UC-NRLF B 3 57T bl7 ■n Li w \ % k b ~^ y^~i z c\ . /^r? LIFE, POETRY, AND LETTERS OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. THE CORN-LAW RHYMER, WITH AN ABSTRACT OF HIS POLITICS. BY HIS SON-IN-LAW, JOHN WATKIN8, AUTHOR OF THE "LIFE OF JAMES IfYEBS," " GEORGE CHAMBER.' ET< " His heart's his mouth ; What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent ; And being angry, does forget that ever He heard the name of Death."— Coriolanus, LONDON: JOHN MORTIMER, PUBLISHER, 6% FLEET- STREET. 1850. ERRATUM. In page 131, second line from bottom, for "enactor," read " establisher." DEDICATORY EPISTLE (with permission) TO SIE KOBEKT PEEL, BAET, Sir Robert, — To yon I dedicate this Life of Ebenezer Elliott, because, since the effective part you took in the repeal of those laws which at once made bread dear, trade profitless, and labour vain, he became one of your warmest admirers. Posterity will do justice to the statesman who sacrificed party, and with it place and power, to principle and the good of his country; who elevated the politician into the patriot ; who, belonging to no party, yet fears not the factious opposition of all ; who stands alone, a free, philosophical, and independent advocate of national interests. I have the honour to subscribe myself, Sir Robert, Your much obliged and most obedient Servant, JOHN WATKINS. Clap ham Rise, 1st July, 1850. N.B. — The above was written previous to the lamented Baronet's decease. 269079 SIR EOBEET PEEL, BAET. At a time of peace and pleasantness, when all was quiet around, the world has been startled with one of those shocks which " overcome us like a summer- cloud," creating wonder and dismay. Sir Robert Peel is dead ! Never, perhaps, was the loss of one man so nationally felt. The deceased was the most dis- tinguished patron of the fine arts, and the greatest statesman of the age. This book derives a melancholy interest from the fact that one of the latest acts of the Right Honourable Baronet was an instance of his generous urbanity in granting permission that it should be dedicated to him.* Elliott's memory will receive this posthumous honour; and the name of the Apostle of Corn-law Repeal will be linked in history with the Accomplisher of that great boon. May we not hope that those truly disinterested benefactors of their kind and country are now in the enjoyment of the everlasting reward which is reserved for all who have done or suffered well in this life ? * See the fac-simile at the title-page. P E E F A C E. The late Ebenezer Elliott, a short time before his death, requested me to write his life. He said he had thought at one time of engaging his son Francis to the task ; but had altered his mind because he deemed an own son less likely to execute it impartially than a son-in-law. He gave me some general directions as to the plan of the work, and told me that he had written an autobiography up to his 25th year. He was desirous, above all things, that a true portrait of himself should be drawn, omitting the colouring or dress of adventitious circumstance ; " For," said he, " that is not myself V I promised to comply with his request, and to write such a Biography as I trusted public opinion would ratify. His decease made me regard his will as a sacred obligation, to be fulfilled before the wish of any one else on the subject. But a natural diffidence caused mc to desire that some one more known VI PREFACE. in the world than myself, and better qualified than I, should undertake the task. Accordingly, Mr. Fox, M.P., was solicited, but declined on account of his Parliamentary engagements. Appli- cation was also made to Mr. Thomas Carlyle, who replied that he had not been personally acquainted with Mr. Elliott. There seemed no alternative but that I should perform my promise to the deceased. I was partly encouraged to this by the example of the sons-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, of Southey, of Dr. Chalmers and others. I wanted not for materials, possessing, indeed, a greater quantity than I could render available. Many printed memoranda of the Life and Cha- racter of Elliott exist in reviews, magazines, and newspapers, together with notices of his works ; these I have not transcribed, because I felt desirous to make the contents of this book as original as possible, and not to republish what had already been published. I have given a somewhat elabo- rate account of his poetic works and made liberal extracts from them : this I felt necessary in order to do j astice to the merits of a poet whose writings are not so generally known as they deserve to be, PREFACE. Vll and concerning whose character mnch misrepre- sentation exists. Readers of poetry are seldom readers of politics — they seek amusement rather than instruction ; but politics could not be wholly omitted in a life of the Corn-law Rhymer. I have, therefore, made a " brief abstract and chronicle" of them, intro- ducing them without amplification. The letters written by Ebenezer Elliott to a great variety of correspondents are very numerous, and would, of themselves, fill a large volume. But as he was in the habit of copying himself in his epistolary correspondence, the reader will not be desirous to see more than a few specimens. In selecting these, I have had regard to one beautiful phase in the character of the writer, namely, his condescension to the wishes of young authors who needed his advice and encouragement. He himself said that his chief pleasure in old age was to con- verse with the young minds of the country ; and those who sought him found him indeed a literary pastor. The letters in this volume furnish the most valuable portion of its contents. I have now a grateful duty, which I cannot con- clude without fulfilling, namely, to express my Vlll PREFACE. heartfelt thanks to those gentlemen who have kindly answered my requests for assistance. These are particularly due to Mr. Tait, of Edinburgh; the Rev. Jacob Brettel, of Rotherham ; Dr. Beard, of Manchester; William Fisher, Esq., of Sheffield; Mr. Ebenezer Hingston, Mr. Bedingfield, and, above all, to Sir Robert Peel, who politely granted me his permission to dedicate to him this book. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page. PROM HIS BIRTH UP TO HIS TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR — BEING AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH THE EDITOR'S CRITICAL REMARKS . 1 CHAPTER II. FROM THE PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST POEMS TO THE PUBLICATION OF " LOVE," A POEM 38 CHAPTER III. FROM THE PUBLICATION OF " LOVE," TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE " CORN-LAW RHYMES" 05 CHAPTER IV. CONTAINING A HISTORY OF THE CORN-LAW RHYMER'S POLITICAL POETRY 78 CHAPTER V. "THE VILLAGE PATRIARCH" — "THE SPLENDID VILLAGE" — " CORN- LAW HYMNS" 107 CHAPTER VI. CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE EDITOR'S VISIT TO EBENEZER ELLIOTT, AT UPPERTHORPE, NEAR SHEFFIELD .... 132 CHAPTER VII. LETTERS TO JOHN WATKINS, FRANCIS FISHER, AND EBENEZER HINGSTON 15G CHAPTER VIII. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AND DRAMVS . 183 BEAUTIES OF ELLIOTT LETTERS TO THE EDITOK CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. Page. . 205 . 22G CHAPTER XI. TIIE EDITOR'S VISIT TO EBENEZER ELLIOTT AT GREAT HOUGHTON — MARRIAGE WITH THE POET'S DAUGHTER: AND DEATH OF THE POET — CONCLUDING REMARKS 25; LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. CHAPTER I. FR01I HIS BIRTH UP TO HIS TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR — BEING AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH THE EDITOR'S CRI- TICAL REMARKS. Ebenezer Elliott is a name that will pass from biography to history. He was pre-eminently a philanthropist and patriot j and, moreover, a poet, who made his ornamental art useful, by words of truth exciting great deeds, as one who had a mis- sion to fulfil on behalf of human progress. For this purpose he mingled politics with his poetry, and was the pioneer and trumpeter of a great national movement for the repeal of the Bread- tax, or the laws affecting Free-trade in corn. He lived to witness the successful result of his labours ; and died anticipating the blessings that would flow from them to his country. Ebenezer Elliott was neither a partisan in politics nor a sectarian in religion — he was a general reformer. His in- dignation against oppressors of all kinds was equalled only by his pity for the oppressed — there ' : • . . 6 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. was the man in all he wrote. The life of such an individual cannot fail to be interesting if faithfully told ; and as there are no biographers equal to autobiographers, when they speak the truth of themselves, Ebenezer Elliott, at every opportunity, shall tell his own story. Accordingly, this chapter will contain an autobiography, written for Mr. Tait, and forwarded by that gentleman, for pos- thumous publication in the " Athenaeum." AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Soon after my Corn-law Rhymes had made me somewhat notorious, I was strongly urged by sundry persons to write a history of my life j which I then refused to do, because I had nothing remarkable to relate of myself, and because I knew not that I had done aught that could rea- sonably induce any person to ask, six months after my death, "What sort of man was Ebenezer Elliott ?" I placed, however, in the hands of my friend G. C. Holland, M.D., a series of letters, in which I narrated some incidents of my early life, that had probably influenced the formation of my mind and character, and which might form the basis of a posthumous narrative, if wanted. I em- body in the succeeding narrative the substance of those letters now, following the advice which I re- jected several years ago — reluctantly, for the same reasons — not that this is " a world to hide virtues LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 6 in," but that I have none to hide. I have another reason for my reluctance. The portion of my history which I am about to publish is not that portion of it which would be most instructive were it written as I alone could write it ; that is, if I were brave and honest enough so to write it — which I am not. Even that portion of it, however, would not be more instructive than the history of almost any one person out of millions of the Queen's sub- jects, if truly written ; nor could I write it at all without saying to dead sorrows, " Arise, and weep afresh," and to errors and failings that would fain sleep forgotten, " Be ye remembered !" Two men alone in our time, Rousseau and Byron, told the truth of themselves ; and how have they been re- quited ? Yet the time may come when my pre- sent unwillingness to look back on days of trouble will be lessened ; for there is might and majesty in the tale of the honest battle for bread, and of the strength which the struggle gives to weak- ness. Of my birth no public registry exists. My father, being a Dissenter, baptized me himself, or employed his friend and brother Berean, Tommy Wright, to baptize me. But I was born at the New Foundry, Masbro', in the parish of Bother- ham, on the 17th day of March, in the year of our Lord 1781 ; and I narrate the fact thus particu- 4 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. larly tliat about an event of such importance there may be no contentious ink shed by historians in time to come. Robert Elliott, my father's father, was a whitesmith, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ; a man in good circumstances, or he could not have given to his son Ebenezer, my father, what was then considered a first-class commercial education, and put him apprentice to Landell and Chambers, of that great city, wholesale ironmongers, who re- ceived with him a premium of 50/. His wife, who rejoiced in the pastoral name of u Sheepshanks," was a Scotswoman, and, speaking metaphorically, wore breeches : a circumstance which does not seem to have lessened the love her husband bore her, for he lamented her with tears long after she had been laid in the grave, even until the day of his death — especially when he was drunk. The ancestors of my grandfather Elliott, I have been told, and have the honour to believe, were thieves, neither Scotch nor English, who lived on the cattle they stole from both. That my grand- mother Sheepshanks had ancestors is probable; but of what they were neither record nor tradition hath reached me, which is the more pity, because my great difficulty in writing this narrative is want of materials. Famous men are fated to have wants ; but ask yourselves, ye famous ! who could write your histories if all the children of want LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 5 were famous ? After my father left Landell and Chambers, he became one of the clerks of the Walkers of Hasbro', where he lodged with a surgeon called Robinson, under whose roof he first saw my mother — one of the daughters of a yeo- man at Ozzins, near ' Penistone, where his an- cestors had lived on their fifty or sixty acres of freehold time out of mind ! ! I think, then, I have made out my descent, if not from very fine folks, certainly from respectables, as (getting every day comparatively scarcer) they are called in these days of ' ' ten dogs to one bone." If famous men are fated to have wants, so are they to have misfortunes, truly such — and some of mine were born before me ; for the whole life of my mother was a disease — a tale of pain, termi- nated by death — one long sigh. Yet she suckled eleven children, and reared eight of them to adidt age. From her I have derived my nervous irrita- bility, my bashful awkwardness, my miserable proneness to anticipate evil, that make existence all catastrophe. I well remember her sending me to a dame's school, kept by Nanny Sykes, the