The stern truth, however, returns to me with solemn emphasis, in spite of my incredulity ; and I know but too surely, that I shall see him no more. It is, nevertheless, a high consolation to look back upon the noble and manly life which he lived ; for he was an exemplar worthy, in many impor- tant particulars, to be imitated and reverenced. He was no half-and-half man, wavering with doubtful indecision between two opinions, but an earnest and sincere, if not a complete and many-sided character. It was his way through- out life, first of all to master every subject that interested him, and then heroically, and without calculating the chances of defeat, or caring for the world's sanction or opposition, to throw himself into the arena as its champion. Like tho warriors of the old chivalry, wherever OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 15 he appeared he left the marks"*of his battle-axe behind him. There is no mistaking the man in any of his performances ; for whatever he touches bears the impress of his own indi- viduality. Of all men, therefore, who have written books, he is, perhaps, the hardest, in a literary point of view, to imitate. Indeed, Nature seems to have cast him in such sharp and decisive moulds that she might be sure of her man, and secure herself from all counterfeits of him. It is at all events certain, that while the mannerism of every other considerable poet has been seized upon by verse- wrights, and persons of that ilk, and passed into the general currency of literature, Elliott is the only bard whose genius has not been corrupted by these base coiners. Looking at him through his writings, he reminds me of some grim Cy- clop, into whose body a divine soul has passed, radiating him with glory, and making even his deformities beautiful. For he is not dressed in the ordinary costume of the Bards, having his garland and singing robes around him (such as Milton and Spencer wore) ; but he appears in the naked buff of a hard-working man grimed with soot and sweat, and singing of the " ac- cursed Bread Tax," made manifest to him as such, in the empty trenchers of his famished children ! We must not look, therefore, in his pages for that external polish and courtly bear- ing which characterise the highest nobility of 16 OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. the poetic order; for there is nothing which he so little professes. And yet he is not without polish, but, on the contrary, he sometimes sur- prises us with delicate touches, and even with whole pictures, finished in the best style of art. The secret of this rude demeanour this bandy- ing of coarse names and crooked epithets, which are so common in his writings, lies primarily in the earnestness of his nature, and, in a secondary sense, in that lack of early culture which he sets forth so prominently in his autobiography. It is this rugged, fiery, and impetuous utterance, however, which gives the main charm to his poetry, and makes it, like Luther's speech, a con- tinual battle. I, for one, do not wish to see these scars and trenches erased from his writings. They are the birth-pangs of his spirit, as it burst forth, with mighty upheavings, from its dumb sepulchre, and arose triumphant into life and melody. In his later writings he evinces more mastery over his imagination and feelings, than in most of his earlier productions, but his wild spirit was never entirely tamed ; and the spots and claws of the leopard are everywhere visible in his pages. Still it would not be doing justice to him as a Poet, if one were to deny that he was ignorant of his art. Few men, indeed, have proved themselves greater masters than he, of the secrets of rhythmical science. Many of his poems are executed OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 17 with consummate skill ; and his descriptive passages are so true, natural, and beautiful, that they can scarcely be surpassed by any similar efforts in the language. He excels most in this kind of writing because he is always at home with Nature and loves her like a mother, with a gentle, confiding, and most affectionate heart. But no sooner do the dark aspects of humanity the wrongs, the follies, the pride, and the crimes of men, pass over his mind, than he bursts forth into pas- sionate and vehement exclamation, and the calm heavens, and the meek and beautiful earth, are suddenly darkened and distorted with the fiery ashes of his wrath. We see in all that he does a strong man ; a sort of gigantic Titan, who hates his chains ; in whom the Divine impulses are so powerful that he must speak even if it be in flame ; for although he has a wonderful faculty of condensation both in thought and matter yet he rarely evinces that subdued power, that central balance and equipoise which are the highest marks of greatness. He knows nothing of the deep repose, the sorrowful strength, which is manifested in Wordsworth ; nor did he ever fully appreciate the writings of that noble and philosophical Bard. He mis- took in several instances the artistic simplicity, and the pure Greek beauty, of Wordsworth, for sheer weakness, and thought very meanly of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets. He allowed that 18 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, there was merit in the " Peter '.Bell," but gave his praise grudgingly, like one who was half ashamed of his judgment. He had no sym- pathy with those high speculations which are for ever haunting the mind of Wordsworth, and are so beautifully embodied in his poetry. He was a far-seeing, much-enduring, hard-working, practical man; dealing always with practical questions, and rarely attempting to soar into the higher regions of thought. Whatever was tinged with mysticism, and did not represent some tangible matter, which he could grasp and wrestle with, was to him idle and empty dream- ing. He was cradled into poetry by human wrong and misery ; and was emphatically, the Bard of Poverty singing of the poor man's loves and sorrows, and denouncing his oppres- sors. This he conceived to be his mission ; and whilst the Corn Laws existed, and Labour and Famine went hand in hand together, he had no time for the dainty speculations of philosophy, even if he had possessed the capacity for them. His mind, however, was not metaphysical ; but as I said, practical ; "and his want of relish for Wordsworth as a whole, lay in the necessity of his intellect. I remember reading to him, after a long conversation upon the relative merits of Wordsworth and Byron, the fine ode of the former poet, called " Intimations of Im- mortality, gathered from Recollections of early Childhood ;" but notwithstanding the profound OP EBENEZEB ELLIOTT. ID significance, and deep anthem-melody of the poem, he would not acknowledge its merit. Nay, he confessed that it was beyond his depth, although he afterwards quoted one or two fine lines, which had struck him during the reading, and seemed to haunt him in spite of himself. This poem, which may be called the Apotheosis of life, and is in every respect a wonderful per- formance, both in spirit, compass, and execution, is the test by which one might measure the depth and culture of all candidates for honors in the Poetical Tripos. And as some one has said I believe Berkeley that unless a man have doubted the fact of his own existence, he may be sure he has no aptitude for metaphysics, so it may likewise be said, that he who cannot understand the moral fitness and spiritual aim of the ode in Question, has no claim to be admitted into the highest regions of poetical inspiration. The truth of this postulate is borne out, so far as Elliott is concerned, both in his public writings and private discourse. The fine Pla- tonism of the ode alluded to, finds no echo in his heart ; the shadowy recollections, as of a dim and forgotten existence, which flit over the golden brain of childhood, and which to Words- worth are evidences of an old, dateless, and eternal birth, and which, " be they what they may, Are still the common light of all our day; Are still the fountain light of all our seeing j 20 LIFE, CHARACTER, AIS'D GENIUS, Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of th' Eternal Silence ;" . these recollections, I say, suggest no such deep thoughts and high emprises, to the mind of Elliott, but have a psychological base, and may be psychologically explained. He looked, in fact, for a literal meaning in the ode, and missed, therefore, the whole grandeur and sub- limity of its aim. " For what purpose," said he, " should the soul return again to earth, after it has once left it ? Is life then, and such a life as this famine-life of England, so love- able ?" The question is a key to Elliott's mind, and we can see very well, how many, and what kind of chambers in the Spiritual kingdom, it will unlock. I find the same practical and ob- stinate question, occurring in one of his latest poems, the " Plaint" written, as he told me, one night to withdraw his mind from the pain and agony of his bodily suffering. This "Plaint," which is the most mystical of all his Poems, is pitched in the same key-note as ITland's u Silent Land," and is wonderfully beautiful and strik- ing. It is the sorrowful wail of a soul wander- ing in the dark, on the very margin of the eternal shores ; companioned by millions, and yet going all alone, into the dark, silent, dread, Unknown. I know of nothing so sad and melancholy in literature; and the gloomy, al- most heart-breaking effect of the poem is height- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 21 ened by the dreary melody of the rhythm, and the skill whereby the main idea of one verse is repeated in the next, and merged into some new and still more mournful thought. The question to which I have alluded will be found in the sixth verse of this poem, where the desire for the re-union of the soul, either with the world, or with its ex- tenants in the immortal spheres, is regarded as selfish and profane, because God is all. Here is the poem : PLAINT. " Dark, deep, and cold, the current flows, Unto the sea where no wind blows, Seeking the land which no one knows. O'er its sad gloom still comes and goes, The mingled wail of friends and foes, Borne to the land which no one knows. nr. Why shrieks for help yon wretch who goes, With millions, from a world of woes, Unto the land which no one knows ? IV. Tho* myriads go with him who goes, Alone he goes, where no wind blows, Unto the land which no one knows. For all must go where no wind blows, And none can go for him who goes ; None, none return, whence no one knows. B2 22 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, Yet why should he who shrieking goes With millions, from a world of woes, Reunion seek with it or those ? YII. Alone with God, where no wind blows, And Death, His shadow, doom'd he goes, That God is there, the shadow shows. Oh ! shoreless Deep ! where no wind blows ! And thou, oh Land, which no one knows I That God is All, His shadow shows." Still, although Elliott could not penetrate the deep allusions of Wordsworth, nor appreciate his philosophy, he held the Bard in great reverence, and spoke of the u Excursion" as one of the poems destined for immortality. He could quote all its finest descriptive passages ; and regarded many of Wordsworth's Minor Ef- fusions, as pieces of pure Nature. His love for Southey, " who condescended," as he says, " to teach him the art of poetry," was sincere, natural, and characteristic. For Elliott was a worshipper of Power and Beauty, and delighted in the architectural pomp of poetry, where he could sit as in a vast cathedral, and contemplate the gorgeous creations of genius upon its painted domes. Hence he spoke of " Thalaba" as the most wonderful effort of the human imagina- tion, and more than one of his pieces is stained -with the fiery colouring of that caballistic poem. OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 23 His admiration of Byron amounted almost to idolatry ; and he was impatient of all dissent from his judgment in this particular. Neither would he allow you to differ from him, unless you could at once substantiate your opinion, by a direct reference to the poet's writings. Nor was it easy to convince him that there was a single flaw in the rhetoric or sentiments of his noble idol. He would not admit that he was ir- religious or immoral in his writings; and de- nounced all such judgment as " cant, twaddle, and hypocrisy." It has become fashionable, he said, to abuse Lord Byron but he will live when the bones of his blasphemers shall have rotted. And then after he had exhausted the fierce tor- nadoes of L.1-.3 v,ra.tli against all such blasphe- mers, he would quote you endless passages from this poet, all of them full of human beauty, and breathing a fine spirit of natural piety. He had a rich and costly edition of " Childe Harold" illustrated, if I remember rightly, by Turner which he cherished with an almost holy love ; for he declared this poem to be the finest master- piece of melody which our noble English tongue can boast of. Shelley and Keats were likewise great favourites with him. The former he loved not only for his genius, but for his deep sympathy with his race ; and the latter he esti- mated more highly than any modern poet, with the exception of Byron ; not so much from what he had actually accomplished, as, for the pro- 24 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, mise which his performances manifested. In these likings, and estimates of the genius of his contemporaries, we see the objective tendency of his mind, and its delight in sensuous, rather than in spiritual beauty and speculative thought. I think, therefore, from these considerations, and others to be shewn hereafter, that Elliott can scarcely be classed amongst the highest order of poetical minds. And yet he belongs to the " true breed of the vermin," as he himself expressed it, in speaking of a much humbler person. For in his writings are to be found all the elements of a beautiful and aesthetic, as well as of a grand moral poetry. And it is precisely in the aesthetic and moral sphere, as distinguished from the spiritual, that he takes his place as a poet ; looking upon all things through the medium of the beautiful, in their relation to the moral laws. There is something Hebraic and sublime in the stern justice which he executes upon falsehood and wrong-doing. He is like the Indian imperso- nation of Brahm all eyes, all ears, all feet keen to see, powerful to perform, swift to overtake. He has one central idea terrible and awful in its aspect, although beautiful and beneficent in its spirit before which he tries all causes, and men, and things. It is the Eternal Idea of Right ; his synonyme of God. And this Idea is perpetually present in his mind, pervades all his thoughts, will not be OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 25 shuffled nor cheated, but demands a full satis- faction from all violators of it. The Titled Scoundrel, and the Mitred Priest, the Bread- Tax-Eater, the Fox-Hunter, the Game-Law- Squire, the Hundred Popes of Englands' Jesuitry, are all summoned before this tribunal, and dealt with sometimes with an over-severe judgment. One can make allowance, however, for the occasional exaggeration of the sentence, because the doom of his delinquents is always just. Besides a man, whose feelings, as he says, " have been hammered until they have become cold-short^ and are apt to snap and fly off in sarcasms," is not likely to be choice in his expressions, when he is dealing with known lies ; nor have they any mercy to expect at his hands. For poetry, with Elliott, was no pas- time, nor even a musical unrest, but a stern and inspired demonic labour deep as life, strong as death ; involving life, or death issues. He had a great contempt for dilitante poetry, and could pardon nothing short of genius ; and even then, genius must be married to practical endeavour, or God had thrown away his highest gift upon an indolent dreamer. " We cannot spare one true man from the ranks of thought and progress, in these distracted times," he said; "and it grieves me to see any man waste his talents in con- structing cobwebs, when the world has to be built anew." For he looked upon the world as altogether diseased; right and wrong had 26 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, changed places in it, and the divine was under- most. A hireling church, and a do-nothing, eat -every- thing Aristocacy, were his nightmare of this moral death ; and he devoted all his powers to crush it. The waving corn-fields, and the sweet-singing birds, piping their rica melodies in the trees and hedge-rows around him, made him sad. " God has given us food to eat, and man. the tyrant and oppressor, has taxed it !" he one day exclaimed, as I wandered with him, in the valley below his house, "and these beautiful birds are singing, as if there were no sorrow in the world. Ye break my heart, ye little birds" he added, turning with his eyes brimful of tears, to the unconscious musi- cians. It was a touching sight ; for Elliott was then grey, and bowed down with the weight of years and affliction. He could not find one pure, unmixed pleasure in all the landscapes, wood- lands, and cloudlands of Nature ; for this Divine harmony which he saw every where around him, became, as I said, sad and painful when contrasted, as by the very law of his mind it was sure to be, with the wretchedness and misery of men. For the Poet had looked upon Nature in so many and such various moods, that all her phenomena and forms were transfigured by the power of his feelings and passions, and had be- come to him the symbols and the representatives of human thought and life. Nature and man's life were fused indeed into one great whole, and OF EBENEZEB ELLIOTT* 27 i the midst of sunshine, and waters, and singing birds, he heard the wild wail of famine, and the shrieks and moans of bleeding and broken hearts. Nay, he took a strange and unwearied pleasure in drawing pictures of woe and misery, and making them speak in a language that melts all hearts. We may thank Crabbe for much of this, and for the gloomy colouring which darkens the genius of our manful and earnest poet. Crabbe was his model in early life, and con- firmed the natural bias of his mind towards these dark and doleful subjects. All his heroes are unhappy ; the victims of social wrong and Corn Law oppression, He regarded Poverty as the waste and flaming Saharra of Life, where no flowers grew, no rain descended, no stars shone. It was his extremes t, deepest hell ; and he peopled it with horror and despair. On the other hand, outward prosperity and a " Home of Taste," for the working man, were his highest visions of a terrestial Paradise. These were the two Poles of his ethical and political science. He could not understand that Poverty was no evil ; that it might be a great good ; capable of yielding priceless blessings : he called it an un- mitigable curse. For he looked at it with the eyes of a Political Economist, and could not, or would not, entertain it as a question of morals. From a very sufficient trial of poverty, however, I can pronounce it good for discipline, consola- tion, guidance, strength ; a very Hercules' 28 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, cradle ; and not at all, therefore, a curse, but a blessing; provided always that a trustful and hopeful heart be at the bottom of it. But Elliott could not see the Angel through this disguise of rags ; and his professed business was to denounce it as a loathesome harlot ; the mother of crime and infamy. As a politician, he was stone-blind to the moral uses of suffer- ing ; and neither the public history of nations, nor the private lives of great men, who had been tried and purified in that fire, could instruct him in the wisdom of the Institution, or induce him to regard it as a divine appointment. Free trade was his religion, and heaven was paved with cheap bread, and rich mosaics of golden untaxed grain. From the altar of this enthu- siasm he preached his new gospel of commerce, which was to emancipate the world from tyranny and superstition, and regenerate the lives and ways of men. It is curious and instruc- tive to observe the strong faith which he has in the power and consequences of this material reform ; what impossible things he expects from it! and how earnestly he believes the demon that possesses him, and speaks through his tongue. Had he been born a little earlier, he would have been a leader in the Commonwealth perhaps a Puritan preacher, a regicide, and Poet Laureate to the Lord Protector. He would have fought well too, at Marston Moor, if one may judge from the battle-music which rings OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 29 through his verses. But as a divine guide, and teacher of heavenly things, he has no faculty, and therefore no mission. He is a poet, but not a priest ; and one always feels dark and lonely with him, except when he goes forth to worship on the hill tops. The beautiful and sorrowful stars instruct us in a holier lore than that of Corn Law Rhymes, and anti-Corn Law curses ; and the poet himself is never so human, natural, and happy, as when singing the songs which they inspire. His thoughts and ways are his own, however ; the proper and necessary unfolding of his nature, and should be received and accepted as such. The philosophy of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham was the substratum upon which his mind was built ; and this philosophy, interpene- trated by his genius, found at last a voice which burst forth in Corn Law Rhymes. It was the first melody that ever came from the dead and monotonous mill- wheels of political economy; and is the best result which I, for one, can hope for from that quarter. The works of the above authors, and those of the good Colonel Thomp- son, made Elliott a politician ; and he no sooner saw the evil effects of the Corn Laws upon the industry of the nation, than he began to de- nounce them. Unfortunately, his hatred of monopoly made him a monopolist in his hatred ; limited his vision, dwarfed his sympathies, and converted him into a kind of Polyphemus a SO LIFB, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, one-eyed King of Song. The Corn Laws were at the root of all our evils ; social, moral, poli- tical, and religious. Destroy these laws, and you will have free trade, and with it a happy, contented, and virtuous population ! Such was the remedy which the Poet proposed for the deep spiritual disease of the nation. His insight did not extend beyond the cuticle of the world ; and all its spiritual wants and necessities were as impenetrably hidden from his eyes as if they had been closed by the seven seals spoken of in the Apocalypse. But no man living in his time had a clearer prac- tical vision, or a more ready aud seasonable wit. He always struck at the right moment, whilst the iron was hot, and sent the hissing and burning sparks around him, with good effect. And thus whether speaking at public meetings, lecturing at mechanics' institutes, or writing political lyrics, he was always successful. His early poems are remarkable for rude power, and for a wild a?id somewhat turgid imagination. They remind me of the Yoluspa, and the Prose Edda of the Scandinavians, where the Norse genius revels in unrestrained license, and conjures its gigantic creations out of the tempest and the whirlwind, and the ghostly regions of eternal ice and snow. We see that the wild Eagle has not yet acquired the mastery over its wings ; although in all its heavenward attempts there is much of glory, if also of defeat. OF EBBNEZER ELLIOTT. SI It is extremely interesting to trace the progress of the poet's mind from his first effort, "The Vernal Walk," made in his seventeenth year, up to the publication of the " Ranter" and the " Corn Law Rhymes." He gathers fresh strength at every step, and beats up the thun- der from the hard highway as he marches along, giving us assurance that an earnest fighting man is on the road, who means, by the grace of God, to become a hero and a conqueror. Unfor- tunately, he is too often a Quixotic spendthrift of his power : and, although he does not fight windmills, he often grinds in them like blind Sampson and that too, with no practical result, but merely to shake off the superabundance of his strength. I have read the " Vernal Walk" with pleasure, as a literary curiosity ; and with the same feelings which induce us to look into the early literature of great nations. It is very singular too, the striking resemblance in the developement of ideas which exists between the youth of man, and the youth of nations. Wonder and worship are the elements of human culture, and religion flows naturally out of the loving heart, in the presence of Nature. Hence all great nations have their theogonies andtheo- sophies, whose origin lies in the very morning of their existence; and hence also the earliest efforts of our best poets have a religious source. Elliott's " Vernal Walk," originally published by Mr. Fowler, of Cambridge, is full of this de- 32 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, votional feeling, and is moreover no inconsider- able performance, in the literary sense, if we take into the account his neglected education, and the age at which it was written. I fancy also that I can discover in this poem the seeds of the future man, his love of Nature, his wor- ship of the beautiful, his earnestness, strength, and weakness. The same fusion of human sor- row with natural beauty, which marks all he does in after years, is likewise visible here. It is, however, an imitative and reminiscent, rather than an inspired poem ; and he apologises for including it in his collected works by saying, that as the idiot of the family is sometimes a favourite, so this poem is endeared to him by the critical persecution which it has suffered. I subjoin a few extracts, which will give some idea of this earliest effusion of the poet : " Hark ! 'tis the hymn of Nature ! Love- taught birds Salute, with songs of gratulation sweet, The aweet May morning. How harmoniously Over these meadows of the rising sun The music floats ! O Love ! Love ever young ! On the soft bosom of the Spring reclined ; Nurse of the tender thought, and generous deed ! Thou com'st to bless thy children. * * Oft have I passed yon cottage door at eve, Where sat the swain, his daily labour done, Nursing his little children on his knee, And kissing them at times, whilst o'er him bent His happy partner, smiling as she viewed Her lisping babes ; then have I blessed thee Love ! And fondly called thee, Fount of Social Peace ! What art thou, deathless, all-pervading power, OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 33 That, like a meek, yet universal sun, Thro* universal Nature gently shin'st ? Art thou a ray from light's unclouded source ? An emanation of divinity ? No; thou art God!" " Here springs the odorous primrose ; sweetly here The orchard blooms ; here bees are full of Spring. The poet courts the violet as he strays ; But Winter cometh, and the flower is gone ; And then, saith he, ' 'Tis faded.' Thus, O Man ! Thou liv'st, and diest ! Strong is thy youthful frame, But soon the feeble steps of Age approach, Follow'd by Death. Even on thy new-made grave Oblivion sits " ** E'er there lived one soul To worship thee, oh, God of Holiness ! "Wrapt in incomprehensibility, Pleased with self contemplation, thou did'st muse In silence on thine own eternal thoughts. Through all extent thou piercest ; nothing is Where thou art not : even in me thou dwellest, Thou movest the strings of mental melody Which tune my soul to harmony and love. Thou bid'st my fancy soar to realms of light, Bid'st reaton, holy reason, muse on thee And in thy works behold thee, throned o'er heights And depths of glory inaccessible. I, in the majesty of Nature, see The greatness of eternal majesty ; I, in her smiling scenery, behold The bounteous smile of beauty infinite. Thy goodness is unbounded, God of Love ! Here, or wherever uncreated light Flames in the sea of ever-vital beams, World peopled as this vernal air with birds- Father and God I thy sons shall worship thee !* 34 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, But notwithstanding that these early effusions are rudely and coarsely constructed, there are gleams of real talent in them, and touches of that deep pathos whereof Elliott has since proved himself so great a master. The Rejected's Song in " The Second Nuptials" may be in- stanced as a specimen of his early skill in this department of poetry. At a very early period of his poetical career, he was fortunate enough to secure the friendship of the poet Southey ; who, on the appearance of his second volume, which originally comprised " Both weir a dramatic poem ; " The Exile," and " Second Nuptials," with a Preface from "Peter Faultless to his brother Simon" defying his reviewers wrote him as follows : " There is power in the least of these tales ; but the higher you pitch your tone the better you suc- ceed. Thirty years ago they would have made your reputation ; and thirty years hence, the world \vill wonder that they did not do so/' Elliott's third volume contained a satire under the title of " Giaour," which, strange enough, was a vehement attack upon Lord Byron. The secret of its history is one of the many curiosities of literature. According to Elliott's own statement, it was written with a view to goad Lord Byron into a notice of him ; and to revenge himself for an affront which he fancied he had received from the noble lord, in the old Bank at Rotherlram. OF EBENEZEB ELLIOTT. 35 The party who relates this story, thinks it should receive but a qualified credence. There seems, however, to be no reason to doubt its accuracy since the original statement was made by El- liott himself; and I have frequently remarked, that he was not only candid in the announce- ment, but severe in the condemnation of his own failings. It is, moreover, easy enough to see how a young and sensitive man conscious of his own unacknowledged merits, might be en- trapped by the impetuosity of his feelings, into an ungenerous revenge of a supposed insult. Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" is an example of this headstrong retaliation; and Elliott could very well plead it as a -precedent, if not as a justification. But in neither instance must we draw too hasty conclusions, from these erratic outbursts ; for they are no true indica- tions of the character of either party. In both cases it is wounded pride that speaks, and not a corrupt and revengeful heart. I do not seek, however, to apologize for Elliott's conduct, in this instance ; and will merely add that Lord Byron took no notice of his assailant. "Corn Law Rhymes and the Ranter" ap- peared next, in one volume, and were noticed in the "Eclectic," and in "Black wood's Magazine." In 1829, he published the " Village Patriarch," which was praised by the u Westminster," but did not bring him the suffrage and applause of the public. He owes the celebrity which ho 36 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, soon after acquired, to an accidental visit which Dr. Bowring paid to T. A. Ward, Esq., of Sheffield. This gentleman placed a copy of the " Corn Law Rhymes, &c.," in the hands of the Doctor who was immediately struck with the great merit of the Poet, and was subsequently introduced to him by Mr. Ward. In returning to London, Dr. Bowring visited William How- itt, at Nottingham, where he met Wordsworth, and made them acquainted with the " w r onderful poet of Sheffield, not Montgomery, but a new name." Mr. Howitt claims to have directed Southey's attention to Elliott, through Words- worth ; but this is an error ; for Elliott had already been known to Southey, for ten or eleven years. In London, Dr. Bowring shewed El- liott's poems to Bulwer, who introduced them to the public in an anonymous letter in the " New Monthly Magazine." It is dated March 19th, 1831, and is entitled "A Letter to Dr. Southey, &c., Poet -Laureate, respecting a re- markable poem by a Mechanic." Bulwer con- cludes his letter thus : " And now I think you will admit that I am borne out in the praises with which I have prefaced this poem. I do not know whether the author be young, or old; if the former, I must unaffectedly add, that to my judgment, he has given such a promise as few men, even in this age an age wronged and unappreciated would be capable of performing/' This friendly notice may be regarded as the OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 37 culminating point in Elliott's poetical career; for from this time his fame spread over the land, and his merit was generally acknowledged. Miss Jewsbury in the "Athenaeum," Mrs. Hof- land in the " New Monthly" and various other writers hastened to pay him homage; and Thomas Carlyle wrote a genial criticism upon his writ- ings, in the a Edinburgh Review." In 1833, 4, and 5, he collected and published his poems in three successive volumes, and in 1840, the pre- vious editions being exhausted, he published the whole of his works in one volume, through Tait of Edinburgh. His later Poems have since been published in two volumes, by Fox, London, under the title of u More Yerse and Prose," by the Corn Law Rhymer. I have no time here, to enter into a critical analysis of these works, in their separate cha- racter ; but I may make a few short remarks upon them by way of illustrating the genius and limits of the writer. It is singular enough, as I said a while ago, that his tales are all sad, and his heroes unhappy. He had studied the physiology and anatomy of human misery, and was its poetical demonstrator. Every painful throb, and every agony of the heart, was fami- liar to his ear, and he reproduced them in melodies which drop down into the soul like the tears of Music. He loves the cypress and the yew ; and the gloomy aisles of death and the grave. I have before alluded to his powers 38 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, of pathos ; and it is strange how such tender- ness, pity, and deep womanly love, should be united to so much rugged manliness, sternness, fierceness, and valour, as met together in his noble and hospitable nature. It was this mix- ture of opposing elements, however, which gave strength, beauty, and consistency, to his cha-- racter ; and although his curses and his hatred were so violent, that he exhausted all the capa- bilities of language, in his utterance of them yet there was nothing low and vulgar in all this, and looked at from the true point of vision it was even grand and prophetic, like the half savage, half archangelic denunciations of the old Hebrew seers. For this hate sprang from love ; from the inmost depths of a heart that vibrated with sympathies for all that was high and dear to man. Hence an act of oppression done to the meanest creature was done to him ; and as if he had been God's deputy on earth, he seized his thunderbolts, and hurled them flaming upon the head of the aggressor. He pleads for the poor, because they have no one else to plead for them ; and it is most beautiful and touching to see him kneeling before the Maker of all the worlds, and imploring heavenly justice at his hands, for these wronged and suffering children. He is blamed for writing political poetry, and his most friendly critics Carlyle amongst the number admonished him of the fleeting nature of such effusions. But politics were his element ; OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 39 the motive and the cue for all his actions, and literary achievements. His mission, indeed, from the beginning to the end of his life, was that of a reformer, chiefly in the political sphere ; and he clothed his message in the forms of poetry, and the robes of song, that he might render it attractive, and successful. In later ages his poetry will mark the history of his time ; for it is the embodiment of the wrongs and sufferings of the people, and of that " blood- less revolution" which has just terminated in commercial freedom. He has reflected likewise in his verse all the great political movements of the age; and we see there, in shadowy outline, the mighty pageantry of Europe as it passed in blood and fire before the eyes of men in '48 and '9. Nothing escapes him connected with these external movements ; for he is deeply and per- sonally interested, not only as a man, but as a poet, in all these outward and human concerns. His genius, however, is not universal but limited. He has but one die in his mint wherewith he stamps all his issues. He does not, like Shak- spere, give us endless types of characters, but reproduces himself in his poems, as Byron did before him. His sympathies are deep and ex- tensive ; but they are all of one class. His very love is sorrow. He cannot laugh at any time, without weeping. He has wrung from knowledge its deepest lesson, and finds it bitter as blood. His teaching is all hopeless save in 40 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, one direction, and that in the lowest of all di- rections viz., the political. He lacked faith and spiritual insight, and could not harmonize the distracting elements of the human world; nor contemplate them aloof from their present and practical bearings. The world disturbed him too much, and he was too much of a man to be a philosopher in it. His poetry was not art although he was an artist but impulse and passion. He did not, like Goethe, study men and things, nor pass through all the grades of animal, intellectual, and spiritual experience, for literary purposes or for his development as a complete man ; he had no such ice in his nature ; he was all fervour and fire, and he loved the world too well to make experiments upon it for artistic purposes. There is