beautiful and brave wife of a drunken husband, where I learned my ABC. I was next sent to the Hollis School, then presided over by Joseph Ramsbotham, who taught me to write, and little more. In those days the science of monitor ship LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. was undiscovered; and as he had seldom fewer, perhaps, than 150 scholars, of course none but the naturally clever made much progress. About this time my poor mother, who was a first-rate dreamer, and a true believer in dreams, related to me one of her visions. " I had placed under my pillow," she said, "a shank-bone of mutton to dream upon; and I dreamed that I saw a little broad-set, dark, ill-favoured man, with black hair, black eyes, thick stob nose and tup-shins : it was thy father." And a special original my father was : a man of great virtue, not without faults. One of the latter had its origin, probably, in some superstitious reve- rence for the cabalistic number "three." I allude to his bad habit of ducking his children thrice, and keeping them the third time some seconds under water when he bathed us in the canal ; which pro- duced in me a horror of suffocation that seems to increase with my years. To avoid this cruel kind- ness, I was obliged to show him that I could do without his assistance, by bathing voluntarily ; a consequence of which was, that on one occasion I narrowly escaped drowning : "the more the pity!" 1 have often said since. I never knew a man who possessed the tithe of my father's satiric and hu- morous powers ; he would have made a great comic actor. He also possessed uncommon political saga- city, which afterwards earned for him the title of LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 7 (< Devil Elliott," a title which is still applied to him, I am told, by the descendants of persons who then hated the poor and honoured the king. He left the Messrs. Walker to serve Clay and Co., of the New Foundry, Masbro', for a salary of sixty or seventy pounds a year, with house, candle, and coal ! Well do I remember some of those days of affluence and pit-coal fires ; for glorious fires we had — no fear of coal-bills in those days. There, at the New Foundry, under the room where I was born, in a little parlour like the cabin of a ship, yearly painted green, and blessed with a beautiful thoroughfare of light — for there was no window-tax in those days — he used to preach every fourth Sunday to persons who came from dis- tances of twelve and fourteen miles to hear his tremendous doctrines of ultra- Calvinism (he called himself a Berean) and hell hung round with span- long children ! On other days, pointing to the aqua-tint 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, explained the glories of " The glori- ous victory of his Majesty's forces over the Rebels at Bunker's Hill \" Here the reader has a key which will unlock all my future politics. If ever there was a man who knew not fear, that man was the father of the Corn-Law Rhvmer. From his 8 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. birth to his last gasp I doubt whether he knew what it was to be afraid, except of poverty, about which he had sad forebodings — ultimately realized after he had become nominal proprietor of the Foundry of Clay and Co. — the partners having sold him their shares on credit. I have left some earlier incidents for after nar- ration, that I may found on my father's pecu- liarities a claim to speak now of my own, or rather of certain physical or constitutional weak- nesses, to which, I fear, all that is poetical in me or in my doings is traceable. " Oh, blessed are the beautiful \" says Haynes Baily, uttering for ever a sentiment to which I can feelingly and mournfully respond ; for in my sixth year I had the small-pox, which left me frightfully disfigured, and six weeks blind. From the consequences I never recovered. To them, quite as much as to my poor mother's infirm con- stitution, I impute my nerve-shaken weakness. How great was that weakness I will endeavour to show the reader. When I was very young — I might be twelve years old — I fell in love with a young woman called Ridge way — now Mrs. Wood- cock, of Munster, near Greasbro'-— to whom I never spoke a word in my life, and the sound of whose voice, to this day, I have never heard ; yet if I thought she saw me as I passed her father's LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 9 house, I felt as if weights were fastened to my feet. Is genius diseased? I cannot remember the time when I was not fond of ruralities. Was I born, then, with a taste for the beautiful ? When quite a child — I might be seven or eight years old — I remember filling a waster frying-pan with water, placing it in the centre of a little grove of mugwort and wormwood that grew on a stone- heap in the foundry-yard, and delighting to see the reflection of the sun, and clouds, and the plants themselves, as from the surface of a natural fountain; for I so placed the pan that the water only was visible, and I seldom failed to visit it at noon, when the sun was over it. But I had also a taste for the horrible — a passion, a rage for seeing the faces of the hanged or the drowned. Why, I know not ; for they made my life a burden, following me wherever I went, sleeping with me, and haunting me in my dreams. Was this hideous taste a result of constitutional infirmity ? Had it any connexion with my taste for writing of hor- rors and crimes ? I was cured of it by a memor- able spectacle. A poor friendless man, who, having no home, slept in colliery hovels and similar places, having been sent, one dark night, from the Glasshouse for a pitcher of ale, fell into the canal, and was drowned. In about six weeks his body rose to the surface of the water, and I, of course; b3 10 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. ran to see it. The spectacle which by that time it presented was daily and nightly, whether I was alone or in the street, in bed or by the fireside, for months my constant companion. Had this morbid propensity any relation to my solitary tendencies? Healthy man is social; but in my childhood I had no associates. Although the neighbourhood swarmed with children, I was always alone ; and this is perhaps one reason why I was deemed rather wanting in intellect, and why I might really have had fewer ideas than other children of my age, for I cut myself off from com- munication with theirs. But though I was alone, I have no recollection that my solitude was painful. On the contrary, I employed my time delightfully in swimming my little fleets of ships, and repair- ing my fortresses on the banks of the canal between the Greasbro' and Rawmarsh bridges. My early fondness for carpentering is no proof that if I had been bred an engineer I should have made any improvements in machinery, for all children are more or less fond of knicknackery ; but I certainly excelled in handicrafts. I was the best kitemaker and the best shipbuilder. Most captains of sloops and other vessels possess a model of a ship of some sort. By borrowing such models, I completed, when I was about thirteen years old, a model of an eighteen-gun LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 11 ship. I gave it, many years afterwards, to a boatbuilder of Greasbro', called Woffendin, who begged it of me, that it might obtain for him the office of boatbuilder to Earl Eitzwilliam. He gave or sold it to Lord Milton, the present Earl Eitz- william, then a youth; and it was, I believe, a few years ago, still at Wentworth House. But my imitative talents won me no respect ; nor is this very surprising. Placed beside my wondrous bro ther, Giles, who was beautiful as an angel, I was ugliness itself ; and in the presence of his splendid abilities I might well look like a fool, and believe myself to be 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. But I am not aware that I ever envied or at all disliked him. When I look back 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 12 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. integrity, without abjuring one article of his fear- less 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 law, and so painful was the impression which they made on me when I was about sixteen years old, that I should certainly have emigrated to the United States had I pos- sessed 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 passion- ately 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 chance to meet an expe- dience-monger who tells me " that the end justi- fies 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 magis- trates ! 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. My ninth year was an era in my life. My LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 13 father had cast a great pan, weighing some tons, for my uncle, at Thurlestone ; and I determined to go thither in it, without acquainting my parents with my intention. A truck, with assistants, having been sent for it, I got into it, about sunset, unperceived, hiding myself beneath some hay which it contained, and we proceeded on our journey. I have not forgotten how much I was excited by the solemnity of the night and its shooting stars, until I arrived at Thurlestone, about four in the morning. It is remarkable that I never in after-life succeeded in any plan which I did not execute in a similar way. If I ask advice, either the plan is never executed or it is unsuccessful. I had not been many days at Thurlestone before I wished myself at home again, — for my heart was with my mother. If I could have found my way back I should certainly have returned ; and my inability to do so (though my having come in the night may in some degree account for it) shows, I think, that I really must have been a dull child. My uncle sent me to Penistone school, where I made some little pro- gress. At this school, one of the boys, who had a bad breath, took a liking to me. He would always sit close to me, and almost poisoned me j yet if at any time he happened to be absent I felt as if I could not live : so necessary has it ever been 14 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. to me to have some kind bosom to lean upon. When I got home from school I spent my evenings in looking from the back of my uncle's house to Hoyland Swaine, for I had discovered that Masbro' lay beyond that village ; and ever, when the sun went down, I felt as if some great wrong had been done me. At length, in about a year and a half, my father came for me : and so ended my first irruption into the great world. Is it not strange, that a man who from his childhood has dreamed of visiting foreign countries, and yet, at the age of sixty, believes that he shall see the Falls of Niagara, has never been twenty miles out of England, and has yet to see, for the first time, the beautiful scenery of Cumberland, Wales, and Scotland ? On my return from the land of the great pan I was again sent to Hollis school, where, as was my wont in all cases, I took the shortest ways to my objects ; and the easiest way to get my sums done was, to let John Ross do them for me. This prac- tice, in its consequences, added not a little to my reputation for duncery at home. Yet I have an impression that I was looked up to by my school- fellows — I cannot tell why ; for I never fought, and I think they must have suspected me to be rather wanting in certain learned accomplishments. I say, I never fought, and yet my brother Giles, when in danger, always took me out to defend LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 15 him. How all this happened I am at a loss to conceive, for I took no pains to bring it about. But having got into the rule of three, without having first learned numeration, addition, subtrac- tion, and division, I was sent by my despairing parents to Dalton school, two miles from Masbro'; and I see at this moment, as vividly as if nearly fifty years had not since passed over me, the king- fisher shooting along the Don as I passed school- ward through the Aldwark meadows, eating my dinner four hours before dinner-time. But, oh the misery of reading without having learned to spell ! The name of the master was Brunskill, a broken-hearted Cumberland man, one of the best of living creatures — a sort of sad-looking, half-starved angel without wings ; and I have stood for hours beside his desk, with the tears running down my face, utterly unable to set down one cor- rect figure. I doubt whether he ever suspected that I had not been taught the preliminary rules. I actually did not know that they were necessary; and looked on a boy who could do a sum in vulgar fractions as a sort of magician. Dreading school, I absented myself from it during the summer months of the second year — " playing truant" about Dalton, Deign, and Silverwood, or Thrybergh Park, where I stole duck eggs, mistaking them for the eggs of wild birds, and was brought before 16 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Madame Finch. She, seeing what a simpleton I was, released me with a reprimand. Let it not be supposed that these were happy days. I was utterly miserable. I trembled when I drew near home, for I knew not how to answer the questions which I feared my father would put to me. Sometimes I avoided them by slinking to bed without supper, which to a lad who took care to eat his dinner soon after breakfasting could not be convenient. It was impossible, however, to prevent my father from discovering that I was learning nothing but vagabondism, or from sus- pecting that my slow progress was owing more to idleness than to want of ability to learn. He set me to work in the foundry as a punishment. But working in the foundry, so far from being a punish- ment to me, relieved me from the sense of in- feriority which had so long depressed me; for I was not found to be less