a moral in his politics, and a moral even in his most trifling effusions ; and whilst he spares not the classes above him in social rank, neither does he spare those of his own order. A knave is as infamous to him in a fustian jacket, as in an ermine robe. I have said that Crabbe was the Poet who first formed his style of writing and determined the natural tendency of his mind to sorrowful themes. He followed Crabbe likewise in the structure of his tales, although he is immeasur- ably superior to him in imagination, diction, and melody. " The Exile," dedicated to Bulwer, is after this model but deeper in its feeling than OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 41 anything to be found in Crabbe, and incom- parably more powerful. So likewise the poem called cc The Letter," is of that household cha- racter which Crabbe loved to delineate. This is a beautiful, simple, touching, and domestic tragedy ; a common tale, of common occurrence. It is managed throughout with great skill, and contains passages of real and marvellous beauty. Both these poems are examples of the power of genius to exalt human passion and human misery, and invest them with enduring interest. His picture of the maiden Anna prior to her mar- riage and desertion, is one of the sweetest in poetry, and he ransacks all the charms of nature wherewith to clothe her virgin beauty. Indeed, whenever he speaks of woman, his words melt into music ; and violets and all sweet flowers spring up and blossom around him, as if by en- chantment. The poem which he calls " Love," is almost an Anthem ; and would be worthy to be celebrated as such, in some grand Cathedral service, if it were perfect in its representations of the divine passion. But in this, as in all other of Elliott's performances, we miss the highest voices, the choral symphonies of the spiritual spheres. He sings of human love in its relation to the sexes, and to social life, with the lyre and emphasis of a master; but of the divinest love, to which all other love is but the prelude and the initiation, he knows nothing. He sticks to flesh and blood, and dare not trust c 2 42 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, the heavenly inspirations, lest they should lead him into mysticism. Still this poem is worthy to have been pronounced at the Banquet of Plato ; and old Plutarch would have worship- ped the author of it. Let the following passages speak for themselves : " Love ! eldest Muse ! Time heard thine earliest lay "When light thro' Heaven led forth the new-born day. The stars that give no accent to the wind, Are golden odes, and music to the mind; So, Passion's thrill is Nature's minstrelsy, So, to the young heart love is poetry. God of the soul ! illumination caught From thy bright glance,, is energy to thought; And song bereft of thee is cold and tame. ***** But when the heart looks thro' the eyes of love On Nature's form, things lifeless breathe and move. The dewy forest smiles; dim Morning shakes The rainbow from his plumage ; music wakes The dimpled ripple of the azure wave ; In fiery floods green hills their tresses lave, And myriad flowers, all brightning from the dews, Day's earth-born stars, their golden beams effuse ; Transported passion bids rocks, floods, and skies. Burst into song, while her delighted eyes To all they see their own rich hues impart ; And the heart's language speaks to every heart." A little further on, I find the following lines, which, as they have a personal bearing upon the poet and his home, will be read with interest : watched by love, he trembles still. Lord ! when our brother wakes, may they Who watch beneath Thy footstool, say, ' Another wanderer is forgiven ! Another child is born in Heaven !"* " Forest Worship/' is, likewise, a beautiful poem, notwithstanding the mixture of politics and religion which it contains. lie takes us at once " Within the sunlit forest ; Our roof the bright blue sky, Where fountains flow, and wild flowers blov We lift our hearts on high. Beneath the frown of wicked men Our country's strength is bowing ; But, thanks to God! they can't prevent The lone wild-flowers from blowing, High, high, above the tree-tops, The lark is soaring free ; Where streams the light through broken clouds His speckled breast I see : Beneath the might of wicked men The poor man's worth is dying; But, thanked be God ! in spite of them, The lark still warbles flying ! OP EBENE2ER ELLIOTT. 63 The preacher prays ' Lord bless us I* ' Lord bless us !' Echo cries ; * Amen !' the breezes murmur low, Amen P the rill replies ; The ceaseless toil of wo-worn hearts, The proud with pangs are paying; But here, O God of earth and heaven ! The humble heart is praying ! How softly in the pauses Of song, re-echoed wide, The cushet's coo, the linnet's lay, O'er rill and river glide ! With evil deeds of evil men Th' affrighted land is ringing, But still, O Lord ! the pious heart And soul-toned voice are singing ! Hush ! hush ! the Preacher preacheth! ' Wo ! to the oppressor, wo !' But sudden gloom o'ercasts the sun And saddened flowers below : So frowns the Lord ! but tyrants, ye Deride his indignation, And see not in his gathered brow Your days of tribulatiQn ! |if Speak low, thou heaven-paid teacher ! The tempest bursts above : God whispers in the thunder ; hear The terrors of his love ! On useful hands, and honest hearts, The base their wrath are wreaking; But, thank'd be God ! they can't prevent The storm of heaven from speaking." T will close these extracts with a few more specimens from his miscellaneous poems ; and the reader will then have a, fair conception of 64 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, the range of Elliott's mind. The two which follow are very striking and beautiful, and are in his highest manner : LEAVES AND MEN. ' Drop, drop into the grave, Old Leaf, Drop, drop into the grave ; Thy acorns grov/n, thy acorns sown, Drop, drop into the grave. December's tempests rave, Old Leaf ; Above thy forest-grave, Old Leaf ; Drop, drop into the grave. The birds in Spring, will sweetly sing, That death alone is sad ; The grass will grow, the primrose show, That death alone is sad. Lament above thy grave, Old Leaf ; For what has life to do with grief ? 'Tis death alone that's sad. What then ? We two have both lived through The sunshine and the rain ; And blessed be He, to me and thee. Who sent His sun and rain. We've had our sun and rain, Old Leaf, And God will send again, Old Leaf, The sunshine and the rain. Race after race of leaves and men, Bloom, wither, and are gone; As winds, and waters, rise and fall, So life and death roll on ; And long as ocean heaves, Old Leaf, And bud and fade the leaves, Old Leaf Will life and death roll on, OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 65 How like am I to thee, Old Leaf ! We'll drop together down ; How like art thou to me, Old Leaf! We'll drop together down. I'm grey, and thou art brown, Old Leaf I We'll drop together down, Old Leaf, We'll drop together down. Drop, drop into the grave, Old Leaf, Drop, drop into the grave ; Thy acorns grown, thy acorns sown, Drop, drop into the grave. December's tempests rave, Old Leaf, Above thy forest-grave, Old Leaf j Drop, drop into the grave ! " OH, TELL US. I. " Companioned each, by all and none, A mob of souls, yet each alone, We journey to the dread Unknown. II. In nothing found, in all things shown, In all life living, yet alone, Where may it be, that dread Unknown ? III. Oh, who, or what, so dreadly shown, And world-attended, yet alone, Is that all-sought, all-known Unknown;"' G6 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, The following lines remind us of Goethe : TO FANNY ANN. " As the flower bloweth, As the stream floweth, Daughter of beauty, Do Lhou thy duty. What, tho 1 the morrow May dawn in sorrow ? E'en as light hasteth, Darkness, too, wasteth : Morn then discloses, Rain-drops on roses ! Daughter of beauty, What then is duty ? Time says, ' Death knoweth !' Death says, Time shovveth !' * The poem which I shall now quote was sent me in MS., and appeared originally in the " Truth Seeker" Magazine, edited by my friend, Dr. Lees, of Leeds. It is entitled LET ME KEST. (t He does well who does his best; Is he weary ? Let him rest : Brothers ! I have done my best ; I am weary let me rest. After toiling oft in vain, Baffled, yet to struggle fain ; After toiling long to gain Little good, and mickle pain ; Let me rest But lay me low, Where the hedge- side roses blow ; Where the little daisies grow ; Where the winds a- Maying go ; OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 67 Where the foot-path rustics plod ; Where the breeze-bowed poplars nod ; Where the old woods worship God ; Where His pencil paints the sod; Where the wedded throstle sings ; Where the young bird tries his wings ; Where the wailing plover swings Near the runlet's rushy springs ! Where at times the tempest's roar Shaking distant sea and shore, Still will rave old Barnsdale o'er, To be heard by me no more. There beneath the breezy west Tired and thankful, let merest. Like a child, that sleepeth best On its gentle mother's breast." The following poems may be cited, as specimens of the pathetic power developed in the Corn Law Rhymes. i. " Where the poor cease to pay, Go loved one, and rest. Thou art wearing away To the land of the blest. Our father is gone Where the wronged are forgiven, And that dearest one, Thy husband, in heaven, II. No toil in despair ; No tyrant, no slave; No Bread-tax is there, With a maw like the grave ; 68 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, But the Poacher, thy pride, Whelmed in ocean afar : And his brother who died Land-butchered in war ; III. And their mother who sank Broken-hearted, to rest; And the baby that drank Till it froze on her breast; With tears, and with smiles, Are waiting for thee, In the beautiful isles, Where the wronged are the free. 1 IV. Go loved one, and rest; Where the poor cease to pay I To the land of the blest Thou art wearing away; But the son of thy pride Shall yet stay with thee. And poor little Jane, Look sadly like thee." OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 69 SONG. " Child, is thy father dead ? Father is gone ! Why did they tax his bread ? God's will be done ! Mother has sold her bed ; Better to die than wed ! Where shall she lay her head ? Home we have none i Father clamm'd thrice a week- God's will be done Long for work did he seek, Work he found none. Tears on his hollow cheek Told what no tongue could speak : Why did his master break ? God's will be done ! Doctor said air was best- Food we had none ; Father, with panting breast, Groaned to be gone : Now he is with the blest- Mother says death is best! We have no place of rest- Yes, ye have one 1" 70 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, PART II. Biography of the Poet. AND now, having given a general characteriza- tion of the mind and writings of our Poet, let us take a glimpse at his early history, and try if we can discover the process by which his mind and character were developed. His Autobiog- raphy, which appeared in No. 1 159 of the Athe- naeum, and extends to his twenty- third year, will enable us to accomplish this ; and it is one of the most interesting pieces of personal history upon record. It is written in a style as unvar- nished as that of Gibbon, and contains all the prominent features in his early career, both of mind and fortune. It is too long to extract in these pages, but it will well repay the student for a private and careful reading. We will first relate the particulars of his birth and parentage, and then run rapidly over such parts of his sub- sequent history, as may throw light upon our investigation. Elliott was born at the New Foundry, Mas- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 71 boro', in the parish of Rotherham, March 17th, 1781; and was well nigh smothered before he had been in the world a quarter of an hour. His son Francis, who relates the story to me in a private letter, says : "In the hurry and con- fusion attendant upon his birth, he was laid in an open drawer, which was presently shut by another person, who did not notice its contents, and the child was missing for some minutes, and could not be found. Fortunately, however, he was rescued from his perilous situation, by the same hands that placed him in it, and restored to his mother. Three quarters of a century later, this child repealed the Corn Laws; and it would be interesting to know how many hun- gry deaths, how many broken fortunes, how many broken hearts, the timely opening of that drawer has saved/' His father, who, for his eccentricities, and ultra- Calvinistic notions, was called " Devil Elliott," was a dissenter ; and our Poet was baptized by one Tommy Wright, a Barnsley Tinker, who belonged to the same school of theology as Elliott's father, and be- lieved that "Hell was hung round with little children, a span long;" a belief by no means uncommon in those days, nor even in later times, as I have good reason to remember. He des- cribes the ancestors of his grandfather Elliott, as border thieves, who lived on the cattle they stole, both from English and Scotch ; and thinks he has made out a good pedigree so far. Of his 72 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, own father he speaks in high terms. He was married to an opulent yeoman's daughter near Huddersfield, and settled in business at Mas- boro', as an iron- founder, where Ebenezer, and all his other children, were born and bred. " I can remember seeing," says the Poet's son Francis, " when very young, the name Elliott, in twisted iron, over the door of a little, low, time-dark building, at the top of the High- street, in the town above named, where my father and his brother Giles, if I mistake not, spent many years of their youth, and early man- hood, in serving customers with ironmongery. My grandfather was a man of great natural shrewdness and penetration ; with a talent for humour and satire; fond of controversy, especially on theology ; and possessed of respectable lite- rary powers. " I have seen a c rhymed Paraphrase of Job,' written by him ; and I must do my buried ancestor the justice to say, that it did not re- quire a Job's patience to read it. If not very poetical in its structure, it is at least as good as many noted pieces in Pope and Dryden. It is sententious, concise, and logical. My grand- mother was a very different person ; all heart, sensitiveness, and meekness. The slightest look, word, or tone of unkindness, cut her to the quick ; whilst a whole world of injuries could not arouse within her the shadow of a desire for revenge. She had great personal attractions ; a OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 73 soft and gentle style of beauty ; which was sister to her heart. She was a very violet in sweetness and unobtrusiveness, and she had a violet's fate too. She lived unnoticed, and mis- fortune trod her out of life. My grandfather's bankruptcy broke her heart." Mr. P. Rodgers, of Sheffield, has fur- nished me with the following anecdote of the Poet's father. " In those days, when the French were generally considered atheists, and the Divine Eight of Kings was an article of almost universal belief it is no wonder that the Poet's father who was a Jacobin and ultra- Calvinist should be regarded with dread by some, and suspicion by others. He was not a man, however, to be trodden upon with impu- nity. His son alludes, in the poem called " The Jacobins Prayer" to an incident in his father's life, which I well remember, and which fur- nishes a good illustration of his character. The Rotherham troop of Yeomanry had had a field day. It was getting towards evening; and previous to the dismissal of the men, they were drawn up in a line, in High Street, with their faces to the Crown Inn, while some one was addressing a loyal speech to them from one of the windows. Mr. Elliott's shop being in the narrowest part of the street, and from some cause or other, one or more of the military steeds, which stood with their hinder parts towards his door and windows, beginning to prance, they ?4 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, were not long before their tails and haunches came through the glass. The old man imme- diately conceived the idea, that the seeming accident was done on purpose, and because he was a Jacobin. Under this impression he flew into a terrible rage ; seized, I believe, upon some offensive weapon, which the stock in his own shop supplied, and rushed to the assault. A terrible disturbance ensued, but no blood was shed, and thus the affair did not end so seriously as it might have done, considering what it was to quarrel with the authorities in those days. Probably, Mr. Elliott's real respectability in the eyes of his neighbours, together with his com- mercial influence in the town, protected him from similar consequences to those which befel the more unfortunate James Montgomery, at a little earlier date, in Sheffield." Such then was the parentage of the Poet and his physical and mental character- istics may be traced, in a great measure, to this source. He had his father's strength of mind and character, and his mother's sensitiveness and nervous weakness. He gives us a picture of his father's home, whilst he was a clerk at the foundry, and before he became the proprietor of it, which is interesting in many important respects. " Under the room where I was born," he says, " in a little parlour like the cabin of a ship, which was yearly painted green, and blessed with a beautiful OP EBENE2ER ELLIOTT. 75 th orougli fare 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 declaim on the virtues of slandered Cromwell, and of Washington the rebel ; or, shaking his sides with laughter, ex- plain the glories of the c glorious victory of his Majesty's forces over the rebels at Bunker's Hill.' " " Here" he adds, "the reader has a key which will unlock all my future politics." And the fact is worth remembering. He relates as proof of his nervous sensibility, that at twelve years of age he fell in love with a young woman, to whom he never spoke a word in his life, and whose voice he never heard. "Yet if I thought she saw me," he adds, " as I passed her father's house, I felt as if weights were tied to my feet." This is the old story, in a new form, illustrative of the power of love over the youthful heart; and Elliott is not the last person who will feel these weights to his feet, in the presence of the be- loved object. The fact, however, made a deep impression upon him throughout life ; for it was the first sunbeam that fell upon the dark, fallows of his nature, and quickened them into flowers and verdure. From this moment he was a new being, and his poetical tendencies 76 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, .began to develope themselves. In the yard of the foundry, surrounded by blast furnaces, and half-naked smiths hammering at innumerable anvils, he contrived a little garden of mugwort and wormwood, and placed a pan of water in the midst of it, where he could see the reflection of the sun and clouds, and of the plants them- selves, as from the surface of a natural fountain. And this anecdote, trifling as it may seem, con- tains the microcosm of the Poet's genius ; for Nature has no new methods, but repeats, and re-repeats herself in every one of her processes ; and the macrocosm is but the microcosm, on a large and complete scale. Combined, however, with this love for the beautiful Elliott had also a strange taste for the horrible a passion a rage, for seeing the faces of the hanged or the drowned. These frightful visages made his life a burden followed him wherever he went and haunted him in his dreams. He cannot ac- count for this morbid love which he had for the dark and obscene imagery of death ; and asks whether it was a result of constitutional infirmity ? and whether it had any connection with his taste for writing of horrors and crimes ? I think there can be no doubt of the answer to either of these questions, and I can trace the effects of this morbid taste in his poems. During childhood he had no associates ; and although the neigh- bourhood swarmed with children, he was alone. Hence his mind fell back upon itself, and by OF EBENE2ER ELLIOTT. 77 dwelling too much upon its own reflections, and constantly brooding over the mixed imagery of beauty and horror which possessed it, he grew unhealthy and diseased. Still his solitude was not painful ; and he occasionally occupied him- self in constructing boats and ships. He remarks, however, that his imitative talents secured him no respect ; and he was altogether unaware that he possessed others of a higher and nobler order, which were one day to awako the admiration, and secure the applause, of the world. Nature however, knew what she was about in impelling him to these ingenious de- vices of boats and ships ; for now he must go down to the water's side and launch them ; and there, in the midst of sunshine, flowers, and darnels, she taught him many preparatory poetic lessons. He speaks with unconscious complaint of his "wondrous brother Giles" who was beautiful as an angel ; and compared with whom he (the Poet) was ugliness itself. c< In the presence of his splendid abilities," he says, " I might well look like a fool, and believe myself one. As I - grew up, my fondness for solitude increased ; for I could not but observe the homage that was paid to him, and feel the contempt with which I was regarded ; although I am not aware that I ever envied or at all disliked him." The following passage from his autobiography is interesting, a,$ showing the impression which 78 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, the " barbarous deeds done in the name of the law" made upon his mind, even in boyhood : " When I look back," he says, u on the days of rabid Toryism through which I have passed, and consider the then almost universal tendency to worship the powers that were, and their worst mistakes, I feel astonished that a nerve- shaken man, whose affrighted imagination in boyhood and youth slept with dead men's faces, a man, whose first sensation on standing up to address a public meeting is that of his knees giving way under him, should have been able to retain his political integrity, without ab- juring one article of his fearless father's creed. But even in those days, I find I was a free- trader though I knew it not. So barbarous were some of the deeds done in that time in the name of the law, and so painful was the im- pression which they made on me when I was about sixteen years old, that I should certainly have emigrated to the United States had T possessed sufficient funds for that purpose ; nor should I, I fear, have been very scrupulous as to the means of obtaining them, so fully had the idea of emigration obtained possession of me, so passionately had my mind embraced it, and so poetically had I associated with it Crusoe notions of self-dependence and isolation. It is not improper to blush for uncommitted offences. Even now, after forty-five years have been added to my previous existence, I shudder if I OP EBENEER ELLIOTT. 79 chance to meet an experience-monger who tells me ' that the end justifies the means :' a false doctrine and fatal faith, which have wrought the fall of many an all- shunned brother, and of ill-starred sisters numberless, once unstained as the angels. Oh, think of this, ye tempted and ye tempters, even if ye be magistrates ! but let no man believe that good effected by evil can be aught but evil done, and an apology for more ! I must return from these digressions." His ninth year was an era in his life, he says; for his father having cast a great pan, weighing several tons, for an uncle who lived in Thurle- stone, the young embryo Poet resolved to travel thither, with it ; and accordingly, at sunset, he stole unperceived, and hid himself inside the pan amongst the hay. As the night advanced, he looked forth from his hiding place, and gazed long, with new, strange, and excited feelings, upon the great blue vault of heaven, with its solemn and lonely stars. " I have not forgotten," he writes, "how much I was excited by the solemnity of the night, and its shooting stars, until I arrived at Thurlestone, about four o'clock in the morning." His uncle, who was of course surprised to see him, made the best of his visit, and sent him to school at Pennistone, where he learnt nothing. His heart, too, was with his mother ; and he spent his evenings in looking from the back of his uncle's house to Hoyland Swaine; for he had discovered that Masboro* 80 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, lay beyond that village ; " and ever when the sun went down, I felt," he says, " as if some great wrong had been done me." When he returned from this "land of the great Pan," as he calls it ; he was sent to Hollis School in Sheffield ; but made no proficiency in his studies. All his sums were done for him by the other boys, and his father regarded him as a confirmed dunce. He confesses that he could never learn any thing at school that he got into the Rule of Three, without having any knowledge of numeration ; and stuck in Deci- mals, like Christian in his bog of Despond. Still he was looked up to, by the other boys at school, and his brother Giles, when in danger, always took Elliott out to defend him. His father, as a last resource, finding that he had made nothing out at Hollis' Hospital, sent him to Dal ton School, two miles from Masboro, where he hoped to have him more under his own eye. " I see/* says Elliott, u at this mo- ment, as vividly as if fifty years had not since passed over me, the kingfisher shooting along the Don, as I passed Schoolward through the Aldwark Meadows, eating my dinner four hours before dinner time." And so Nature was revenged upon the schoolmaster ; for she taught the boy her great mystic alphabet and deep symbol writing, before he could either read a book, or write a line. She took her own way likewise in doing it ; eschewing the methods of OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. SI the pedant. Elliott made no proficiency at this new school although his master was a kind and good man " a sort of sad-looking, half- starved, angel without wings," he says ; " and I have stood for hours beside his desk, with the tears running down my face, utterly unable to set down one correct figure." His ignorance, and apparent want of common capacity, dis- gusted him with school duties, and during the summer months, he was almost always absent playing truant amongst the woods of Dalton, Deign, Silverwood, and Thryberg Park. On one of these occasions he stole duck eggs, mis- taking them for the eggs of wild birds, and was brought before the Lady of the Manor for his delinquency, who dismissed him, when she saw what a live goose he was. These truantings were soon discovered by the poet's father, who resolved at last to make him work in the foundry. " The result of this ex- periment," says Elliott, " vexed the experi- menter ; for it was soon found that I could play my part at the York Keelman, with the best of its customers." He was never fond of the ale- house, however, and his thoughts were always wandering to the canal banks, which were covered all over with the golden " ladies' -bed- straw" and to his little ships. In other respects the trial at the Foundry proved successful, for Elliott found he was not less clever than other beginners, and the work he had to do, was done. 82 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, He mentions that about this time, he had strong religious impressions, and attended the ministra- tions of an excentric Domine Sampson, with regularity and profit. But Nature at this juncture played him another trick, and dissi- pated his religious moods, with her fine nick- nackery of flowers. Happening to call one Sunday at his aunt Robinson's a widow with three children and 30 a-year, out of which she gave her two sons an education, which made them both gentlemen he became acquainted with " Sowerby's English Botany." " Never shall I forget," he says, " the impression made upon me by the beautiful plates. I actually touched the figure of the primrose, half con- vinced that the mealiness on the leaves was real." The good aunt seeing the delight he took in these pictures, showed him how to draw the figures, by holding them to the light with a thin piece of paper before them. Finding he could draw them correctly, lie was lifted at once, he says, above the inmates of tlie ale-house, at least a foot in mental stature. And here we may see the reason why, in his aesthetic poems, he exhorts the working classes to cultivate a "Home of Taste" His aunt then showed him a book of Dry Plants^ which, with the Botanical work, belonged to her son Benjamin. And these cheap and simple exhibitions gave an impulse to Elliott's mind which never aban- doned him, until it had completed its work, OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT^ 83 and conducted him to the Elysian fields of poe- try. He soon after began to study Botany on his own account not, however, in a consecutive and scientific manner for to the day of his death he never relished Botany as a Science ; the classifications of which seemed to him to be, like preparations for sending flowers to prison. The minister, who had begun to entertain hopes of Elliott's conversion, made frequent inquiries at the paternal home, why Ebenezer did not come to chapel as usual ; and the Poet says that he passed his Sundays in gathering flowers, that he might make pictures of them ; totally uncon- scious that he was learning the art of poetry in his woodland wanderings. Nay, he then hated poetry ; especially that of Pope, which always gave him the headache. His floral and herbal gatherings soon made him a noted person in his neighbourhood, and people stopped him with his plants to enquire what diseases he was going to cure. Even his wonderous brother Giles, con- descended to admire his Hortus Siccus ; and he had been so long a stranger to the voice of praise, that it sounded sweetly in his ears, and he welcomed it when it came with joy and triumph. About this time, his brother read to him the first book of Thompson's Seasons, and when he came to the description of the Polyan- thus and Auricula " I waited," says Elliott, " impatiently until he laid down the book ; I then took it into the garden, where I compared 84 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, the description with the living flowers. Here was a new idea ! Botany in verse I a pro- phesy/' he continues, " that the days of scrib- bling were at hand." The account which he gives of his first essay in verse is interesting enough. It was an imitation in rhyme of Thompson's blank verse thunder-storm. " I knew perfectly well,'* he writes, u that sheep could not take flight after being killed but the rhyme seemed to be of opinion that they should be so described ; and as it doggedly abided by this perversity, there was nothing for it but to describe my flock, scudding away, after the lightning had slain them." His cousin Benja- min criticised the poem mercilessly, and Elliott never forgave him. This cousin it seems was a scholar ; and the Poet was never so happy as when listening to his recitations of Homer's Greek of which, although he did not understand a word yet after the lapse of nearly half a cen- tury, its music had not departed from his soul. He regarded his brother Giles as a prodigy, and became at last painfully alive to his own defi- ciences. Giles' accomplishments stung him into self-instruction ; and the misery of his mind at this crisis, may be gathered from the fact that he lost his round, healthy proportions ; and fell into the disease of all students viz : that of leanness, and pale-faced anxiety. He bought a grammar, and studied it laboriously but could never retain a single rule in his memory. Then OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 85 he took to the key, and read it through and through, a hundred times. " I found at last," he says, " that by reflection, and by supplying elisions, &c., I could detect and correct gram- matical errors. At this moment, I do not know a single rule in grammar, although I flatter my- self I can write English as well as Samuel Johnson could ; and detect errors in a greater author Samuel Bailey." His attempt at learn- ing the French language, was equally unsuc- cessful and his teacher, who seems to have been an incompetent person, got in this instance, all the blame. An accident assisted him much at this period by placing a number of books at his disposal ; and as Elliott confesses that his writings owe something to the list which he furnishes in the text of his Autobiography, section 5th, I shall be pardoned for naming them. They are " Bar- row's Sermons," " Ray's Wisdom of God," " Derham's Physico Theology," " Young's Night Thoughts," u Hervey's Meditations, 5 ' "Here- pin's Travels ;" and three vols. of the " Royal Magazine," embellished with engravings. u I was never weary," he says, " of Barrow, and Young taught me to condense." Shenstone was afterwards a favourite with him ; and he thinks that he is now undervalued. The following passage contains a good word to all students. " I never could read a feeble book through ; and it follows that I read master-pieces only 86 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, the best thoughts of the highest minds : after Milton, Shakspere ; then Ossian ; then Junius with my father's Jacobinism for a commentary. Paine's Common Sense ; Swift's Tale of a Tub ; Joan of Arc ; Schiller's Robbers ; Burger's Leo- nora ; Gibbon's Decline and Fall ; and long afterwards Tasso, Dante, De Stael ; Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the Westminster Review." A strange medley ; but valuable as revealing some- thing of the sources of Elliott's peculiarities of writing and thinking. He complains that his memory sometimes fails him altogether ; and yet he almost knew the Bible by heart, at twelve years of age ; and could repeat, at sixteen, icitJwut missing a word, the 1st, 2nd, and 6th books of Paradise Lost. He is conscious to a considerable extent of his own powers, although he does not do full justice to his good angel, and speaks dispara- gingly of his acknowledged merits and genius. " Time,'' he says, " has developed in me, not genius^ but powers which exist in all men, and lie dormant in most. I cannot, like Byron and Montgomery, pour poetry from my heart, as from an unfailing fountain ; and of my ina- bility to identify myself like Shakespere and Scott with the character of other men, my abortive c Kerhoneh' and ' Taurepdes,' and si- milar rejected failures, are melancholy instances. My thoughts are all exterior ; my mind is the mind of ray eyes. A primrose is to me a prim- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 87 rose, and nothing more. I love it because it is nothing more. There is not in my writings, one good idea that has not been suggested to me by some real occurrence, or by some object actually before my eyes, or by some remembered object or occurrence, or by the thoughts of other men heard or read." At the close of his Autobiography he says : u Newspaper-taught as I am, and having no ideas of my own, I can only seize those of others as they occur ; ear- nestly applying them to current occasions. If I have been mistaken in my objects, I am sorry for it ; but I have never advocated any cause, without first trying to know the principle on which it was based. On looking back on my public conduct, thanks to the science which poor Cobbett, ever floundering, but great and brave, called in scorn ' Poleetical Economy/ I find I have had little to unlearn. And when I shall go to my account, and the Great Questioner, whose judgments err not, shall say to me ' What didst thou with the lent talent ?' I can truly answer, ' Lord, it is here ; and with it, all that I could add to it, doing my best to make little, much.' " Such, in a condensed form, is the account which Elliott gives of his early years. I am warned, however, by his son Francis, not to place implicit reliance upon the statements it contains. " I doubt not," he says, " that it is as correct as my father could make it ; but he 88 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, was the unfittest man in the world to write or speak of himself. His estimate of his merits was far below the true one; and he was neither the dunce and simpleton at school, nor the lesser light, paled by the brilliant brother Giles, which he described, and believed himself. Giles was a first-rate business man; but he was nothing more; and my father was that, and something more. I am not surprised, however, that his more solid and sterling qualities, were but a poor foil to the mortal thrusts, which in the eyes of his father's household, Giles* bril- liance dealt him. All of them homaged and flattered Giles, and my father hid his despised head in the brightness of his brother's glory. I have always thpught that the disparagement" which he received from all about him, had much influence in producing that melancholy and love of gloom, which, through the rest of his life, so strongly characterized his mind. At school he fared no better than at home ; and unless he was consoled by his almost constant truantings in the woods and fields, his youth must have been one of unre- lieved repining and despondency. I am in- clined to think, however, that the ambitious lad was happier in so making himself a poet, than he would have been in outshining his school- fellows, in studies distasteful to him." This statement is further confirmed by Mr. John Fowler, and Mr. Paul Rodgers of Sheffield, OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 89 who were both friends of the poet. The latter says : " Mr. Elliott, in the account of himself, recently published in the Athenaeum, talks about his own remarkable dullness, when a boy. I do not think he is right ; in fact, he was no judge at all in the matter. It was rather that his brother's taste and his differed, than that Ebenezer was essentially inferior in any way. I have no doubt he shewed as much genius among the modellers and mechanists in the manufac- tory, as the other did in the shop or the count- ing-house. Mr. Mark Gregory, then a youth about his own age, and long a workman of Elliott's father's a man whom Ebenezer always highly esteemed says he never knew that his young master was dull at any thing, but always regarded him, as very much the contrary." Mr. Rodgers likewise gives the following de- scription of the " wonderous brother Giles," who later on in life fell, I regret to add, into intemperate habits, and blighted his own pros- pects, and the hopes which his family had enter- tained of him : " He was rather a handsome- faced youth ; but lame, went with a limp, and wore a high-heeled shoe. He had very quick parts ; and was Ebenezer's acknowledged fa- vourite." From his sixteenth to his twenty- third year Elliott worked for his father as laboriously as any servant he had and without wages, except a shilling or two for pocket-money. 