clever there than other beginners. For this there was a sufficient reason : I had been familiar from my infancy with the pro- cesses of the manufactory, and possibly a keen though silent observer of them. The result of his experiment vexed the experimenter, and he had good cause for vexation ; for it soon appeared that I could play my part at the York-Keelman with the best of its customers. Yet I never thoroughly relished the rude company and coarse enjoyments LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 17 of the alehouse. My thoughts constantly wan- dered to the canal banks and my little ships ; and — I know not why, but — I always built my fort- resses, aye, and my castles in the air, too, where the flowers were the finest. The yellow " ladies' bed straw" (I did not then know its name) was a par- ticular favourite of mine; and the banks of the canal were golden with it. At this time I had strong religious impressions ; and (when there was service) I seldom missed attending the chapel of Parson Allarcl — a character who might have sat for Scott's picture of Dominie Sampson. But I some- times went to the Masbro' chapel (Walker's, it was then called), to hear Mr. Groves, one of the most eloquent and dignified of men, but hated by my father (who was a capital hater) for some nothing or other of discipline or of doctrine. I was on my way, I believe, to hear him, when I called, one Sunday, on my aunt Robinson — a widow, left with three children and about 30/. a-year, on which (God knows how !) she contrived to live respect- ably, and to give her two sons an education which ultimately made them both gentlemen. I thought she received me coldly. She did not, I think, know that I had been tipsy a night or two before, but I was conscience-stricken. After a minute's silence, she rose, and laid before me a number of Sowerby's " English Botany/' which her son Ben- 18 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. jamin, then apprenticed to Dr. Stainforth, of Shef- field, was purchasing monthly. Never shall I forget the impression made on me by the? beautiful plates. I actually touched the figure of the prim- rose, half convinced that the mealiness on the leaves was real. I felt hurt when she removed the book from me — but she removed it only to show me how to draw the figures, by holding them to the light, with a thin piece of paper before them. On finding that I could so draw them cor- rectly, I was lifted at once above the inmates of the alehouse at least a foot in mental stature. My first effort was a copy from the primrose ; under which (always fond of fine words) I wrote its Latin name, Primula veris vulgaris. So, thenceforward, when I happened to have a spare hour, I went to my aunt's to draw. But she had not yet shown me all the wealth of her Benjamin. The next revealed marvel was his book of dried plants. Columbus when he discovered the New World was not a greater man than I at that moment ; for no misgiving crossed my mind that the discovery was not my own, and no Americo Vespucius disputed the honour of it with me. But (alas for the strength of my religious impressions !) thenceforth often did Parson Allard inquire why Eb. was not at chapel ? — for I passed my Sundays in gathering flowers, that I might make pictures of them. I LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 19 had then, as now, no taste for the science of Botany, the classifications of which seemed to me to be like preparations for sending flowers to prison. I began, however, to feel mannish. There was mystery about me. People stopped me with my plants, and asked what diseases I was going to cure ? But I was not in the least aware that I was learning the art of poetry, which I then hated — especially Pope's, which gave me the headache if I heard it read aloud. My wanderings, however, soon made me acquainted with the nightingales in Basingthorpe Spring — where, I am told, they still sing sweetly — and with a beautiful green snake, about a yard long, which on the fine Sabbath mornings, about ten o'clock, seemed to expect me at the top of Primrose Lane. It became so familiar, that it ceased to uncurl at my approach. I have sate on the stile beside it till it seemed unconscious of my presence ; and when I rose to go, it would only lift the scales behind its head, or the skin beneath them — and they shone in the sun like fire. I know not how often this beautiful and harmless child of God may have " sate for his picture" in my writings — a dozen, at least; but wherever I might happen to meet with any of its brethren or sisters — at Thistlebed Ford, where they are all vipers, black or brown — or in the Ald- wark meadows, on the banks of the Don, with 20 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. the kingfisher above and the dragon-fly below them — or on Boston Castle ridge — or in the Clongh dell, where they swarm — or in Canklow Quarry — or by the Rother, near Hail-Mary Wood — what- ever the scene might be, the portrait, if drawn, was sure to be that of my first snake-love. I had now become a person of some note ; and if I let my wondering adorers suppose that I copied my figures of plants, not at secondhand, but from the plants which they saw I was in the habit of collecting — pardon me, outraged spirit of Truth ! for I had been so long a stranger to the voice of praise, and it sounded so sweetly to my unaccus- tomed ears, that I could not refuse to welcome it when it came. But my dried plants were un- deniably my own ; and so obvious was their merit, that even my all -praised and all-able brother some- times condescended to look at and admire my " Hortus Siccus," as I pompously named my book of specimens. It was about this time that I first heard him read the first book of "Thomson's Seasons ;" and he was a capital reader — well aware, too, of that fact. When he came to the description of the Polyanthus and Auricula, I waited impa- tiently till he laid down the book ; I then took it into the garden, where I compared the description with the living flowers. Here was another new idea — botany in verse ! — a prophecy that the days LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 21 of scribbling were at hand. But my earliest taste in poetry was like that of Bottom the weaver, who of all things liked best " a scene to tear a cat in." Accordingly, my first poetical attempt was an imitation in rhyme of Thomson's blank- verse thunderstorm. I knew perfectly well that sheep could not take to flight after having been 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. I read the marvel to my cousin Benjamin, from whom I received infliction the first of merciless criticism. God for- give him ! — I never could. Neither could I help perceiving the superiority which his learning gave him over me ; and never was I so happy as when listening to his recitations of Homer's Greek, of which I did not understand a word — and yet, after the illapse of nearly half a century, its music has not departed from my soul. Willingly, too, would I have shared the praises showered on my brother Giles : — but, alas, how was that to be accomplished ? Hitherto I had been fat and round as a ball — I now became pale and lean. My health visibly suffered ; but I had inly resolved to undertake the great task of self- instruction. I purchased a grammar ; but proved 22 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. unable to remember a single rule, however labo- riously committed to memory. About a year afterwards, I added the " Key" to my grammar, and read it through and through a hundred times. I found, at last, that by reflection, and by supply- ing elisions, &c, I could detect and correct gram- matical errors. The pronouns bothered me most — as they still do. At this moment I do not know a single rule of grammar ; and yet I can now, I flatter myself, write English as correctly as Samuel Johnson could, and detect errors in a greater author, Samuel Bailey. Flushed with suc- cess, my enthusiasm knew no bounds. To the great joy of my father, I resolved to learn French. But though I could with ease get and say my lessons, I could not remember a word of them ; I therefore at the end of a few weeks gave up the attempt. For once, however, I was lucky in calamity ; for my French teacher not understand- ing the language himself, I was allowed to throw the blame on him, which I did gloriously. It would seem that my poetical propensities are traceable to certain accidents ; but that about the end of my fourteenth year my mind began to make efforts for itself. Those efforts, however, were favoured by an accident of importance in the history of my education. A clergyman, called Firth, who held a poor curacy at a desolate place LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 23 called Middlesmoor, bequeathed to my father his library, containing, besides scores of Greek and Latin books, Barrow's "Sermons/' Ray's "Wisdom of God," Derham's " Physico-Theology," Young's "Night Thoughts," Hervey's "Meditations," Henepin's " Travels," and three volumes of the " Royal Magazine," embellished with views of Bom- bay, Madras, the Falls of Niagara, Pope's Villa at Twickenham, and fine coloured representations of foreign birds. My writings owe something to all these books ; particularly to Henepin, who carried me with him from Niagara to the Mississippi. I was never weary of Barrow; he and Young taught me to condense. Ray also was a favourite. The picture of Pope's Villa induced me to buy his " Essay on Man," but could not enable me to like it. In the " Royal Magazine" I found the narrative of a shipwreck on a South -Sea island; on which I made a romance in blank verse, twenty years before Scott printed his " Lay of the Last Minstrel." My next treasure was Shenstone ; I could repeat all the mottoes, translated from the Greek and Latin, which he has prefixed to his poems. I think he is now undervalued. Then followed Milton, who held me captive long. I have said I always took the shortest road to an object ; this tendency led me into some errors, but is the principal cause of my ultimate success as an 24 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. author. I never could read a feeble book through: it follows that I read master-pieces only — the best thoughts of the highest minds; after Milton, Shakspeare — 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 "Leonora/' Gibbon's "Decline and Fall/' and, long afterwards, Tasso^ Dante, De Stael, Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the "Westminster Review." But I have a strange memory. Sometimes it fails me alto- gether ; yet when I was twelve years old, I almost knew the Bible by heart, and in my sixteenth year I could repeat, without missing a word, the first, second, and sixth books of " Paradise Lost !" If, then, I possess that power which is called genius, how great must be my moral demerits! — for what have I written that will bear any com- parison with the least of my glorious models? But I possess not that glorious power. Time 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 inability to identify myself, like Shakspeare and Scott, with the characters of other men, my abortive "Kerhonah," "Taurassdes," and similar rejected failures, are me- lancholy instances. My thoughts are all exterior ; LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 25 my mind is the mind of my own eyes. A prim- rose is to me a primrose, 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. If I pos- sess any power at all allied to genius, it is that of making other men's thoughts suggest thoughts to me which, whether original or not, are to me new. Some years ago, my late excellent neigh- bour, John Heppenstall, after showing me the plates of Audubon's " Birds of America," re- quested me to address a few verses to the author. With this request I was anxious to comply ; but I was unable to write a line, until a sentence in Rousseau suggested a whole poem, and coloured all its language. Now, in this case, I was not like a clergyman seeking a text that he may write a sermon ; for the text was not sought, but found, or it would have been to me a lying and a barren spirit. From my sixteenth to my twenty-third year, I worked for my father at Masbro' as laboriously as any servant he had, and without wages, except an occasional shilling or two for pocket-money; weighing every morning all the unfinished cast- c 26 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. ings as they were made, and afterwards in their finished state, besides opening and closing the shop in Rotherham when my brother happened to be ill or absent. Why, then, may not I call myself a working-man ? Bnt I am not aware that I ever did so call myself — certainly never as an excuse for my poetry if bad, or if good as a claim for wonder. There are only two lines in my writings which could enable the reader to guess at my condition in life. I wrote them to show that, whatever else I might be, I was not of the genus " Dunghill Spurner;" for in this land of castes the dunghill- sprung, with good coats on their backs, are not yet generally anxious to claim rela- tionship with hard-handed usefulness. But as a literary man I claim to be self-taught; not be- cause none of my teachers ever read to me, or required me to read, a page of English grammar, but because I have of my own will read some of the best books in our language, original and translated, and the best only, laboriously forming my mind on the highest models. If unlettered women and even children write good poetry, I, who have studied and practised the art during more than forty years, ought to understand it, or I must be a dunce indeed. I have laid before the reader a history of my boyhood and youth. What excuse can I plead LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 27 for troubling him with these common-place