90 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, His first trial at business, which proved so melancholy in its results, is thus spoken of by his son, from whose letter, I have previously quoted : "The fortune he received with my mother, w r as invested in a business already bankrupt beyond redemption ; and my father went in as a partner with the old firm, consist- ing of many partners, amongst whom was my grandfather. Here he passed several years, in hopeless efforts, and hopeless hopes and yearn- ings, to retrieve the desperate affair. He lost the last penny he had, in it ; and found an asy- lum under the roof of my mother's maiden sisters, with whom he spent many months, in a state of wretchedness, which was relieved, how- ever, by the tenderest solicitude for his happi- ness, on the part of his friends. He endeavoured to beat down despair by writing poems, and painting landscapes in oil, from views in the neighbourhood. But his state of mind will be readily conceived when it is remembered that he was an honest man, a proud man, and pos- sessed of all the sensitiveness which charac- terizes the poet." In 1821, when he was forty years of age, he was enabled, chiefly by the affectionate generosity of his wife's sisters, to make another venture in business. He began with a capital of ,150, and managed at last to accumulate a fortune ; making 20 a day sometimes, without stirring from his counting-house, or ever seeing the OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 9 1 goods he disposed of, which exchanged hands as they were landed at the wharf. His warehouse is described as a small, dingy place, piled all round with bars of iron, having a bust of Shak- spere in the centre of it ; and his counting- house contained casts of Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon. The following anecdote, (the circum- stances of which occurred in this warehouse) illustrative of his attachment to his poorer guests, and of his impatience at insolent behaviour, has been forwarded to me from Sheffield. "All readers of Elliott," the writer commences, " will be prepared to learn that a man of such strong passions did not always conduct himself with perfect smoothness, under circumstances of real provocation. No one ever saw him guilty of anything like a deliberate, or even thoughtless insult ; but in reply to insolence he was always indignant. A friend of mine, in humble life, happening to call at his warehouse in Gibraltar Street, found himself in company there, with a third party, a semi- clerical gentleman. Whether this gentleman had a previous pique against my friend, or whether something arose during the conversation which caused a misunderstanding between them, I cannot tell ; but from some cause or other, the said gentleman deliberately insulted him. Whereupon, losing all control over himself, Elliott started up, and shouting c Away with you ! Do my friends come here to be insulted by you ?' seized a broom-stick which J>2 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, was within reach, and dealt his blows on tho offender without mercy, Dot ceasing until he had pursued him into the middle of the street." This is certainly the most striking anecdote which .1 have been able to gather from the Poet's his- tory ; and like that of the old woman who flung the stool at the head of the bishop in the Scotch Kirk in Charles the First's time, it sticks very fast to the memory. Up to the time of Elliott's second trial of busi- ness, in 182 1, he had written, says his son, "no- thing of importance ; nothing which gave pro- phesy of Ebenezer Elliott. But shortly after this event, works of greater pretension to poetic power appeared ; and the world had an oppor- tunity and used it of disregarding some of the finest poetry he ever penned, and which it now lauds as such, under other titles, in the poems of 6 Love/ and ' Night/ Of the c Gia- our/ and 'Scotch Nationality/* poems of about the same period, I am not able to speak so highly. The one contained first-rate satire, which is never even the worst poetry ; and the other an attempt at humour, which was of course a failure for humour was a faculty which he did not possess." Many of his poems were written at the request of his friends; and the following deeply interest- ing letter explains the origin of " The Sinless * Vide Appendix, OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 03 Cain" which celebrates the life tragedy of genius. "Upperthorpe, Wtk Oct. 1835. "Young Lady, " Your father requested me to write you a poem, and I did so, and called it ' The Sinless Cain/ But you are come into a world filled with dangers ; and instead of sending you the poem, I think it better, on the whole, to refer you to it, when it shall appear in some one or other of the Magazines. You will remember that you are the occasion of its having been written. It describes a wretched being who has wandered over the earth, playing various parts, almost all of them sad ones, during more than six thousand years. If in after days you chance to meet with him, do not believe that the rags which may clothe him, are the garment of God's indignation. Should he ask you for a pittance, borrow a penny for him, if you have not one. Should he silently implore your pity only, turn not away ; for he has a heart that will thank you for a tear, with its last throb. But should he solicit your love, tell him that you once heard of a maiden, who, dreaming that she saw and heard a celestial spirit (that had eyes bright as passion, and a voice like that of the woods in spring), loved it with excessive love, but embracing it, found it a corpse ! sweet, indeed, and sadly beautiful, with tears in its F 2 94 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, eyelids, like a white rose gathered in the dew but still a corpse ! Which, had it never known the touch of mortal passion, might have con- tinued to walk even on the earth, a spirit of light and joy. There is a meaning in all this, which, if you cannot understand, come and learn it, from "EBENEZER ELLIOTT." " To Miss Rodgers." I have already related how the Poet became acquainted with Southey, and was cheered on hy him ; and how, likewise, he was suddenly raised into fame by the publication of the Corn Law Rhymes. It will be interesting to get a per- sonal glimpse of him at this period of his life ; and I will, therefore, quote from Mr. Stanton, an American writer, who visited him about this time, and presents us with the following picture, both of the Poet and his home. " I inquired," says he. " of a young man, dressed in a frock besmeared with iron and coal, for the head of the establishment. i My father/ said he, 'is just gone: you'll find him at his house yonder.' I repaired thither. The Corn Law Rhymer stood on the threshold, in his stocking feet, hold- ing a pair of coarse shoes in his hand. His frank c Walk in ' assured me I was welcome. I had just left the residence of Montgomery. The transition could hardly have been greater . from James Montgomery to Ebenezer Elliott. OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 95 The former was polished in his manner?, exqui- sitely neat in his personal appearance, and his bland conversation never rose above a calm level, except once, when he spoke with an indignation which years had not abated, of his repeated im- prisonment in York Castle, for the publication first in verse and then in prose of liberal and humane sentiments, which offended the govern- ment. And now I was confronted with a burly ironmonger, rapid in speech, glowing with en- thusiasm, putting and answering a dozen ques- tions in a breath ; eulogising American repub- licanism, and denouncing British aristocracy ; throwing sarcasms at the Duke of Wellington, and anointing General Jackson with the oil of flattery ; pouring out a flood of racy talk about church establishments, poetry, politics, the price of iron, and the price of corn ; while ever and anon he thrust his clamp feet in the embers, and hung his shoes on the grate to dry." As his prosperity increased, he built a handsome house in the suburbs of Sheffield, where he could look down upon the smoky chimnies of the town, full of prophetic thoughts like Teufelsdrock in the " Sartor Resartus." A path at the back of the house led to the hills, and the vale of the Rive- lin, about which he loved to sing. Here he entertained all comers right hospitably, attract- ing around him troops of friends, who listened to his songs and speech as to an oracle. * During the whole of his residence in Sheffield, 96 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, and indeed throughout life, he identified himself with its interests, took part in all the public concerns of the town, was an active memher of the Committee of the Mechanics' Institution, and delivered the course of lectures there, " On Poets and Poetry/' some of which were pub- lished in Tait's Magazine, and are admirable literary performances. He once read to me the lecture cc On Burns," which is a prose poem, full of beauty and wise discrimination ; and I hope to see this and the entire course included in his writings. Mr. Robert Leader, junr., in an article which appeared in the Sheffield and Rotherham Inde- pendent, December 8th, 1849, gives the follow- ing summary of Elliott's political career : " In politics, the great object of Mr. Elliott was the abolition of the food monopoly. Some were ready to say that he was a monomaniac on this subject. But he saw that this question lay at the root of all others in regard to politics and national prosperity ; that a nation confined to a limited supply of food could never be per- manently happy and prosperous ; and that a commercial system based on restriction could not be sound. The great cause of Mr. Elliott's rejoicing in the triumph of Reform was the conviction that it must speedily ensure the re- peal of the Corn Laws. He soon after formed a local society for promoting this object. But the restoration of transitory prosperity diverted OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 97 the public mind from the subject, and the Anti- Corn Law agitation failed. Mr. Elliott con- tinued to raise his warning voice, but it was not until 1838 that people could be induced again to move. Then commenced the agitation of the Anti-Corn Law League, and also that for the Charter. Mr. Elliott had been so much dis- heartened by the previous apathy shewn towards his great subject, that he seemed to lack faith in the sincerity and power of the movement in Manchester. The cotton lords had so long been apathetic that he could not all at once give them credit for having honestly and heartily taken up the cause. He seems to have had more hope in the movement for the Charter, which commenced about the same time, and iu which at first some iiiiliiential Birmingham Re- formers took part. In September, 1838, Mr. Elliott attended a conference in London, and in the same month he presided at a meeting in Ros- coe Felds, when the Charter was first publicly brought forward in Sheffield. But when, in the succeeding January, the Chartists put themselves in opposition at an Anti-Corn Law meeting, Mr. Elliott was found supporting the effort which they opposed. He did not completely separata himself from them, however, till further proof had been given of the desperate nature of the counsels which prevailed among them. When Peter Foden was arrested for sedition, in August, 1839, Mr. Elliott, who seems not to have 98 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, watched Foden's course, ga\e bail for him, at the same time reprobating the men who coun- selled violence. His want of caution was pun- ished, as might fairly have been expected, by the absconding of Foden, and Mr. Elliott's re- cognizance was estreated. The more complete demonstration of the principles then dominant among the Chartists, which the events of the winter of 1839-40 afforded, seems to have satis- fied Mr. Elliott completely that the Chartist cause was in wrong hands. He continued to aid by his writings the Anti-Corn Law move- ment, but he felt that with him the time for active personal effort was passed. He retired from business, and from active interference in politics, and left Sheffield in 1841, to spend his last years at Great Houghton, near Barnsley, where he built a house upon a small estate of his own. Many persons have wondered that he took so little part in the operations of the Anti-Corn Law League. We believe the primary cause to have been a conviction that his work was done, and this was not unmingled with a doubt whether it was yet possible to save the country from the anarchy into which he foresaw that the continuance of monopoly must inevitably plunge it. Becoming interested, too, in rural engagements, being separated from the friends with whom he had been used to converse on public affairs, and left behindhand, as it were, in the current news of the day, he lacked the OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 99 stimulus to play his accustomed part. During great part of his residence at Great Hough ton, he wrote and published little. To various invi- tations to take part in public aftairs, he pleaded the old man's excuse, and gradually withdrew himself/' The following letter upon the Corn Laws addressed to Mr. Rodgers, of Sheffield, and dated Houghton Common, May 7th, 1842, is almost a prophesy; and shows the political sagacity and foresight of the Poet : " Eat each other, said we ? Yes ! but bare bones are poor picking. I have still the remains of a forlorn hope in the Tories. Peel, I have long thought, understands our position, and will do his best to prevent the coming catastrophe ; but he wants moral courage. Wellington does not understand our position ; when he does, if ever, he will act boldly on his convictions per- haps too late. " But the c fifty pound tenant-at- will-clause Whigs ; the ballot-refusing Whigs ; the re- form-defecting Whigs ; the monopoly-defend- ing Whigs ; the Bank Charter- renewing Whigs; the Coercion-bill Whigs; the twenty million-slave-holder-rewarding Whigs ; the half-faced, double-faced Whigs, who could once havesaved the State, and would not can do no good, if willing. Their time is past. 4i EBENEZER ELLIOTT." 100 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, The active part which he took at political meetings in Sheffield and elsewhere, and the fierce poems and epigrams which he scattered over the land, made him flany enemies ; and to such an extent did the virulence of party feeling prevail against him, that when in 1839 he sought admission to the " Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society" the gentlemen mem- bers blackballed him ! Elliott, who was fear- ful lest this transaction, so disgraceful to the parties concerned in it, should damage in its results the Mechanics Institution, of which lie was a member, wrote the following letter to Messrs. Paul Rodgers and John Fowler, mem- bers of the Committee, offering to withdraw himself from all active part in its counsels and proceedings. He was the more readily induced to this course, because certain weak-minded persons had already taken offence at his remarks upon a lute occasion, whilst introducing the Reverend B. Stannus, to the audience, prepara- tory to the delivery, by that gentleman, of a Lecture " On Burns." The letter runs thus : ''Sheffield, llth March, 1839. " To Messrs. Paul Hodgers and John Fowler. " In my old age, I have got the heart-ache. The few words with which I introduced Mr. Stannus, I am told offended influential friends, or foes, of the Institution. Certainly, when I said OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 101 lie would show that to his thirteenth year he does not manifest a single fa- culty from which his future greatness might be augured. His affection for his mother is the only redeeming quality which he seems to have possessed. For although, he says, he cannot remember when he was not fond of ruralities, one can scarcely call his endless truantings a manifestation of his love for Nature. It was vagabondism, induced by shame, not unmixed with sorrow, at his own wilful ignorance. Still the forms of Nature impressed themselves upon his soul in these wild, woodland ramblings, and remained there in dumb pictury, until lie was able to reproduce them in song. I notice like- wise, that he never forgets a single vision of Nature ; and that all her phenomena and beau- tiful creatures, range themselves round his mind as if he was the sole centre of the universe. OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 109 The kingfisher flying over the waters of is rememhered through the darkness of fifty years ; and the lonely and solemn night, with its flaming stars and meteors, is the unforgotten canopy of his Hejira into the land of the great Pan. The nightingales in Bassingthorpe Wood ; the snake which waited for him on the sunny Sabbath mornings at the top of Primrose Lane, are all related to him, and flow towards him by the law of polarity. They are waiting to be sung ; although he is unconscious of that deep underlying faculty which they are gradually and silently awakening within him. The botanical book and the specimens of dry plants, which he saw at his aunt's, gave the first quickening im- pulse to his mind and genius. Up to this time He had been a frequent visitor at the York Keel- man ; was drunk even, a few days before this memorable visit to his aunt's cottage ; but now, when he found he had talents, could admire and, by tnechanical process, draw the flowers in the botanical book ; he was lifted three feet all at once'above his alehouse companions ; and for the first time in his life the good demon opened the windows of his soul, and gave him a glimpse of the wonders and beauties of the universe. Then followed the impressions made upon him on hearing his brother Giles read that first book of Thomson's Seasons his comparison of the po- etical description of the flowers with the flowers themselves ; and the new idea which burst upon a 110 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, him of "Botany in Verse!" Afterwards, we find him rambling for a purpose ; mysteriously collecting plants for the cure of diseases, the people thought and thought truly ; although the diseases were not such as they imagined. Then Homer's Greek turns all his thoughts into melody ; and at last he attempts his rhymed thunderstorm, where the sheep are represented running away after they were killed hy lightning, because the rhyme icould have it so ; and thus, by slow and imper- ceptible degrees, was the mind of the Poet developed ; and thus he sought to break the chains of his spirit, and uplift the awful veil of Nature. He served, however, a long apprenticeship to his art before he produced any thing worthy of a place in the Pantheon of literature. Twenty years elapsed between the publication of the Vernal Walk, and that of the Corn Law Rhymes ; and although these are by no means his best performances, yet they won for him a name, which led to an appreciation by the public of those higher books which 'he had written in the interim alluded to. From the first his muse was wedded to politics and to social wrong. These, indeed, were the mate- rials from which his inspiration was drawn ; and he found in them the region of his work and power. Hence he never loses sight of his mis- sion but with the jealous eye, and vehement soul of a Prophet and Reformer, labours with- OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Ill out ceasing for its accomplishment. He is of all other men, the Man of his Age. Such scars are upon the face of this old warrior such light- nings in his eyes such thunder and terror upon his brow yet withal such pity and womanly tenderness such musical pathos in his heart and all so strangely an'd inextricably woven in his nature and radiating his person, that were I to meet him a thousand years hence, in the most out-of-the-way corner of Heaven, I should recognize him in spite of his celestial raiment, and rejoice with him that life was at last swal- lowed up in victory. I must not omit, before proceeding to the final division of my subject, to quote in this place, a short and characteristic note, written to the Editor of the " Sheffield Independent/' by James Montgomery, the sole remaining poet now, in the town of fire and steel, upon the subject of this paper : " I do not remember having ever been, for an hour in Mr. Elliott's company. Our occasional meetings were few, and short, and far between, though he was known and ad- mired by me as a Poet, before the world would either know or honour him as such. He pub- lished several small volumes, at intervals, the manuscripts of which (mostly) he had confi- dentially submitted to me ; and they had my best encouragement, on the ground of their merit ; but not one of these could command 112 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, public attention, till he broke out in 'The Corn Law Rhymes/ as Waller said of Denham, 'like the Irish Rebellion, forty thousand strong, when nobody thought of such a thing* Then, indeed, he compelled both astonishment and commenda- tion from all manner of critics : Whig, Tory, and Hadical reviewers vying with each other who should magnanimously extol the talents which they had either not discovered, or had super- cilliously overlooked, till, for their own credit, they could no longer hold their peace, or affect to despise what they had not had heart to ac- knowledge, when their countenance would have done service to the struggling author. A few of his master -pieces did find their way into the , Iris, but I believe these were all republished by himself in his successive miscarrying volumes. I, however, am quite willing to hazard any critical credit by avowing my persuasion, that in ori- ginalty, power, and even beauty, when he chose to be beautiful, he might have measured heads beside Byron in tremendous energy, Crabbe in graphic description, and Coleridge in effusions of domestic tenderness; while in intense sympathy with the poor, in whatever he deemed their wrongs or their sufferings, he excelled them all, and perhaps -everybody else among contempo- raries, in prose or verse. He was, in a trans- cendental sense, the Poet of the Poor^ whom, if not always c wisely^ \ at least dare not say, he loved ' too well' His personal character, his OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 113 fortunes, and his genius, would require, and they deserve, a full investigation, as furnishing an extraordinary study of human nature/' The allusions made by Montgomery, in the above letter, to Elliott's " Effusions of Domestic Tenderness," and to his " intense" sympathy with the people, cannot be better illustrated than by the following poems. THE DYING BOY TO THE SLOE BLOSSOM. " BBFORE thy leaves thou com'st once more, White blossom of the sloe ! Thy leaves will come as heretofore ; But this poor heart, it's troubles o'er, Will then lie low. A month at least before thy time Thou com'st, pale flower, to me ; For well thou know'st the frosty rime Will blast me, ere my vernal prime, No more to be. Why here in winter ? No storm lowers O'er Nature's silent shroud ! But blithe larks meet the sunny showers, High o'er the doomed untimely flowers In beauty bowed. Sweet violets, in the budding grove, Peep where the glad waves run ; The wren below, the thrush above, Of bright to-morrow's joys and love Sing to the sun. And where the rose-leaf, ever bold, Hears bees chant hymns to God, The breeze-bowed palm, mossed o'er with gold, Smiles on the well, in summer cold, And daisied sod. 32 114 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, Butthou, pale blossom, thou art come, And flowers in winter blow, To tell me that the worm makes room For me, her brother, in the tomb, And thinks me slow. For as the rainbow of the dawn Foretells an eve of tears, A sunbeam on the saddened lawn, I smile, and weep to be withdrawn In early years. Thy leaves will come; but songful spring Will see no leaf of mine ; Her bells will ring, her brideVmaids sing, When my young leaves are withering Where no suns shine. might I breathe morn's dewy breath, When June's sweet Sabbaths chime ! But, thine before my time, O death ! 1 go where no flower blossometh, Before my time. Even as the blushes of the morn Vanish, and long ere noon, The dew drop dieth on the thorn, So fair I bloomed ; and was I born To die as soon ? To love my mother and to die To perish in my bloom j Is this my sad brief history ? A tear dropped from a mother's eye Into the tomb. He lived and loved will sorrow say- By early sorrow tried ; He smiled, he sighed, he past away j His life was but an April day- He loved and died ! OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 115 My mother smiles, then turns away, But turns away to weep : They whisper round me, what they say 1 need not hear, for in the clay I soon must sleep. Oh, love is sorrow ! sad it is To be both tried and true ; I ever trembled in my bliss; N ow there are farewells in a kiss- They sigh adieu. But woodbines flaunt when blue-bells fade, Where Don reflects the skies ; And many a youth in Shire-cliff's shade Will ramble where my boyhood piayed. Though Alfred dies. Then panting woods the breeze will feel, And bowers, as heretofore, Beneath their Ipad of roses reel ; But I through woodbined lanes shall steal No more, no more. Well, lay me by my brother's side, Where late we stood and wept ; For I was stricken when he died I felt the arrow as he sighed His last, and slept." The above poem needs no comment; and the following, entitled "The People's Anthem," will show what Montgomery means by Elliott's love for the people. " When wilt thou save the people ? Oh, God of Mercy ! when ? Not kings and lords, but nations I Not thrones and crowns, but men ! 116 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, Flowers of thy heart, oh, God, are they, Let them not pass like weeds away ! Their heritage a sunless day ! God save the people ! Shall crime bring crime for ever, Strength aiding still the strong * Is it thy will, oh Father, That man shall toil for wrong ? No !' say thy mountains ; No !' thy skiet ; ' Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise And songs be heard instead of sighs/ God save the people 1 When wilt thou save the people ? Oh, God of Mercy ! when ? The people, Lord ! the people ! Not thrones and crowns, but men ! God save the people ! thine they are> Thy children, as thy angels fair : Save them from bondage, and despair 8 God I save the people.* OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 117 PART III. Reminiscences of the Poet in his retirement at Margate Hill. IT only now remains for me to speak of the Poet in his retirement at Hargate Hill, and present a picture of his private life. And as I design to give personal reminiscences of him, I hope I shall not incur 'the charge of egotism, if, in the execution of my purpose, I shall find it necessary to take a more prominent part than I could otherwise wish or consent to. At all events egotism is very far from my intention. I have thought the matter well over, however, and do not see how I could better render justice to my subject, than by adopting the plan I have chosen ; and with this explanation will address myself forthwith to the work before me. Hargate Hill is about eight miles from Barnsley, and three from Darfield Station, on the North Midland Railway. " I chose this place/' says the Poet, " for its beauty, which, as is usual in affairs of the heart, is invisible to all but the enamoured. Rising early one morn- 118 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, ing, I took a beautiful walk of eighteen miles, through parks, wild lanes, and footpaths ; reached the place ; liked it ; and returning the same day, resolved to buy it. Supposing the cottage, which stood upon it, to be worth 60, I gave 180 for the land, say 18 per acre. It was a wild land, having been a wood, and fox cover ; called on the maps Argilt Hill, or wood. I have laid out upon it, land and all, about a thousand guineas. My establish- ment," he continues, " is illustrious for a St. Bernard dog, and a Welsh pony, ' the observed of all observers/ which in its green old age of twenty years, draws a small gig ; both untaxed. Gig, harness, and mare, cost altogether 8 10s. My family here consists of Mrs. Elliott, my two daughters, or rather one daughter, for they keep house for one of my sons in Sheffield in turn, a servant maid, and a man who works for me occasionally. Rid the Corn Laws, and I shall not be without dim visions of a flunkey." It is a lovely walk from Darfield Station up to the Poet's house, and the surrounding country is of an undulating, quiet, and pastoral cha- racter. The road runs through thick hedges, and tall trees ; with wide, green pastures on either side of it, where sheep and oxen graze in undisturbed tranquillity. I have many beauti- ful recollections of this old green road, with its musical birds and flowers ; its cool brooks, and shadowy outline of trees, falling in sunny mo- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 119 sales upon the pathway. I remember too, the wild roses and honeysuckles which grew upon the hedges ; especially the latter, whose " clus- tered trumpets," as Elliott calls them, seemed to be blowing anthems of incense upon the morning air, to the praise of the Great Creator. For it always happened in my summer visits to Elliott that the days were fine and sunny ; so that I look back upon them as Sabbaths conse- crated to the genius of friendship and poetry. After walking about two miles through this fine country, you come to Great Houghton, a long and straggling village, chiefly remarkable for an old, delapidated hall, from which Went- worth, Lord Strafford, married his third wife, and where he lived for some time afterwards. It is a fine, old ruin ; and I remember with what interest I regarded it, on my first visit in that direction, to the Poet. It was very early one summer's morning, and long before I arrived at the village, I saw the grey, massy building looming through the sunny mists ; and presently beheld its grotesque gables, and projecting win- dows. There was such an antique look about the place, that I could have imagined myself, for the moment, drawn suddenly back into the Middle ages. A nearer approach, however, dissipated the illusion ; for it w r as soon evident that the old glory had departed from its walls, and with it the ancient spirit of its chivalrous owners. At the end of the field enclosing it 120 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, on the west, which it was evident enough, from the scattered elms and chesnut trees, had once been a park, hung a wooden gate upon two stone pillars formerly a chief entrance to the mansion. A stone wall ran from this gate to the mansion itself ; and upon an inspection of the front, I found it was converted into an inn, where provender was furnished to man and beast for money. I opened the great door and entered the house ; for Elliott had frequently desired me to inspect the old mansion, and named it with pride, as the most interesting, historic ruin, in his neighbourhood. A large fire was blazing up the huge chimney, and the landlady was washing her chubby-faced children in an earthen pancheon, before it. A servant girl brought me a cup of milk, and asked if I would not like a drop of rum in it. The land-- lord, who was dressed in a velveteen shooting jacket, and corduroy breeches, was quietly de- vouring his hot toast and tea ; whilst a braw fellow, who had brought a team of horses from Sheffield, was regaling himself on the oak settle, with a pint of beer. I enquired how the house came to be in such a delapidated condition, and the landlord told me that the steward of the property had frequently promised to patch upf the old rooms, and make them habitable for him and his family but always forgot to keep his word. The roof was quite rotten, he said, from neglect; and ho could not afford to repair it OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT- 121 himself, out of the profits of the little farm he rented. And to this complexion, thought I, has the pride of Went worth come at last! The lofty rooms, and tracery on the oaken beams and wainscots, seemed to mock the vulgarity and poverty of their present occupiers ; and I could not help thinking that so fine a building with its rich historic memories might have been de- devoted to a better purpose than that of an ale- house. Having obtained permission, I wandered over the hall, up massy stone stair-cases; in to large rooms lighted by magnificent windows; along twilight galleries, where old family pictures, instinct with life, were wont to stare from the walls upon observing visitors, in the dim times that are gone. Here were dark antechambers ; the floors all rotten and breaking into dust be- neath the foot; and there were others well lighted, and looking out upon a fair and beauti- ful country, over which the sun shone as brightly as in Strafford's proudest and happiest days. But Strafford himself, and his third wife, and all their retainers, where were they ? The eastern part of the building is a mere ruin. The walls are dismantled; and have fallen in in some places ; leaving nothing to be seen but broken staircases and mouldering stones; where the ivy clings, and the bat and the owl inhabit. Elliott, in speaking of this old hall to a friend, who reports his last visit to him in an interest- ing paper which appeared in a late number of 122 LIFB, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, " Eliza Cook's Journal," says : " After Went- worth's time it became the property of Sir Wil- liam Rhodes, a stout Presbyterian and Parlia- mentarian. When the Civil War broke out, Rhodes took the field with his tenantry, on the side of the Parliament, and the first encounter between the two parties is said to have taken place only a few miles to the north of Old Houghton. While Rhodes was at Tadcaster, with Sir Thomas Fairfax, Captain Grey, (an ancestor of the present Earl Grey) at the head of a body of about three hundred Royalist Horse, attacked the old hall, and there being only some thirty servants left to defend it, took the place and set fire to it, destroying all that would burn. But Cromwell rode down the Cavaliers with his ploughmen at Marston Moor, not very far from here either, and then Rhodes built the little Chapel that you will see still standing at the west end of the hall, and estab- lished a Godly Presbyterian Divine to minister there ; forming a road from thence to Drimeld, about three miles off, to enable the inhabitants of that place to reach it by a short and conve- nient route. I forget how it happened (con- tinued the poet,) I believe it was by marriage, but so it was that the estate fell into the possession in these latter days, of Monckton Milnes, the poet's father, to whom it belongs." Resting myself awhile, after I had explored the dusty chambers and ruins of the hall, I re- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 123 sumed my walk through Great Houghton vil- lage, about half a mile from which, at the top of a hill, stands the poet's house. And as I ascended from the valley, I heard afar off the well-known bark of the great St. Bernard's dog already alluded to, as one of the notable appendages to Elliott's establishment. The red marly road led me under beautiful shady trees, up to Barnsdale Moor, which spread out with its blossoming gorse bushes, like a sea of golden emeralds. On the right hand, there was a farm- house, with great stacks piled up on one side of it, and a little cluster of trees in the back ground ; and on the left, fenced in from the Moor by a good and substantial stone-wall, stood Elliott's villa. Here I turned off upon the gravel road leading to the large blue gates, and entered the Poet's grounds, where I was saluted by the great shaggy dog, whose bark I had heard below. He came at me with a bound, wagging his huge tail; and jumping with his paws upon my shoulder, thrust his friendly snout into my face. I entered the gar- den, and soon stood within the porch of the LrFB, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, a poor servant boy of his in an oven, at Great Ploughton. When breakfast was over, the Poet related to me many incidents in his early life, and spoke of his ramblings around Sheffield, as the most beautiful of all his memories. The hill above the old Park Wood, where the scene of the Ranter's last sermon is placed, was a favourite haunt of his ; and he heard the sound of the many voiced rivers the Don, the Loxley, Ew- den, Rivelin, Sheaf, and Porter like the songs of innumerable Syrens, singing to him for ever, and cheering him in his Hargate solitude. His love for these beautiful streams had grown into a passion, which was increased by his long absence from them ; and whilst alluding to them on the morning in question, he repeated the following u Farewell to Rivelin " which he had written previous to his leaving Sheffield : <' Beautiful River ! Goldenly shining Where, with the cistus, Woodbines are twining, (Birklands around thee, Mountains above thee,) Rivelin wildest I Do I not love thee ? Why do I lovo thee, Heart-breaking River ? Love thee, and leave thee ? Leave thee for ever I Never to see thee, Where the storms greet thee ! Never to hear thee, Rushing to meet me ! Never to hail thee, Joyfully chiming Beauty in music, Sister of Wyming! Playfully mingling Laughter and sadness, Ribbledin's sister ! Sad in thy gladness. OP EBBNEZER ELLIOTT. 