inci- dents in the history of a common-place person? That I write not for the strong, but for the weak j who may learn from this narrative that as by the mere force of will such persons can write poetry, no honest man of good sense need despair of accomplishing much greater because more useful matters. The history of my manhood and its misfortunes — your famous people have a knack of being unfortunate, and of calling their faults mis- fortunes — remains to be written. It would not, I have said, even if honestly written, be more in- structive than an honest history of almost any other man; but when I said so, I forgot that it would be, in part, a history of the terrific changes of fortune, the alternations of prosperity and suffer- ing, caused by over-issues, or by the sudden with- drawal, of inconvertible paper-money, in those days "when none but knaves throve, and none but madmen laughed; when servants took their masters by the nose, and beggared masters slunk aside to die ; when men fought with shadows, and were slain; while, in dreadful calm, the viewless storm increased, most fatal when least dreaded, and nearest when least expected." I am not yet prepared, not yet sufficiently petrified in heart and brain, by time and trouble, to tell a tale in c 2 28 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. telling which I must necessarily live over again months and years of living death. When I made the astounding assertion many years ago (in " Tait's Magazine") that the food- taxes were costing, or destroying, or preventing the earning of more than a hundred millions sterling a-year, I knew well that in a short time the truth of that assertion would be confirmed by the wisest and best informed of my countrymen. It has been objected to my political poems that I sometimes repeat in them the same thoughts and words. Why should I not repeat the same thoughts and words, if they are wanted, and I cannot find better? My countrymen were robbed of knowledge as well as food ; and it is not my fault that, born dull and slow. T find thoughts and words with difficulty. I husband my materials because I am intellectually poor. No man can, " by taking thought, add an inch to his stature ;' ; but any man may do the best he can with the means in his power — and he who would usefully live in his deeds " must fight for eternity with the weapons of time." Newspaper- taught as I am, and having no ideas of my own, I can only seize those of others as they occur, earnestly applying them to current occasions. If I have been mistaken in my objects, I am sorry for it ; but I have never advocated anv cause without LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 29 first trying to know the principles on which it was based. On looking back on my public condnct — thanks to that science which poor Cobbett, ever floundering, yet great and brave, called in scorn " Polcetical Economy" — I find I have had little to nnlearn. 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." Ebenezer Elliott. Sheffield, 21.9* June, 1841. The attentive reader of the foregoing autobio- graphy will perceive that Ebenezer Elliott was born with the fatal gift of genius — a thing as much to be deplored in the present social system as the mark of immortality on the brow of a Struldbrug, or the brand on the forehead of Cain. It singled him out even in childhood from his fellows, and made him dwell apart with his soul in solitude. Two antagonistic elements of being early began to strive within him — one derived from the rough fearlessness of his father, the other from the ner- vous timidity of his mother. In infancy compelled to flee for refuge from the unsympathizing and perhaps inconsiderate spirit of his sire, to the weak and tender arms of her who not only could forgive 30 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. him his faults but protect him from the punish- ment of one who would not forgive. Probably the senior Elliott's creed had wrought an ill effect upon a temper naturally uncouth. He who could be- lieve that hell was hung round with span-long children was not likely to be a very kind father ; and his politics were akin to his religion, for it seems that they earned him the cognomen of " Devil !" The stern trade of this iron and steel man had its influence in the formation of his character, and imparted a strong tone to that of his son. Most men of genius have owned their obligations to their mothers, though there are exceptions. The story of Savage, singled out by Dr. Johnson, is not a solitary instance. Little Ebenezer, however, was doubtlessly well treated in bodily respects, though not indebted mentally or intellectually to his parents. He was sent to a dame's school to learn his ABC. Nor can it be said that he owed much to the teachings of others. Joseph Rams- botham, his first master, taught him to write, but " little more." This is no reflection on the capa- city of either tutor or pupil. Genius loves to walk its own way. It resents the blind and beaten track of a horse in a mill. An unconscious power, it rests unrevealed to the possessor himself till im- pulse or accident opens its secret springs; and more often owes its full development to sorrow or LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 31 suffering than to favour or encouragement. The true teacher of Ebenezer Elliott was yet to come — that was, himself! He could learn little more at school than to read or write, but with the aid of those mechanical acquirements he could unlock for himself the great storehouse of knowledge. In the meanwhile, what he learnt by rote lay like un- productive seed in his heart or mind ; and many a boy of moderate but more ductile capacity might compare his accomplishments with this seeming dunce, and exult in the contrast. But the boy who durst hardly speak, and shrunk, like Cowper, with morbid sensitiveness from action, was think- ing all the while : his senses were most powerful teachers that were filling him with ideas, and making him God and Nature's scholar. Unpromising as he appeared, he could excel in anything which he himself took delight in. His ingenuity in constructing the toys that he was to play with ought to have convinced his friends that he was " no vulgar boy." Probably his deficiency in learning was more owing to the false method of teaching in our schools than to any inaptitude of his own. Pedagogues at that period used to tliink thrashings the best teachings, and were wont to increase stupidity by resorting to an injudicious mode of expelling it. An illness that disfigured his looks operated with his mental backwardness 32 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. in flinging him out of society, and throwing him upon his own resources. Solitary habits were to him a necessity, arising from his want of com- panions. Books he had not yet begun to regard as acquaintance. Play was his first work. He could not tire of his amusements, while sunshine, and water, and flowers, were his playfellows, with whose aid he could make beautiful water-colour drawings. But his mind ever oscillated in extremes. His love for the beautiful was not less than his taste for the horrible, though it terrified him — a fearful desire which he shared with all children who are fond of ghost-stories. Having no home, for where there is no sympathy there is no home, he went in search of one, and found in the residence of an uncle a more com- passionate sphere. Here the yearnings which he felt to return to his mother prove that he possessed a kind and gentle heart, that might have been easily softened, in spite of the indurating process to which it had been subjected. Ebenezer's father, with a shortsightedness not uncommon, could not see what was in the lad — knew not what to make of him ; and, as incurable invalids are sent from doctor to doctor, tried dif- ferent schoolmasters in vain, till, despairing to see him fit for aught but the drudgery of mere manual labour, he put him, like another Cymon, to the LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 33 lowest employment, and associated him with men little better than the brutes. They taught him their pothouse habits ; and it is a proof how indif- ferent his bigoted and tyrannical sire had become to his lot, that he allowed him to sink into this ser- vile and degraded state. But Ebenezer began to reflect ; and even while at Nanny Far's house, the sign of the Yorkshire Keelman, he sat an ab- stracted guest, Ins mind wandering from the din and smoke to the woods and streams, only roused from his reverie by the garrulous hostess when she had some traditionary tale to tell. Though Ebenezer says, "Working in the foundry, so far from being a punishment to me, relieved me from the sense of inferiority which had so long de- pressed me, for I was found to be no less clever than other beginners," yet no doubt his mind was ill at ease under this disgrace. What could be done by any boy could, of course, be done by him ; but he felt ambitious to do more, to do what none but himself could do. His destination was not that of a common working-man, but of a master — of one whose head sets to work the hands of others. This ambition, however, was nourished in secret, be- cause its manifestation would have subjected him to scorn and ridicule, if not to worse persecution. But bis boyhood was not all desolate ; he found a friend, the son of his schoolmaster, and he fell c 3 34 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. in love — haunted by the vision of a young woman whom he had seen, but never spoken to ; and as women are like ghosts, that will not speak first, the unconscious object of his passion married another. His friend, however, remained ; and how much so isolated a being as poor Ebenezer must have loved that friend ! This lone cloud had wandered listlessly as the wind, till it met with one of mutual attraction, and its electric sympathies were drawn forth. We may conceive how readily he would learn from the son what the father had tried in vain to teach ; and in their peripatetic rambles through the romantic scenery of the neighbourhood, what an interchange would take place of mind and heart, that would rouse his dor- mant energies, and make the latent seeds of know- ledge which had been sown at school, spring up and bear fruit. No longer kept down by a deep sense of self-humiliation, nor still further depressed by the scoffs of those around, his faculties sprung into mature and manly growth, so that his father made him his commercial traveller, in which capacity he doubtless much extended his knowledge of men and things. Well was it for Ebenezer that the stern will of his sire bent him to his trade, for by that, and not by poetry, he was to live. Nor was his father backward in due encouragement to him ; he took him into partnership with him, LTFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 35 though he did not succeed in business till he set up for himself and became independent. He used to express an ill-opinion of partnerships, saying that the Devil threw his club over them. Ebenezer had an elder brother, named Giles, who was as remarkable for quickness and docility as he himself had been for an apparently dull and intractable disposition. Like Gilbert, the brother of Burns, he was thought the cleverer boy ; but showy accomplishments are seldom deep. Giles was a general favourite, and was of great service to Ebenezer, for he inspired him not with envy, but with emulation, till the precocious and popular Giles himself condescended to notice the talents of his poor younger brother, who, in mind and per- son, seemed so much his inferior. But the world has heard nothing of Giles, while Ebenezer has left a name that will wake its echoes with Fame's trumpet. This chapter may be appropriately closed with one or two anecdotes, omitted in the " Athenaeum," but inserted by the Messrs. Chambers in one of their " Papers for the People." "Touching the bravery of Elliott, senior, an absurd story is told in which he is represented as thrashing a cavalry officer with a stick, his anta- gonist being at the time on horseback, sword in hand ! After receiving his chastisement, the officer 36 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. took to flight, and never afterwards met the victor without touching his hat and saying, ( How do you do, Mr. Elliott V During his father's scene with the dragoon, Ebenezer, then in his fifteenth year, was ' terribly frightened/ although he must have been sufficiently familiar with such disturbances, it being the custom of the cavalry to back their horses so as to break the windows of the Jacobin's shop. l But I, alas V says he, ' am the son of my mother ; yet on emergencies, and in the hour of calamity, the single drop of northern blood which my father put into my heart has more than once befriended me/ " An instance he gives of the terrible criminality of the law exhibits in a half- amusing half-painful manner the wrongheadedness of a man of genius. ' I will relate the circumstances/ says he, ' precisely as they were related to me by an eye-witness. A youth called Yates, a native of Masborough, but apprenticed at Sheffield, instigated by his master, stole a fowl, for which crime he was tried at Rotherham, and convicted on clear evidence. The chairman of the court, in passing sentence, gave him the choice of transportation or the army. He chose the former. Down, black as thunder, came the frown of authority. f No; you shall be flogged!' — and he was flogged. But why ? For stealing a fowl, or for refusing to enter the army V LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 37 " 'When a labourer writes a poem/ says he, ' the fact is an incident in the history of poets — a class of persons proverbially unable to earn their bread; but if there is merit in the poem, why marvel at the slave-driver's wonder-cry ? I never felt any respect for the patrons of inspired milkmaids and ploughmen, for milkmaids and ploughmen, if inspired, cannot long need patronage ; but I know- that, unwilling to believe aught good of the poor, the rich, when a poor man's deed shames theirs, transform the individual into a marvel at the expense of his class ; because, having wronged, they hate it.'" There may be some truth in the above remark ; but there is more prejudice. The rich may not take pains to discern merit in the poor ; but when it forces itself upon their notice they are not slow to welcome it. On the contrary, the aristocracy of merit is regarded, even by aristocrats themselves, as something superior to the aristocracy of mere birth or fortune. 