127 Oh, when thy poet, Weary reposes, Coffin'd in slander, Far from thy rose, Tell slave and tyrant (Heart-breaking River I) Tell them I loved thee, Love theefor ever !"* He was, however, well satisfied with his present position. " People," he said, " laughed at me for buying this little estate, and thought I should soon die of ennui, so far removed as I am from friends, companions, and the conveniences of civilization. But they were all mistaken. I am happy with my family and books ; and spend my time in laying out my garden, plant- ing trees, walking, driving, reading, writing. I envy no man, nor have I any right to do so. This is not an unlovely neighbourhood, (he added) for a poet in his old age, as I will prove to you before I return. And in the meanwhile, look out of the window, and tell me what you think of the view from it/* I did so, and found that the Poet had made artificial openings in the trees which bounded the croft beyond the gar^ den, through which the best pictures of the landscape were visible. Here were the Hall and Village of Great Houghton, and the dim landscape beyond it ; and a little to the right, far off, through another opening of foliage, lay the manufacturing villages of Swinton and Warth ; arid nearer in the valley, the beautiful church of Darfield looked over the quiet scenery towards the Poet's house, backed by the woods * See Appendix, 128 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, of Wentworth ; through which the monuments of Hoober Stand, Needles' Eye, and Smoothing Iron, shot gleaming in the sunshine; whilst a line of dark hills bounded the horizon. " Confessnow," said the Poet, " that I have not made a foolish choice, in coming up here to live." Shortly afterwards, at my request, he read to me some of his unpublished poems. These were written in a large folio book, which he kept in a wooden box, on one side the piano. He repeated like- wise, several melodies which he had adapted to some of our national airs, and I afterwards had the pleasure of joining his daughter in singing them. In this way we beguiled several hours ; and then took a short ramble over the moor, and through the fields and woods ; conversing by the way, of the aspects and tendencies of the age, and of the truly great men now living amongst us. In the political sphere, Cobden was his idol. He called him the Hero of the Bloodless Revolution ; the golden-mouthed ora- tor, whose plainest words rang with music ; and whose eloquence, at once simple, powerful, earn- est, argumentative, and convincing, was the most wonderful which ancient or modern times could boast of. " I look to Cobden," he said, " as the leader of the Advance Body Guard of Man ! Great as the Corn Law Battle was, and incalculably great as it will be in its results, Cobden will yet effect another revolution as great as that. He will destroy monopoly in all OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 129 its forms; and by reducing our taxation, he will rid the country of its titled paupers, and enahle the working man not only to eat cheap bread, but to possess a comfortable home to educate his children to live as a man !" He named Bright, too, as a fiery and energetic speaker and actor : but intellectually considered, as a Melanc- thon leaning upon the bosom of Luther. Of Lord John Russel and the Whigs he had no hope ; and spoke of them in contemptuous, and not very polite language. But he respected Sir Robert Peel, and regretted that he had u retired from business.'' I have previously shown, in an extract from one of his letters, that he had all but prophesied, ten years before the event took place, that Sir Robert would repeal the Corn Laws, as soon as he understood the true com- mercial position of England ; " and now," he said, u we want Sir Robert to execute his own measures ; for we have not got Free Trade yet, and when we do get it, we shall have hard work to keep it." Speaking of Colonel Thompson the brave Reformer and accomplished Scholar, he called him the Prince of Politicians ; and said that every letter of the Corn Law Cate- chism ought to be printed in gold, and read once a day on Sundays, from every pulpit in the land. For this book was Elliott's gospel ; and I am not quite sure that he did not go to heaven with it in his hand. He will read it there to Bentham, as he advised Tennyson when H2 130 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, he died, to read Longfellows' " Evangeline " to Homer. I ventured to allude to the neglect with which he had been treated by his own party, as a sort of probe which I thought might reach him ; but lie had no bitterness in his heart against his quondam associates, and fellow workers. " I am no longer wanted," he said ; " I have done my work, and can die, when God calls me; thankful that the battle is over, and the good time coming/' We were now in the midst of a wood, wandering knee-deep in blue bells, whilst the birds were singing merrily around us. " These," he said, pointing to the flowers, and trees, and birds, "are my companions; from them I derive consolation and hope ; for Nature is all harmony and beauty, and man will one day be like her ; and the war of castes and the war for bread will be no more." And then he stooped down, and gathering a flower, placed it affectionately in my hand, and bade me keep it in remembrance of that day's ramble. "For," he added, with the most touching emphasis of voice, " when these old woods are brown with their autumnal attire, I shall, in all probability, be at rest in the grave." The afternoon of that day was spent in walking up and down the grass-plot before the house, where we continued our morning's conversation, interrupted occasionally by the St. Bernard's dog, who seemed to be jealous of my monopoly OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 131 of the Poet, and came to ask for his wonted caresses. We were sometimes joined likewise by Mrs. Elliott and her daughter, who, when they had heard enough of our politics, retired amongst the flowers, and left us alone in the full glory of debate. It is well known that Elliott was a redoubted champion of competition, and that he looked upon communism as fatal to the best interests of man ; as a system where Do-nothing was to have all, with George Sand for a king. It is related of him, that walking once in company with a leading Socialist of Sheffield, discussing this subject, they came to a sudden turn of the road, which revealed a number of willow trees in a meadow, all re- cently cut into one uniform shape. At this strange and unexpected sight Elliott extended his arms, and cried aloud, " Behold a society of ready made Socialists !" He was apt enough at this work, and never let slip a good opportunity of illustrating his arguments by such casual examples as fell in his way. His hatred of communism however, blinded him, as usual, to the whole merits of the subject, which he had never studied, and which he said was not worth studying. George Sand was his Mother of Har- lots, in the new regime ; and he called Louis Blanc the fit legislator of an infernal Noodledom. He regarded the communistic tendencies of the age as the most death- like sign, which if not arrested would plunge the nation into anarchy, 132 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, confusion, and ruin. No argument drawn from the anomalies of our social state, could convince him that Capital had not a right to rule the world, according to the law of supply and de- mand ; and no horrible Irish famine ; no cri- minal statistics ; no facts of daily starvation ; no revelation of fever cellars of starving needle- women making shirts at 4d. a day, and that they might not die, compelled to the most pitiable, sorrowful degradation (such as one cannot think of without tears and agony) I say none of these things could move Elliott one inch from his political doctrine, or make him doubt for a moment that competition was the great social law of God, destined to rule the w r orld to the end of time. Neither would he admit the validity of the higher argument drawn from the Christian precepts, in favour of co-operation. Free trade, he said, would give us all we wanted of material wealth ; and education would gra- dually introduce a better feeling, and a kinder understanding between masters and men. Not that Elliott was impassible to the sufferings of the classes we have alluded to ; for it is no- torious that he was keenly alive to them. It was as a poet, however, not as a political econo- mist. In the former capacity he would have died to save them ; in the latter, he could have seen the earth filled with graves, rather than have abandoned it to poor Dudevant, a Ashley's Cow," and Louis Blanc. OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 133 Returning once more to the Corn Law Agita- tion, he said, " You spoke this morning about the neglect which you imagined me to have re- ceived at the hands of the old League ; and you are not perhaps aware that the League itself originated in Sheffield ; and that the Ariti Corn Law Association, commenced the crusade against monopoly, and engaged Paulton as their lec- turer." He likewise claimed for himself the honour of having given the first decided impulse to the movement, and by his songs, epigrams and- satires, prepared the way for the reception of the Anti-Corn Law doctrines. He spoke too with great and pardonable pride, upon his posi- tion with respect to the Corn Law Agitation. u I have won my name as the " Rhymer of the Revolution," he said, " And am prouder of that distinction, than I should be if I were made Poet Laureate of England." He did not seem to be aware that his fame as a poet could not last upon that foundation alone ; or that there was any thing in his poetry of which he might be more justly proud than of these political effusions. He was delighted when his corres- pondents styled him Ebeneezer Elliott, C.L.R. (Corn Law Rhymer), and he had a seal with these initials surmounting his own name, which he was in the habit of using upon his letters. In conversation he was sometimes slow and de- liberate ; condensing his thoughts in as few words as possible, and giving the net result > 134 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, as with a u whip of fire/' without letting one see the " cold process" of his thinking. Hence he was often sudden and startling in his annuncia- tions ; but he was no dogmatist in the rigid meaning of that word and if his premises were disputed would take infinite pains to establish them, conducting afterwards the entire argument with logical accuracy. But when the subject was a sacred one to him, and he grew warm over it, there was no bound to his rhetoric. He would utter the finest things, one after another, with the throat of Etna ; scattering them about in blasts of fire and thunder. He was a sort of walking earthquake, clad in flowers and rain- bows ; one of the most beautiful and terrible of men. I need not say that he was a thorough demo- crat in principle, for all his poems bear witness to the fact ; but he had no patience with Moboo- racy ; and despised the demagogues, who made it their business to mislead the people, coolly pocketing the wages of their iniquity. At one period of his life, when William Lovett guided the popular movement for reform, Elliott did all in his power to promote the enfranchisement of the people, both by speaking and writing ; but when O'Connor and the physical force Chartists appeared, he withdrew from the movement, and warned the working men of the inevitable issue of that business. And whilst we w r ere walking this afternoon in the garden at Har- OP EBENEZEB ELLIOTT. 135 gate, he fought his old Reform Battles over again ; and told me how he trembled when he had to face a public meeting ; how he pre- pared all his speeches, and committed them to memory, singing them in public, to the same tune wherein he had learned them in private. And when we were tired of talking, he con- ducted me round the house and garden, and over his little farm of corn-fields, grass, and clover. The garden, which was laid out by the poet himself, was very tastefully arranged, having many winding paths in it, running be- tween rich borders of shrubs and flowers. A mound, artificially elevated, on one side of the garden, commanded a beautiful and extensive prospect of hills, woods, dales, and streams. On the west lay a sunny dell, and just beyond it, on the side of the hill, stood a farm-house and buildings whilst several cows were grouped under the branches of a large beech tree in the farm croft. Lady "Wood, West Wood, Spring Wood, and Nun Wood, stretched away at our feet, covering many hundred acres, and forming a fine foreground to the wide and distant scenery, lying between them and the Hudders- field Hills which bounded the horizon. " We can see West Nab, and Home Moss distinctly from this mound," said the poet, " and in damp weather they look as if they would come into my parlour windows/' We proceeded from this mound down the hill side, which the poet had 136 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, planted with trees and shrubs, to the little dell below, where a trout stream w r ent babbling along over its shallow and stony bed. "When we arrived opposite the corn-field, just as they slope down to the lowlands we being still in the dell the Poet led me to a tree, which spread its friendly branches over the beautiful waving grass at our feet. " Under this tree," he said, with a plaintive and serious voice, " I mean to be buried. I shall sleep well enough here, out of the consecrated churchyard ; 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 once desired to be buried at Sbirecliffe, tmder the Gospel Tree, which he has celebrated in his poem of the u Hanter ;" and had even driven a large nail in it, and communicated the fact to two beloved friends in Sheffield, that they might know it, and see his wishes enforced, in case of his sudden death. But his sepulture on his own estate at Hargate was a more pleasing and touching desire, full of pastoral simplicity, and patriarchal beauty. That it was his earnest desire to be thus buried, and that he had long contemplated the event, there can be no doubt. Writing to a friend, (Isaac Ironsides of Sheffield) in September, 1848, he says : Ci I suffer great pain, and after losing more than twenty eight pounds in weight, I continue to lose at the rate of one pound weekly. You cannot fatten calves in that way ! If I am OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 137 not removed suddenly, I shall last till April next." He then continues, " I wish to be bu- ried in my skin, at the foot of Lord Galway's ash tree here. My folks are all for holy ground, and costs ; so I suppose I must submit ; and Hotherham Church being full of corruption, and one of our neighbouring clergymen happening to be here, I have been trying to bargain with him for a grave at Darfield. Could you think it ! Sinking the offal, it will cost 40s. for the use of the ground alone." In this way he grimly played with the subject, but it had a deep hold of him nevertheless ; as the little poem entitled u Let me Rest" in which he desires to be buried in Barnsdale, " where the wayside daisies grow, where the winds a Maying go," will sufficiently testify. Neither did he look on death as trifling and unimportant, but as a serious event, upon which were suspended the awful reprisals of a future judgment and an eternal doom. He confessed, however, that he knew nothing of this great Hereafter, whose starry curtain all mortals are forbidden to un- draw. But he clung with an infinite faith to the idea of immortality, and knew that he must soon unriddle the problem, which it presents to us. As we returned to the front of the house, he pointed to the wooded hills in the East, where the seat of Sir Charles Wood (present Chancellor of the Exchequer) was situated ; with Conisbro 138 LIFB, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, Castle and Hickleton Hall, in the distance; all of them visible in clear weather. We then crossed the garden, and went to the back of the house, where we had a fine view of Barnsdale Moor with its gorse and bracken whilst lines of dark trees fenced it on the right, and thick towering woods on the left. Descending the hill side, which was well planted with trees, we again entered the dell ; and the Poet led me to a little fish pond which he had laid down him- self, and stocked with trout from the neigh- bouring streams. It was a cool and beautiful spot, like some quiet nook in the mythic vale of Tempe. The birds sang there all day; and the pond itself was supplied by water which gushed in living streams out of the hill side. Elliott promised himself many happy hours in fishing and musing upon its banks. He had been a fisher in early life, and the statement of this fact, led naturally to Izaak Walton and his beautiful book on Angling, which contains, per- haps, the very best pastoral description in our language. I found that Elliott knew Walton by heart, and loved the fine old commonwealths- man too, notwithstanding his loyalty to the king. All books, indeed, which were true re- flexes of nature, were his delight. Hence the Howitts were his especial favourites ; two of Nature's most beautiful children, whose lives were all sunshine and poetry. He spoke of their mutual wanderings, and visits to remarka- OP EBENEZEB ELLIOTT. 