38 LIFE OF EBENEZFR ELLIOTT. CHAPTER II. FROM THE PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST POEMS TO THE PUBLICATION OF "LOVE," A POEM. Most poets commence writing with love ; but love was not the early muse of Ebenezer Elliott. The spirit of botany, or rather a fondness for flowers, led him into the fields, and poetry followed. The alehouse was now deserted — even the chapel. He began by making pictures of flowers, which are the poetry of nature, and ended by translating their beauty and fragrance into verse. His school- masters had taught him nothing but that he was unable to learn ; and his treatment at home did but increase the self-diffidence that overpowered him. Fear and anxiety robbed him of his faculties. But now Nature took him, and from her flowery breast he imbibed the milk of poesy. The more proficient he became, the more he grew aware of his deficiencies. Shame set him to school to him- self, and he became the willing pupil of a willing tutor. His progress was rapid. The best authors were soon his favourites. His great difficulty was the want of a retentive memory. Yet, though his LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 39 health suffered by his severe application, he per- severed. Ebenezer Elliott was one more example that knowledge may be successfully pursued under diffi- culties. All the while that he was taking upon himself the instruction of a simpleton who had been given up by others in despair, he worked for his father, " as laboriously as any servant he had." The leisure that he had formerly employed in debasing relaxations was now enthusiastically devoted to the noblest tasks. Having heard his brother Giles read Thomson's "Seasons," he began with an imitation of the style of that author, but in rhyme. u Genius," says Southey in a letter to the editor, " generally shows itself first in imitation, and necessarily must do so." But one of his critics abused this first attempt so unmercifully, that he was probably incited to put it in the fire,, but not to despair of doing better. We cannot wonder if Ebenezer failed in comparison with the great ori- ginal whom he had chosen to imitate. But such a choice was no proof of presumption, but rather of a desire to inspirit himself with a great example or a great theme ; for the subject was a thunder- storm. It is the province of learning to correct genius, though genius is the superior power. The self-education of Elliott leads to an inquiry into the relative value or uses of genius and learning. 40 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. It is thought by many, that a classical education is requisite to the development of native genius. But do not facts contradict this theory? Were not our greatest geniuses self-taught? And even those who had received a classical education, did they not fling off its trammels ? Learning is well, but genius is " something more, and better." Learning is rich with the ideas of others — genius possesses a golden treasury of its own. But learning often succeeds in making itself more known than genius. Why ? Because art is always less diffident or modest than nature. The counter- feit sometimes passes in preference to the genuine coin. Learning makes a noise when genius is silent. The former is assuming, the latter retiring. Genius knows, intuitively, all that talent labours to acquire ; and is learned by fortune, rather than by study. Therefore genius, a thing of privilege, hath scarcely the merit due to learning, no more than he who inherits wealth, or who is gifted with it, is comparable in desert with the man who, by toil and industry, makes his way to eminence. But does not genius learn ? Yes ; but not so much from books as from life. The elements of genius are — imagination to create, fancy to colour or beautify, taste to select the fittest ideas, and judgment to arrange them in the most perfect order. It also possesses electric feelings and LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 41 passions, with a fine power of perception and appreciation. The man of genius is the scholar of his own informing senses — the universe is his book — and talent is to him the pen of a ready writer. For genius includes talent, just as nature includes art. Genius is its own critic, and its works are standard authorities. The only authority which it stoops to is common sense or experience. Whatever is excellent — in heart, mind, and soid — it possesses ; and is, inwardly at least, poet, painter, musician, and sculptor. It loves to separate itself from the real, in order to animate the ideal, and to leave its own idiosyncracy to assume that of others. It can metamorphose and transport itself. When it draws only from self, it becomes a mannerist ; when from others, a copyist. The chief acquirements of genius result from the exercise of its own powers. Learning is only of service so far as it enables the man of genius to make use of his own intrinsic stores. Learning is a kind of innoculation, that brings out the inherent qualities of genius — and a small quantity suffices. The youth of genius naturally seeks such information as is most congenial to his bent, and this will generally be of a popular or desultory kind. His delight renders him docile ; and thus whatever he reads becomes his own, because not 42 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. "crammed against the stomach of his sense." But it is by the exercise of his own thoughts, rather than by reading the thoughts of others, that he strengthens his faculties. The thoughts of others are often suggestive of his own. A weight of imported learning may encumber his innate ideas, or be regarded in preference; and this is the greatest injury genius has to fear from learning. This makes plagiarists and pedants. Better to write as nature inspires than as art dictates. No model, however good, ought to be set up as an idol : it is still but the work of man. Let the oracle within be consulted. Borrow not light from the moon, who herself is a borrower. If ships had always sailed in the wake of each other, the New World would never have been discovered. But genius generally tries itself first with imita- tion, till practice having given it the use of its own powers, it attempts an independent night. It is of consequence, therefore, that good models be presented to it, and the ancient classics are said to be the best. Is it requisite to spend much time to learn the Latin and Greek languages in order to write English well ? — or do dead tongues teach us to speak a living one ? What we may gain in correctness or polish, we lose in warmth and vigour. Besides, pupils learned in the ancient LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 43 classics are taught to despise modern languages as vulgar. They term their mother-tongue the ver- nacular, or vulgate. Even so the fool of quality makes the tour of Europe, to return a fop, and ridicule the manners and customs of his own country. The pedant, who reads much, thinks little ; he prizes his learning not so much for itself as for the pains it has cost him, and because the gene- rality are without it. He speaks cum privilegio. He interlards his English with Latin and Greek, and writes about words rather than things. His chief works are commentaries or translations, not original. He is constantly vaunting artificial acquirements, at the expense of natural endow- ments. The province of such a one is to follow in the beaten paths of literature, where talent alone is required — he cannot strike out a path for him- self. He resembles the course of a stream in a canal, which, however smoothly and regularly it may flow, cannot be admired like the river, that runs a free, though, it may be, an eccentric course. We know not whether it be in favour or against our argument, that most of our poets were edu- cated at college. We think the learning which they acquired there did not make them men of genius, as the prejudice of the world may suppose, 44 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. but that they were geniuses in spite of it. For genius can burst the swaddling bands of learning, as well as the chains of ignorance. Genius is not a prescriptive thing, and it hates to be tied down to any rule or method except its own. Its ideas spring spontaneously in an indigenous mind ; they do not require to be planted, and have much care and labour bestowed upon their cultivation, as in extraneous soils. But let us look at some exam- ples : — Byron abhorred the mechanical teaching which he had received at college, and complained that the freshness of his mind had been worn out before it was free to choose, and that he could not after- wards restore its health, to relish what it might have sought. Scott left his books to study human nature, whose epitome was in himself ; he eschewed a regular course of study at school or college, and betook himself to a circulating library. These are the two greatest of our modern geniuses ; but there was a greater, before them, whose genius owed nothing to learning. It has been said, that Shak- speare would have greatly surpassed himself if he had been classically educated. On the contrary, would he not have degenerated to a Jonson, who, but for his pedantry, might have been a Shak- speare ? The greatest geniuses make the least show of LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 45 learning. How simple is Wordsworth ! He teaches wisdom as from the month of a babe. Burns war- bled his songs as intuitively as a bird. Swift was English to Saxon plainness. Sterne's touches came hot from his heart. Pope lisped in numbers. Dr. Johnson was the worse for his Latinity. Milton wrote Latin sonnets which no one reads. Dry den followed the French fashion, in his rhyming plays, which are now totally neglected. Much learning made Southey mad. Sublimity is alwaj's simple ; and those portions of " Paradise Lost" which are regarded as the best, are those where the genius of the author borrows least from his learning. If, as some think, learning is essential to genius, what praise is due to those who are great geniuses without being learned ? Tf a classical education fails to make a poet, what shall we say of the poets who had no means of procuring education from others, scarcely of educating themselves ? Some follow literary pursuits exclusively, and with every facility ; others are obliged to follow occupations the most detrimental to literary exercise; such was Elliott, who, speaking of a youth like himself, says,— "Here oft, with fading cheek and thoughtful brow, Wanders the youth, town-bred, but desert born ; Too early taught life's deepening woes to know, He wakes in sorrow with the weeping morn, And gives much labour for a little corn. 46 LIFE OF EBENE2ER ELLIOTT. In smoke and dust, from hopeless day to day, He sweats, to bloat the harpies of the soil, That make the labour of his hands their spoil, And grind him fiercely ; but he still can get A crust of wheaten bread, despite their frowns. * * * Thrall though he be, He feels his intellectual dignity, "Works hard, reads usefully, with no mean skill Writes, and can reason well of good and ill. How gratefully his growing mind receives The food which tyrants struggle to withhold ! Oh, with what rapture he prepares to fly t From streets and courts with crime and sorrow strewed, And bids the mountain lift him to the sky !" Nothing is more rare and great than true genius ; it is a gift that fortune, or rank, or learn- ing cannot confer, but nature only. Its seed springs as capriciously as if sown by the winds — sometimes in a garden, but oftener in the wild. Mankind have always been disposed to pay more homage to that nature which owes little to art — to that genius which borrows nothing from learn- ing. The powers of such minds are more native and original — more genuine and strong. Thus, Burns is a greater name in Scotland than men of much superior pretensions; and Bloomfield, in England, was regarded as more of a prodigy than Pope. None of our poets deserve more the atten- tion of the critic than those of self-taught genius. None are so truly original. Their genius, excited with passion, always speaks to the purpose. It is LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 47 not curbed by servile fear, nor trained to one par- ticular track. It instinctively obeys its own impulses ; and, by a fortuitous flight, readies the sublime without losing the simplicity of its character. Learning is but its instrument. But always let us remember, that the proper use of genius is, to promote the interests of virtue ; and that, when it degrades itself by a subserviency to vice, it forfeits its title to honour, and turns its own fame to infamy. There is no great man who is not a good man ; and the most glorious genius may humble its pride, when it reflects that the highest stretching of its ambition cannot reach beyond the attainment of common sense. Young Ebenezer lived deep in himself, hid from the world. " His books were rivers, woods, and skies, The meadow, and the moor." When he first made