139 ble places, as a rare and pleasant feature in the married life of literary people ; and so inseperable were they, he said, in his mind, that he always associated with their names, the old William and Mary Shillings. When we returned to the house, we found Mrs. Elliott and her daughter waiting for us at the tea table. The little yellow canary was still singing, perched outside its cage ; and the dis- tant lowland landscape was beginning to darken in the blue twilight of evening, as we gazed upon it through the open casement. The room in which we were assembled was large and conve- nient ; having the true household look about it; with none of the modern finery which marks the sitting rooms of the wealthy. There was the Poet's library against the wall opposite the window, which, with his easy chair, and the wooden box wherin he kept his MSS., are now the most interesting of these household relics. The piano he did not look upon as a luxury, but as a necessary article, which ought to appertain to every home, even the poorest ; and a deal box, instead of a mahogany case, to put the instrument in, would bring it, he said, within reach of the humblest means. Music was a great source of consolation to him, and often charmed him into forgetfulness of his bodily pain. For music has a language of her own ; and speaks to us of things which, as Jean Paul says, " in all our endless life we have not found, and 140 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, shall not find." The best parlour was opposite to the one we were sitting in, and contained portraits of the Poet, his wife, and children. That of Elliott himself, is the best I have yet seen ; although it is far from being a true repre- sentation of the man. It is singular, that all the attempts made by various artists to imprison him upon canvass, have been unsuccessful. William Howitt compliments Margaret Gillies upon the sketch she made of him, which appeared in the " People's Journal," some two years ago ; but it is a most comical failure ; and reminds me of the following criticism which the Poet passed upon four portaits of him in oil, which appeared in the first exhibition on behalf of the Sheffield Mechanics' Institute. "Taking them altogether, I could imagine them to represent four impor- tant scenes in the life of a Tailor : first, the Tailor turned gentleman ; second, the Tailor going a picturesqueing; third, the Tailor seeking cabbage ; fourth, the Tailor selecting his own grave." As I said, however, the portrait pos- sessed by his family is the best I have seen. After tea we fell gradually into an earnest conversation upon the literature of the day. I have already spoken of his admiration of Byron, Keats, and other poets, and in alluding to the Life of Keats, by R. Monckton Milries which he thought a fine piece of Biography on the whole, although rather too hasty in its finish he said the death of Keats, as described by hia OF EBENE2ER ELLIOTT. 141 friend Spenser, was the most painful and deeply affecting scene upon record. And, indeed, the world is deeply indebted to this true and beau- tiful brother, who, with the love of St. John in his great and devoted heart, watched the poor dying poet day after day week after week, and never left him until the stern work of death was over. " Had Keats lived," said Elliott, "there is nothing which he might not have achieved in the way of poetry." It was re- marked that this poem called " St. Agnes Eve," had no rival in our language as a picture of mediaeval life ; that its feudal and religious architecture was perfect, and that all the char- acters were as truly and faithfully drawn, as those in the Romeo and Juliet of Shakspere, of which indeed, it was a kind of episode. " But the Hyperion, Sir?" said Elliott, " What do you think of that ?" That it is a beautiful ruin, created and deserted by the gods. u Aye," he answered, " And what a ruin !" He then read the following lines upon Keats, which are published in the first volume of his "More Prose and Verse" fyc. " He lived, and loved ! He was a power That left its thought more felt than spoken : ' A fading flower, a falling shower, A breaking wave.' which now is broken. Can greatness die and be unborn ? It cannot, thou in scorn repliest; He perished in his scorn of scorn, And lowest deemed, of all was highest. 142 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, A vapour quenched his visions grand, Ah ! hope destroyed is worth's undoing ! He left the deathless deed he planned, A deed undone !- And what a Ruin 1" "We then spoke of Scott and Tennyson, of Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and Philip Bailey. Scott was his greatest favourite, and he quoted long passages from " Marmion" and the " Lady of the Lake/' " I envy Scott his narrative power in poetry," he said, " more than any other faculty which he possesses. Nothing is more difficult than to tell a tale well in rhyme ; and Scott has succeeded better than any one else. I have begun," he continued " a narrative epic in twelve books, four of which are finished ; and each book is complete in itself. I will read it to you before you go, and you will then' see in my own failure, why I envy Scott." I afterwards heard the poem in question, which is printed in his new volumes ; and I cannot understand why it has dropped silently from the press. For it is a poem of great power and beauty, and contains passages superior to any thing which Elliott had previously written. There is a little in- congruity and indistinctness perhaps in some of the characters, but this is amply atoned for by the general skill of the narrative, and the har- mony of its plan and details. There are one or two blots in it, however, of which ho was duly warned by friendly critics ; and these consist in that love of the horrible, which he says in his Au- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 143 tobiography, haunted him so in his young days. I allude more particularly to the picture of the drowned woman who fell a victim to Lord Konig's lust which occurs in the sixteenth section of the second book of this poem and which, in spite of the moral and poetical drapery thrown over it by the Poet, is a loathesome, and not a " beauteous horror" This was pointed out to him when he read it ; and it was endeavoured to be shown that things horrible and repulsive in themselves, were not fit subjects for poetry, and could not be elevated, even by the highest genius, into the region of human sympathy. He acknowledged the justice of this criticism and promised to alter the passage, and I have no doubt would have done so if death had not summoned him away so soon after this conver- sation. Elliott loved Tennyson for his pathos, and the courtly finish of his marvellous verse. He has caught a few eches of the Marianne in a soliliquy which occurs in the opening of his epic, but Tennyson was too dreamy a poet to make much impression upon the Corn Law Hhymer ; although he spoke of him with affec- tion and reverence. Bailey's Festus had a stronger hold of him ; but he knew very well how to discriminate between a panorama of pictures, and a poetic work of art. His admi- ration of Festus was therefore limited to its glorious passages, and wild flights of hnagina- 144 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, tion ; and to the lyrics scattered through its pages. He severely condemned the theological soliloquies which darken the last edition of this poem, and so painfully hurden its action. " The book," he said, u wanted cutting down hefore, in the first edition ; and now it sprawls its un- wieldy length to such an appalling extent, that its many and manifest beauties will hardly save it from perishing." He spoke with great enthusiasm of Carlyle, and had a copy of tc The French Revolution^ a History" in his library. He was a long while before he knew what to make of that book ; but when he had grown familiar w r ith its strange terminology, and could steer his way amid the endless pageants that swept in glaring colours past him, upon that wild revolutionary ocean of blood and fire, he found it the most vivid and splendid of histories, He called it poetry in prose ; and named Carlyle the Homer of his age. And then as he w r armed in his eulogies, he rose from his seat, and advancing to the bookcase took down the first volume the Bastille and said, " Now, sir, I will give you a scene from this book that would wring tears from marble." He then read, with a voice full of pathos, the following letter signed Que- ret Demery, which was found in one of the cells of the Bastille, after its demolition by the populace : "If, for my consolation, Monseigneur would OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 145 grant mo, for the sake of God, and the most Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife ; were it only her name on a card, to show that she is alive ! It were the greatest consolation I could receive ; and I should for ever bless the greatness of Monseigneur." " There, sir," he said, wiping away the tears which streamed down his furrowed cheeks, " that is the most painful and agonizing passage in the language. You see it has made a woman of me ; and I should be a brute if I could not weep over such great, sad sufferings ; such calm resignation in the midst of I know not how many years of despair ; which only breaks si- lence at last in a touching, heart-breaking appeal to the d- d Monseigneur that it would please him to send the poor captive tidings of his dear wife, were it only ; her name on a card/ " " O God !" he continued, " how dreadfully the wail of that poor, unknown, broken heart, sounds in the ears of men for ever." " Bless the greatness of Monseigneur !" he added, walking fiercely up and down the room; "Yes ! and pray too that Hell might be hot enough for him ! God for- give these scoundrels, sir ; it is not in me !" Later in the evening he asked me if I had seen Emerson during his visit to this country, and when I replied that I had the honour to entertain him during the greater part of his stay in Huddersfield, he requested me to describe the man, and his bearing in social life. My i 146 great reverence for Emerson made me draw, perhaps, too partial a picture of him ; for the Poet remarked that such a high and impassable nature, with such simple and winning manners, rarely met together in so illustrious a person ; and that he approached the ideal he had formed of the great Plato. He had not read Emerson however, and was only acquainted with him through extracts from his printed works, which he had seen in the periodicals of the day ; and through the puhlic reports of his lectures. If he had known more of him, he would have liked him less ; for so called the Transcen- dental Philosophy was to him a stumbling- block. He was too strongly tied with his natal-cord to the objective world, to appreciate the speculations and inner revealings of the Massachusetts Philosopher ; although his mind was broad enough in its aesthetic and intellec- tual relations, and could grasp all the beauty of the universe, and resolve in some fashion at least not a few of the moral problems which affect the destiny of the race. But -beauty was not symbolical to him ; or at least, not in the same sense as it was to Shakespere, Plotinus, or Swedenberg. It was God's silent gospel, re- vealing God as The Beautiful; and beauty was his divinest Idea. He did not see that beauty was fleeting and evanescent ; the mere garment of the Invisible, behind which HE sat enthroned, whose are all the worlds. And be- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 147 cause he could not pierce through the painted robes of the Phenominal, he never read the Divine Secrets, and could form therefore, no conception of the "Ubi" or "Whereness" of Emerson. Still there was enough of the prac- tical and homely in this author to recommend itself to the Poet; and as the newspapers, which always cater for the mass, instinctively assimi- lated such passages, as they w T ere thrown off by the Reviewers, Elliott's estimate of Emerson was formed almost exclusively upon them. He much regretted that neither Carlyle nor Emer- son had visited him ; especially since they had both been in his neighbourhood. He was in- formed that Carlyle had once set off with Monck- ton Milnes to visit him, but was detained on the way by some occurrence which had slipped the memory of the speaker ; and moreover that Carlyle had asked many questions about him, upon one or two occasions which were specified ; and Elliott in his turn now asked for particulars respecting Carlyle. The conversation termi- nated by the Poet expressing his deep regret that the opportunity alluded to was gone by for ever. For now, he said, we shall never meet, unless in Heaven. I have previously given the general character- istics of Elliott's conversational speech ; but I find it impossible to do him justice in this re- spect. The poor fragments which I have ren- dered in these pages will give no idea of him ; 148 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, except to those who knew him personally ; (for they can vivify these broken sentences, by put- ting the fire of the man into them) ; to all others they must be comparatively lifeless. And this seems to be the fittest place to describe Elliott's personal appearance, not as he was when a young man, but at the time I am now speaking of. Most of his readers imagine him to have been a man of large proportions, a true son of the forge broad-set, strong, and muscular, as a Cyclop. But he was the reverse of all this. In stature he was not more than five feet six inches ; of a slender make, and a bilious-nervous tempera- ment. His hair was quite grey ; and his eyes, which were of a greyish blue, were surmounted by thick bushy brows, which looked like the* thunder clouds of Jove. His forehead was not broad, but rather narrow; and his head was small. There was great pugnacity in the mouth, especially when he was excited ; but in repose it seemed to smile, more in consciousness of strength, however, than in sunny unconscious beauty. His nostrils were full of scorn ; and his eyes which w r ere the true indices of his soul literally smote you with fire, or beamed with kindness and affection, according to the mood he was in. In earnest debate, his whole face was lighted up, and became terrible and tragic. At such times he paced up and down the room, with a firm foot, full of trampling scorn, and his words were whirlwinds. In gayer moments he would at- OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 149 tempt comedy, and I have heard him recite pas- sages from Molliere who was a great favourite with him until I scarcely knew whether to laugh or weep. For he had no comic faculty, and all his attempts that way, were mere travestied tragedy. His voice was as musical as a lute, and capable of the deepest pathos. He was very fond of that fine old song by Burns u Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon," and during the evening I am now speaking of, he recited and sang it with great effect, notwithstanding his weakness. Fancy the grey, old man, standing, during this performance, behind his easy chair ; dressed in a blue frock-coat ; a blue waistcoat, which came down to the hips, and a pair of blue trowsers ; for this was his ordinary attire ; and he walked about his garden with a blue cap on. These facts are, to me at least, very interesting ; and I think they are not without general interest. He had a great love for the Latin and Greek classics, which he read through English transla- tions. Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, and Tacitus were his chief favourites. He was well ac- quainted with " jEschylus," was keenly alive to its beauties, and was fond of comparing the different translations of this tragedy ; never failing to adopt the best renderings of particular lines. In a book called a " Monopoly graph," by Samuel Gower, a scholar and a poet of Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, he found the fol- lowing beautiful translation of one of the most J 2 150 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GENIUS, difficult lines in this tragedy, which he was never weary of repeating. I will quote the pas- sage; and it is the last line to which I now allude : PROMETHEUS (solus). " Oh, thou divine and boundless atmosphere I And you, ye swift-wing-ed winds of heaven ; and thou Oh countless laughter of the salt-sea waves !" There can be no question that this is a great im- provement upon the old translations and that it is rendered in the true spirit of the original. I said that Elliott's prejudices were very strong, and will now relate an anecdote to illus- trate this fact, although indeed, such illustration is scarcely necessary, We had been speaking about mesmerism : and Mrs. Elliott, who had seen many experiments performed by Dr. Hol- land of Sheffield, confessed her entire belief in this mysterious and occult science. The Poet, how- ever, was loud in his denunciations of it, and in- sisted that it was mere collusion and quackery. As this was a charge brought against many men whom I knew to have practised mesmer- ism, and whose characters were unimpeachable, I ventured to remonstrate with him, intimating at the same time that I had proved the truth of mesmerism myself, in various cases, and at various times. "If that be the case," said Elliott, "you can mesmerize me. Come, sir, OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 151 try your power ; and if you succeed I will be- lieve in this infernal art." I was unwilling, however, to make the attempt, because I do not like playing at such a serious game ; but I told him I had no doubt I should succeed, in case I tried. He called this a subterfuge, and laughed at me with the merriest mockery ; literally crowing with exultation, and repeating his chal- lenge, as he paced up and down the room. At the request of his daughters and Mrs. Elliott, who were very anxious that he should be con- vinced, I at last accepted the challenge. Ac- cordingly, the Poet sat down in his chair, and the moment my hand came in contact with his head, he shrunk as if struck by a Voltaic Pile, uttered a deep sigh, fell back upon his chair, and all consciousness fled from him. I shall never forget my sensations at that moment, as I contemplated the pale and lifeless form of the Poet thus suddenly silenced all the fire of his spirit quenched, and put out as if by the hand of Death. His daughter, however, became alarmed, and to relieve her I began to denies- merize him. He gradually roused himself, and when consciousness returned, he rubbed his eyes, started from his chair, and exclaimed, " What have I been asleep ?" " Yes," was the triumph- ant reply of his daughter ; and Mrs. Elliott clapped her hands in chorus. The Poet, how- ever, was still dubious ; and would have it that he had fallen asleep from exhaustion. 152 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND GEKIUS, In religious matters it is difficult to say what he believed, and what he disbelieved. Like the great mass of literary men, he had no creed, properly so called, and no faith in sects or par- ties. Still he loved Christianity for the human beauty which pervades, it and the divine revelations which it unfolds to man. In one of his letters to a friend, already quoted, he says,