the discovery that he pos- sessed talents, he grew proud of himself — " an honest pride, and let it be his praise," for it rescued him from self-abasement and low com- pany. No mortal pain or trouble could now deter him from seeking immortality; and they who sought to drive or divert him from his course might increase his difficulties — might retard his progress — but could no more prevent his ultimate success than they could make a drone of the 48 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. working-bee, or a noxious reptile of the provident ant. Instinct, the locomotive of nature, is not a greater propelling power than genius. Whoever saw this solitary boy wandering on the mountain heaths might have prophetically ex- claimed, "Of such materials wretched men are made \" He was not thoughtless or cruel. We do not hear that he robbed poor birds of their young, or tormented insects for sport. He played truant ; but it was rather to make playfellows of the free and beautiful creatures of nature than to hunt them to destruction. He left " Murray's Grammar " unlearnt ; but it was that he might read the great book of creation, which lay open all before him. Thus he fed the spirit of poesy, like a bird, kept secretly in his bosom. Ebenezer Elliott's first published poem was a piece which he had written in his seventeenth year, entitled "The Vernal Walk." How this was ushered into the world, whether in leading- strings, through the nursery of a magazine, or in- dependently, we have no present means of ascer- taining, nor is it of any consequence. He found an auspicious printer in Mr. Flower, of Cambridge, whom he terms the father of the Liberal news- paper press. " The Vernal Walk " is a " rhapsody of words/' with little antecedence or sequence, yet with a few lines here and there of genuine poetry, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 49 though containing no characteristics of the future bard. He had not yet found out his forte — his metal had not yet received the stamp of his individuality. Not daring to trust his own judgment, and dread- ing the contempt of his too familiar critics at home, he sought impartial advice from those most able to give it — from those who had succeeded in the arduous path which he was pursuing. He dedicated his "Vernal Walk" to Miss Sarah Austin, the writer of " Pride and Prejudice," and styles her what no doubt he had found her, ( ' A man in counsel." The delicious disorder of a soul thrown into tumult with the emotions of first love, would resemble the poet's feelings on writing this maiden effort, which indicates all the defects of youthful genius ere nature has learnt the use of art — tau- tology, redundancy — that superfetation which, Dr. Johnson says, is so much better than barrenness. It is a chaos, but not without gleams of the subli- mity and beauty which were the elements of Elliott's world of poetry. The following extracts will show how full of promise was the poet's boyish muse : — " 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, while o'er him bent His happy partner, smiling as she viewed D 50 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Her lisping babes ; then have I blessed thee, Love, And fondly called thee Fount of Social Peace ! What ! art thou deathless, all -pervading power, That like a meek, yet universal sun, Through universal nature gently shin'st ? Art thou a ray from light's unclouded source ? An emanation of divinity ? No : thou art God, our God, th' eternal One ! To thee I bow, Being all amiable, On thee I call. Parent of every good, Preserve me from the vices of the base ; And when I reach the dark and narrow house, Let me have well deserved the good man's love ! * * * * * Farewell, cold world, farewell ! I flee to thee, O Nature ! Hail, thou solitary vale ! And hither come, Imagination ! Come, And waft my soul to isles of poesy ! Come, come, oh come ! — come with thine eyes of light That shine away the darkness of the soul ! Come with thy heaving bosom, and thy hair That streams like sunshine on the hollow wind ! And I will strike my lyre of rustic song, And sing of all things that are frail and fair." Most of the early poetry of genius is of a repining character, more so than its later pro- ductions. Young poets love to believe themselves not of the earth, to regard their doom as that of fallen angels. It is some time before the world can wean them from self; but habit at length reconciles them to the customary lot of human beings, and the melancholy which they took delight in gives way to a kind of levity — solitude becomes less congenial than society — in a word, their ideal stoops to the real. The young poet LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 51 finds the vanity of his ideal, even as the old worldling of his real. Ebenezer's next piece was an attempt at humour, with the title " Second Nuptials/' a tale which, he says, was "my first sustained effort in rhyme." His admiration of Milton and Thomson had in- duced him to mould the first outpourings of his muse in blank verse; but there is no style that requires more maturity of power. Blank verse must support itself upon the wings of the eagle or the feet of the ostrich ; words sonorous as the tones of a trumpet, expanded not with empty air, but with the full breath of impassioned feeling — with ideas strong as those thoughts that move the will to act. High sounding, without sense, it is fustian — too familiar, it degenerates to prose. A master- hand can alone wield this giant's sword. Elliott doubtless disdained the jingle of rhyme, and much has been said to induce writers to discard it ; but does it not give a certain melodious turn to harmonious numbers ? and is there not something pleasing in its ingenuity? Though the sublime may reject the littleness of this artifice, it will never be out of place with the beautiful. Elliott was not a man of wit, his forte was not humour. He was too grave to be gay, too serious to be lively. He did not, like Burns, " rhyme for fun" — he had not the wisdom of the merry. His d2 52 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. attempts at wit are always mistimed or misplaced, and breathe an air of vulgarity. He smiles sadly — his laughter is coarse. He seems ever glad to escape from his forced humour to indulge the native sadness of his disposition. He might have said with L. E. L., — " In vain I try a lighter tone, My lute must breathe what is its own ; It is my own heart that has taught This constancy of mournful thought." Or as himself more appropriately expresses it : " I would not, could not if I would, be glad, But, like shade-loving plants, am happiest sad." He seems to have written his " Second Nuptials" in imitation of Scott's "Metrical Tales." The story is of a widow who is about to wed the messenger who has brought her news of her husband's death in a foreign land, when, throwing off his disguise, he appears as her husband. There are passages in this poem like roses among thorns ; and had the whole been equal to some of its parts, it might have fairly stood beside Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel." The following is a description of a minstrel-youth disappointed in love : — " Pensive and pale arose the youth, The child of feeling and of truth ; And modestly, and yet with pride His ancient fiddle laid aside, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 53 Which not its weight in gold could buy. True, it was clumsy to the eye ; True, its dark side some flaws displayed ; Yet was there more than music in't, For why ? 'twas by his grandsire made. The worm of death was in his breast ; Sarah, the faithless, met his eye, Which grief and mute reproach expressed. Then gazing, self-condemned, on earth, She heaved, or seemed to heave, a sigh ; But Jacob came, and in its birth The infant, frail Repentance, died. At first the minstrel's voice was low As whispered prayers of fear or wo ; But soon distinct, and deep, and clear, The soul -felt accents met the ear, Full of that fervour of the heart Which bids all earthly toys depart ; Taught by calamity to scorn All that of human pride is born." Here is one verse of the minstreFs song : — "And not to soothe wild passion, came Religion from above ; Speak not in scorn her holy name, Religion's self is love. Love, with no poison in her kiss ; And, if she weeps, her tear is bliss. Applauded by the noiseless tear, Although no plaudit met his ear, Thus sang the meekest child of wo The song his heart made years ago j But inspiration's sudden glow Added a happy word or so. His cheek, late pallid as the snow, Now burned with feeling's hectic glow. For Death his banner there displayed, Beautiful as a dying maid, 54 LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Or blushing merit in distress, Or like the meek and splendourless Rose — not the white one, but the pale, That with cheek carnation' d faintly, Blushing sweetness, chastely, saintly, Sigheth in the vale." One more extract : — " She hung upon his bosom — weak — She looked the love she could not speak ; He smiled the rose back to her cheek : ' Thou fond and full heart, do not break.' He sealed with kisses warm her lips, And, as the half-flying redbreast sips, A dew-drop from the lily's breast, Then, perching on it, trills his song, So kissed he off her tears to rest, Soothing the heart-throb tortured long. A fairy shod with gossamer, Joy unexpected came to her For past wo to atone. Her cheek lay on his neck, embraced ; As if an angel's glance had chased Her troubles, they were gone." Elliott says this poem was endeared to him by the persecution which it had suffered; such a sympathiser was he with whatever suffered. Having passed the Rubicon of his juvenile poems, we come to his more elaborate per- formances. But who can tell what numbers of pieces, written as exercises, were cast away before he ventured to solicit public approbation? His private critics seem to have been sufficiently severe, but not more so than himself; and when the public came to sit in judgment on his efforts, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 55 neglect or condemnation seems invariably to have been its verdict, at least in all his earlier appeals. This ordeal would have discouraged any one but a true poet, whom nothing can discourage. Poetry is so rare a gift that the possessor of the ethereal flame will never be found to quench it himself; and the efforts of others to extinguish it always end in making it burn more intensely. Genius is a thing of exercitation. Elliott still sung on, though to his own ears, for none other would listen to him. Probably the fault lay in ill-chosen subjects. He had not yet learnt to be popular. "Night, or the Legend of Wharn- cliffe," drew from the reviews the first notice which he obtained. The " Monthly Review " styled it " the ne plus ultra of German horror and bombast." Horror indeed, but not bombast. He had written it to show that he could make poetry of plague or pestilence, as afterwards he did of famine ; and probably it owed something to his early penchant for the horrible. Striga, an adulteress, who has murdered her own husband, calls on her paramour to murder his wife, her sister ; but he shrinks from the task. She then, being an enchantress, invokes the fiends to shed a pestilence. They comply with her wish; but she herself falls a victim. There is a dark light in this piece horribly beautiful. It is wild, turbid, 56 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. and supernatural, as the painting of a Martin; possessing awful power that is nowhere feeble, nowhere lacking congruity, and Miltonic in its grandeur. The following is an extract : — " ' Hope ! saidst thou hope ?' exclaimed the fallen one, ' Never Idona, never may I greet That heavenly stranger. Dwellest thou in heaven ?' ' No/ answered then Idona ; ' but where heaven Borders on chaos, and, dimensionless, Rocks in perennity of gloom repose, I make perpetual night my dwelling-place, And, with the majesty of ruin, sit Awfully lone. The elements, all dark, Combat before me ; or the hand of God Writes fiery indignation on the deep, Which seems in fragments wild a universe, Or continent of deflagrated worlds Arrayed in lightning ; or infinitude Of burning oceans up in ridges rolled Huger than myriad systems ruined. There I dwell in horrid solitude, yet not Heaven's outcast Sometimes I revisit, calm, Th' eternal throne, and breathe my native air Unblamed, a duteous guest ; for not a sun, Extinguished, ceaseth to illumine space, But to Heaven's silence sad Idona' s voice Singeth the funeral song of funeral worlds, While seraphs weep ; for well they know how once More bright than suns was he who sings their fall !' " This tale is dedicated to Earl Fitzwilliam, but was scarcely calculated to win his patronage. Elliott had " supped full of horrors." Doubtless they are very indigestible fare, and apt to produce the nightmare. "Wharncliffe of the Demons" is a dream of this kind ; crude, yet more cohe- LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 57 rent than its predecessors. He was evidently advancing in the art of composition, bnt still swinging like a comet of the night. Next followed his u Tales of Night," com- prising "Bothwell," "The Exile/' &c. These evince still further progress. His poetic zeal had defied expense, and now was rewarded by the friendship of one or two masters of the art, whose praises consoled him for the want of public approbation, and taught him how it was to be obtained. Southey wrote to him, saying, " 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; thirty years hence the world will wonder that they did not do so." It is now more than thirty years since Southey made this observation ; but the world does not wonder that the poems adverted to did not make Ebenezer Elliott's reputation, whatever they might have done thirty years previously. Let us recollect who were in the field at that period. Words- worth, Southey, and Coleridge, Byron, Scott, Crabbe, Campbell ; the men have passed away, but what poem of Elliott's would stand in competition with one of theirs ? Our poet's poetry was irre- gular — unequal — indicating by fitful passages of great power and beauty the struggles of the god d3 58 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. within, rather than the liberated expression of his genius. His forces were as yet undisciplined ; he had not obtained the complete mastery over them. He lacked the dignity of ease. Every fresh poem, however, was an instance of progress. The two last, in particular, indicated powers of narration and description, above all of pathos, that none of his contemporaries had surpassed. He possessed a kind of wild vigour, like that of Orson, but lacked the grace of Valentine. His lofty sallies of imagination were not sufficiently cor- rected with taste, or curbed with judgment. He was also unfortunate in his choice of titles, none of which could be deemed " taking titles." His subjects, too, though they seem to have strongly possessed himself, lacked popular interest; and poetry in these utilitarian days will hardly recom- mend itself. ' c Is it good ?" is not the question — but " What is it about ?" Elliott found out this truth afterwards. In the meanwhile he went on as he had begun, writing on subjects which inte- rested his own very powerful sensibilities, and, of course, excelling in them ; but they were rather of a hackneyed nature ; and though he treated them with great originality, they lacked the charm which soonest arrests the public ear — the charm of novelty. Elliott took no means to make himself popular LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 59 beyond legitimate merit. He resorted to no tricks. He belonged to no cliqne or coterie. He was a provincial poet, and stood aloof from the literary world, and independent of it. He knew that a clique reputation, though it may buoy up a writer into sudden notice, is not a public reputation, and that true fame, to be lasting, must be of slow growth. The laurel grows nowhere but on graves manured with the ashes of the dead. Thus, though Elliott deserved success, he did not succeed. This neglect, and the consequent obscurity it kept him in, he probably resented as an injustice, and seems to have been indignant that Lord Byron did not mention him in his " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." It is said that he even wrote a satire on Byron to revenge himself for this omission, but his better feelings caused him to suppress it. The taunts and jeers which he had to sustain from his father, who, he says, possessed much satiric power, were doubtless hard to bear ; but, with a burning heart and silent tongue, he did not despair, but resolved more desperately to pursue his fortune, trusting that his star would yet predominate, and that his ultimate success would convert the unbe- lievers in his genius, and convince them of his merits. Would not that be a glorious revenge ? Our poet's dedications of his poems were dedi- cations of gratitude rather than of hope. He could not be said to seek patronage by them. His poem 60 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. of the " Exile" he dedicated to Bulwer, " who," he says, "helped me when I was helpless and unknown." Bulwer is the most multifarious author of his day, and stands the highest for varied excel- lence ; but all his fame will not speak so loudly in his favour as this dedication of Elliott. The " Exile" is a story of a young woman who had loved " not wisely but too well." Her lover had been compelled to flee the land as a partizan of the Royalists in the days of the Commonwealth. She "became a mother, not a wife." Spurned from her parents' door, she first attempted to sup- port herself by needlework; but this resource failing, she is driven to worse means, yet soon relinquishes them with horror and disgust, and ultimately pawns the " stolen silk," for which crime she is sentenced to transportation. Her destination happens to be the very country in which her lover is spending his hopeless exile. He sees her — she tells her sad tale to him, and dies. In this story, though the subject is not felicitous, there is the pathos of an Otway. Crabbers " Ellen Orford" cannot compare with it for fine- wrought sensibility. The following is the mother's narrative of the funeral of her little boy, who had died at sea: — " Oh, let me weep ! — What mother would not weep To see her child committed to the deep ? All lifeless o'er his marble forehead rolled, The third night saw his locks repose in gold. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 61 Methinks 'twas moonlight, and a torch cast wide Its lanthorn'd radiance o'er the umhered tide, As wan on deck he lay serenely fair, And oh ! so like his sire ! that man of care (From home, and hope, and all he loved impelled), Who ne'er his child in life or death beheld, And could not come my breaking heart to share ! No mournful flowers by weeping fondness laid, Nor pink nor rose, drooped on his breast displayed, Nor half-blown daisy in his little hand ; Wide was the field around, but 'twas not land. His features wore a sweet and pensive grace, And death was beauty on his silent face. No more his sad eye looked me into tears ! Closed was that eye beneath his pale cold brow; And on his calm lips, which had lost their glow, But which, though pale, seemed half unclosed to speak? Loitered a smile like moonlight on the snow. I gazed upon him still — not wild with fears — Gone were my fears, and present was despair. But as I gazed, a little lock of hair, Stirred by the breeze, played trembling on his cheek. O God, my heart ! I thought life still was there. But to commit him to his watery grave, O'er which the winds, unwearied mourners, rave, One who strove darkly sorrow's sob to sway, Upraised the body ; thi'ice I bade him stay, For still my wordless heart had much to say, And still I bent, and gazed, and gazing wept. At last my sisters, with humane constraint, Held me ; and I was calm as dying saint, While that stern weeper lowered into the sea My ill-starred boy ! deep — buried deep he slept. And then I looked to heaven in agony, And prayed to end my pilgrimage of pain, That I might meet my beauteous boy again ! Oh ! had he lived to reach this wretched land, And then expired, I would have blessed the strand. But where my poor boy lies I may not lie — I cannot come with broken heart to sigh 62 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. O'er his loved dust, and strew with flowers his turf : His pillow hath no covering hut the surf. I may not pour the soul-drop from mine eye Near his cold bed ; he slumbers in the wave ! Oh, I will love the sea, because it is his grave !" The following is still more painfully pathetic : — " ' Spare me,' she cried, ' O thou destroying rod ! Hark ! 'tis the voice of unforgiving God ! A mother murdered, and a sire in woe ! Alfred, the deed was mine ! for thee, for thee I broke her heart, and turned his locks to snow ! Hark ! 'tis the roaring of the mighty sea ! Lo, how the mountain billows fall and rise ! And while their rage beneath the howling night Lifts my boy's tresses to the wild moonlight, Yet doth the wretch, the^unwedded mother live, Who for those poor unvalued locks would give All, save her hope to kiss them in the skies ! But see, he rises from his watery bed, And at his guilty mother shakes his head. There, dost thou see him, blue and shivering, stand, And lift at thee his little threatening hand ? Oh, dreadful ! — Hold me ! — Catch me ! — Die with me ! — Alas ! that must not, and it should not be ! No ; pray that both our sins may be forgiven ; Then come ! and heaven will — will indeed be heaven !' " What sea is deeper than tears ? and what author ever sounded that briny ocean with a more fathom- less plummet than Elliott ? " Bothwell" is a dramatic poem with the follow- ing dedication : — " To my great master Robert Southey, who condescended to teach me the art of poetry." It was an odd subject for him to choose, but few could have written it so well. Conflicting LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 63 feelings wrought to madness in this poem, show that the author possessed strong dramatic powers, though fitful as the eruptions of a volcano, and lacking the art of construction. Bothwell is dying in a dungeon in Norway, and his mind reverts to his guilty passion for Mary Stuart. Rhinvalt, a fellow-prisoner, is Ins sole attendant. " Rhin. Alas ! how farest thou now ? Darkness hath chased The dreadful paleness from thy face ; thine eye Upturned, displays its white ; thy cheek is laced With quivering tortuous folds ; thy lip awry Snarls as thou tearest the straw ; the speechless storm Frowns on thy brow, where drops of agony Stand thick and beadlike ; and while all thy form Is crumpled with convulsion, threateningly Thou breathest, smiting the air, and writhing like a worm." The following stanza might have found a place in Byron's " Childe Harold " without disparage- ment to its company : — " Farewell, my heart's divinity ! To kiss Thy sad lip into smiles of tenderness ; To worship at that stainless shrine of bliss ; To meet the elysium of thy warm caress ; To be the prisoner of thy tears ; to bless Thy dark eye's weeping passion ; and to hear The word or sigh, soul-toned or accentless, Murmur for one so vile, and yet so dear — Alas ! 'tis mine no more ! Thou hast undone me, Fear !" Such names as Southey and Bulwer were deemed likely to direct public opinion, but their praises of Elliott did not produce the effect that might have been expected. Was it because they spoke of him 64 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. as a mechanic? Burns had but recently died — Bloomfield had just been lauded for his self- educated genius — nay, the Quarterly Review had discovered a mighty poet in one John Jones ; the public was probably not in the humour to listen at that moment to a new name, founding its claims on the marvellous fact, that poetry had inspired a poor man. Byron, the lord of the ascendant, with some degree of aristocratic hauteur, had ridiculed the pretensions of poets of this class. However, the undaunted bard was still in hopes that he should hit the bull's eye — the white mark of public favour. His next volume contained — " Love," " The Letter," " They Met Again," and "Withered Wild Flowers." Now that we can look back on all his poetry we have no hesitation in saying, that the genius of the author reached its meridian in this volume, and that these poems will be those for which he will be most remembered by posterity. Taking them, therefore, as criterions of his merit and fame, let us enter more largely into an examination of them, for a critical dis- cussion of his poetry is probably the best illustration we can give of the life of the poet. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 65 CHAPTER III. FROM THE PUBLICATION OF "LOVE," TO THE PUBLI- CATION OF THE "CORN-LAW RHYMES." " Love" is a poem sweet as love itself — rich with ideas that are jewels and glow with delight — round and smooth as the apple which Paris gave to Venus. All that love has done, can do, or will do in its various forms of youthful, conjugal, maternal, and heroic, is expressed in this poem, though it remained unnoticed and unknown, and "wasted its sweetness on the desert air," while many a gaudy plant was cherished in the conservatory of public favour. It is a poem not only good in its poetry but in its purpose. Dr. Holland had the honour to have it dedicated to him. It is written in what had become the author's favourite measure, the heroic couplet. Practice had now enabled him to perfect his style, yet something was still wanting to render it complete. He had at length obtained the mastery over his genius ; his ideas came at his call, and he had learnt to condense them into words of force, even as water in the distiller's alembic is steamed into drops of spirit. Reading and obser- 66 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. vation had stored his mind. His fluent verse had its fountain in his heart, and ever flowed warm as his own blood — deep, yet not smooth, somewhat confused, yet never feeble. If his poem of " Love " has a fault, it arises from the too uniform solidity of his thoughts, which make it somewhat accord with Shakspeare's description of that passion — " heavy lightness, serious vanity." The following is a favourable specimen : — " Blessed is the hearth when daughters gird the fire, And sons that shall be happier than their sire, Who sees them crowd around his evening chair, While Love and Hope inspire his wordless prayer. Oh, from their home paternal may they go, With little to unlearn, though much to know. Them may no poisoned tongue, no evil eye, Curse for the virtues that refuse to die — The generous heart, the independent mind — Till truth, like falsehood, leaves a sting behind. May Temperance crown their feast, and Friendship share — May Pity come, Love's sister-spirit, there. May they shun baseness as they shun the grave ; May they be frugal, pious, humble, brave ; Sweet peace be theirs, the moonlight of the breast, And occupation and alternate rest ; And dear to care and thought the rural walk ; Theirs be no flower that withers on the stalk, But roses cropped, that shall not bloom in vain, And Hope's blest sun that sets to rise again. Be chaste their nuptial bed, their home be sweet, Their floor resound the tread of little feet ; Blessed beyond fear and hate, if blessed by thee And heirs, O Love ! of thine eternity." ' c The Letter" is a tale that reminds us of Crabbe ; but Crabbe had a more philosophic LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 67 insight into human nature than Elliott; he was more a metaphysician, and conld analyse motives better, so as to instruct where he entertained. Elliott's view was of the outer rather than the inner man; he showed effects better than causes. He is more a representative than a creative poet — a poet of the heart more than of the mind or soul. Crabbe does not affect us like Elliott, nor is he so full of the beauty of nature. He is more a con- ventional bard. Moral and religious worth is in both bards ; but Elliott has more feeling, though perhaps less literary merit. "The Letter" tells a story of a young woman who was struck blind just as she became a bride, and by losing her sight lost her husband's love. He deserted her, and she was reduced to become the inmate of a workhouse. While there, and in a dying state, a letter is brought to her from her husband. It speaks of what he has seen, but says nothing to her, does not even mention her name. She dies ; and some time after, her husband, unknowing of her fate, but struck with some degree of remorse, returns to rejoin her, but too late. This is told in a quiet feeling manner that gently interests the heart. The following is a picture of the blind bride : — " Sad then it was to see a form so fair In tears resigned — though dark, not in despair ; Still on his bosom she could lean and weep, And feign a dream of eyelids closed in sleep ; 68 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Still when with him she walked, at eve or morn, She could inhale the odours of the thorn ; And while she hung so helpless on his arm, Dependence gave his words a double charm : They fell like dew o'er violets on her ear, Or like offended Love's forgiving tear On man's warm breast. Yet by the plaining rill The thought would rise that flowers on every hill Were beautiful to every eye but hers — That broom, and hawthorn, and the armed furze, Bloomed vainly fair beneath the sapphire sky. Still waved the birch in memory's happy eye, Yet made by vain regret more sadly sweet ; The hours returned when oft, with naked feet, And bare plunged arm, the trout or loach she took Where stones upturned perturbed the shallow brook, Or mid her sister maidens of the dale, Held forth the lizard by his golden tail In childish wonder ; and an envious pang Assailed her weakness if the echoes rang, With ' Holiday' proclaimed in joyous cries, And little boys and girls, with upturned eyes, Came whispering round her." " They Met Again" is another story of remorse- ful guilt. We are introduced to a rebel and traitor who hides his life in a cave. A storm has cast an aged shipwrecked voyager on shore, and in him the outlaw recognises a wronged friend — a husband whom he had deceived and injured in the deepest degree, robbing him of his wife's love. The victim does not recognise his wronger, and while dying recounts to him the history of his wrongs and sufferings, which awaken the vain repentance of the listener, who cannot atone. The following lines no learning, but only genius, could have dictated : — LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 69 c; I may not lie where Ann in cold earth lies ; But might I see again with these sad eyes The clay that is her pillow, they would close Happy to shut for ever on the woes Of such a world as this. I weep for her : I am not stone : she was a sufferer, And though a sinner, yet a Magdalene. She died repentant, and was loveliest then. Oh, she was false to me, but I am true ; And when she died we then were wed anew. The worms, the worms our bridal bed prepare; Long waits the bride — in vain ! I come not there- Severed in life, still, still let death divide ; Why should I slumber by the lost one's side ? Yet when the trump of doom shall rend the sky, And wake all sleepers, she shall meet an eye That could not meet hers frowning. Oh, her breast, Though dearest still, is spotted and unblessed — No pillow meet for me, although I long for rest." " They Met Again" is one of those tales of truth that are stranger than fiction, and contains an excellent moral, exemplified in the following fine lines : — " No fancied muse do I invoke to aid The song that tells of trusting truth betrayed. Be thou, my muse, thou darkest name of woe, Thou saddest of realities below, Love ! But I called not thee, thou boy of guile, Cruel, though fair, that joyest to sting and smile ! Sly urchin, winged and armed too like the bee, And tressed with living gold, I called not thee — But thee, sweet profligate, who gavest all, Peace, earth and heaven, for poisoned fire and gall ! Thee, thee, thou weeping Magdalene, I call. Alas ! o'er thee hath rushed the avenging blast, Through thee the arrows of the grave have passed. Avaunt ! thou palest daughter of Despair ! If thou art Love, what form doth Horror wear ? 70 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Yet stay ! I know thee, in thy faded eye The light of beauty lingers — soon to die : Known by the worm that feedeth on the heart. Stay, guilty Magdalene, we must not part Till I have told this saddest tale of thine, And steeped in tears each slow complaining line." It will be seen that " They Met Again" is of a similar character with " The Letter ;" and there is yet another, "Withered Wild Flowers." From what source Elliott drew these tales, whether he was indebted for them to fact or fiction or to his ow T n imagination, it were bootless to inquire. There is but little incident and character in them. The story is simple, and seems written to exem- plify one moral, namely, that sin is the sure breeder of misery. All are tales of sorrow and remorse. Narrative and descriptive powers they evince in a high degree, but are chiefly character- istic for pathos. " Withered Wild Flowers" is a tale of New England. We are introduced to Kirk, Winslow, and Henley ; also to Elliot, the Indian Apostle. Senena, the guilty and unfortu- nate love of Henley, and Mary, her sister, the wife of Winslow, are the female characters of the drama. After a dialogue, remarkable for the courtier tone of the cavalier Kirk, contrasted with the fierce republicanism of Winslow, the con- science-stricken Senena quits the room, and we follow in secret to a dark deed of guilt, the mur- LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 71 der, by drowning, of her infant child ; it hath no other name. Afterwards, impelled by that strong curiosity which prompts the murderer to look upon his deed, she goes and draws the dead body of the infant to land. Remorse plunges her with it into the wave. The guilty lover discovers his victims, and sequesters himself from all society. He also dies, and his funeral gives occasion to Elliot, the missionary, to preach a funeral sermon over his grave, from the text, " The curse of God is in the house of sin." Most tender and solemn is the feeling awakened by this. Bad indeed must that heart be whose better feelings would not be touched by it — hard indeed, if the hand of sorrow that can soften a stone did not cause those tears of peni- tence to flow, whose drops, more than " great Nep- tune's ocean," have power to wash a^vay guilt. Elliott's choice of those melancholy subjects arose in part from the morbidity of his disposition. His sensibilities were roused by his sympathies ; he wrote to ease a bursting heart. Had he been able to identify himself with the characters he described, or had he drawn from self, he would have evinced power little lower than Shakspeare or Byron. As it was, he at least reached the second best of Byron, and was thus far superior to that misanthropic genius — he wrote with better purpose. Some of his lines have the condensed T& LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. power and sonorous swell of Byron's most majestic flow. For instance : — " Kirk turned black with, ire, And on his forehead darkness seemed on fire." ****** " But Kirk, with gloomy stare, Perused each sunburnt warrior's haughty air, And, starting, almost feared rebellion there." In the following extract each word seems a tear — each tone a cadence of woe. " My murdered baby ! Oh, that I had borne The taunt of prudery, the scourge of scorn, The penance due to sin ! Would I had taught Thy little lip to know this breast, and bought Thy thankful smile with love, and o'er thee hung, To bless the name of mother from thy tongue ! Was this a mother's deed ? Thy stifled cry Still echoes in my soul, and will not die. Bitter remembrance is my portion set, Never on earth to smile, or to forget. And I must bear perdition in my breast, And wear my hopeless anguish as a vest. Why did I do this deed ? Let Henley tell : He, most unworthy, still is loved too well. But he shall weep when I am lowly laid, And wish too late I had not been betrayed. Canst thou forgive me, baby ? Thou, my child, Canst thou forgive this wretch with blood defiled ? Baby, forgive me ! I forgive thy sire. O Heaven, forgive us both ! and in thine ire Remember him with mercy. Let me weep A little longer, ere I try to sleep." No one could excel Elliott in depicting what Crabbe calls a the strong yearnings of a ruine mmd/' or those horrors of a guilty conscienc LTFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 73 which are so pitiful in their terrors. The following passage will not easily be paralleled : — "And he complained that oft the light was green, That blue sparks girt his bed, in darkness seen, And that the rushes on the floor had wings, And moved and flew like animated things. Then would he mourn his nights unblessed with sleep, And bend his face upon my knee and weep, And say that he had wished in vain to die ; And that (although he shrunk when death seemed nigh) Oft had he gazed upon the heaving main And longed to leap, and turned, and looked again. But if I prayed him to return with me, Then, like a wretch who strives with agony, And deeply maimed prepares his final blow, He mustered up his strength and answered ' No ! ' Once, only once, his anguish sank in prayer, And uttered all a broken heart's despair : ' In doubt I liv^ed, in horror I expire. Release me ; Oh, release me ! in thine ire, Or in thy mercy rather, set me free ! For my eyes hate the blessed sun to see, That only bids my hopeless spirit mourn O'er ill-spent hours that never can return.' " " Spirits and Men/' is a poem of the world before the flood, but might with equal propriety have had a posterior date. Incited by the examples of Milton, Byron, Moore, and Montgomery, who had all written on this subject, our author, too, must needs enter the lists, but we cannot say with equal success. Milton has legitimately possessed himself of that ground, and rendered it an act of temerity in all who would trespass on it. Elliott's poem is a fragment, deficient in story and charac- E 74 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. ter, and is, indeed, what he terms it, an ' ' evidence of his presumption and despair." The literal character of his genius unfitted him to grasp a purely spiritual subject. His poetry is not fiction, but truth ; he could not idealise the real, still less realise the ideal. He looked on nature with his own eyes — and not with the coloured glasses of fancy and imagination. His spirits are men "Without the metaphysics of Byron, the melli- fluous sweetness of Moore, and the theological piety of Montgomery, he yet possessed a some- thing of his own which, exercised in its proper sphere, made him a magician as mighty as they in their circles — namely, an exquisite sensibility. The death of Thamar in this unfinished epic is an instance : — " Words came at length, and tears were wildly shed ; ' I die at home, and thou art here,' he said ; ' But though released, I die at home, and feel Thy warm tears, Zillah, on my bosom cold, Think not that aught but fire can soften steel, Or that in pity wolves relax their hold. Oh, I have dreamed of vollied seas and fire, Sad retribution haply yet to be : The tyrant's power and will obey a higher, And vain is human strife with destiny. Know, from thy womb the destined twain have sprung, On whom the fate of this doomed world is hung. Oh, may their deeds, magnanimous and just, Cancel the crimes of ages, and retrieve The fainting hopes of man, when I am dust ! For I must leave thee, Eva — I must leave LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 75 Thee, ray brave boy ! your sire is summoned hence To join Mahali, whom his innocence Could not defend or rescue ; if, indeed, My ill -starred father lives, not yet fast bound In torturing dungeons, whose slow pangs exceed All other pangs. But ah, what mists surround My swimming brain ? What means this sudden gloom ? Take not my children from me ere I die ! I cannot see your faces, nearer come, Irad, yet nearer. Eva, art thou nigh Zillah, thy hand — my poor ill-fated one ! I see a shade resembling thee — 'tis gone There was ever deep feeling in that well of truth — the poet's heart. Elliott had hitherto written as he had read, as chance led him, with probably no greater design than to prove his powers as a poet. It is remark- able that his earliest subjects are not drawn from local or national sources, from individual or social feelings. There are none of the superstitions or traditions of his native place versified by him — none of the characters either domestic or in the neighbourhood figure in his rhymes. He " takes off" no one — writes no love songs — and is any- thing but a genius loci. With the exception of a well-paid tribute to the memory of his school- master's son, whose soul of flame, he says — " Cherished in mine a spark that else had died," he passes over all that lay nearest- to him, and sends his thoughts into the Far West to gather e2 /D LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. the honey of poesy from foreign rather than from: native flowers. His mind appears to have been early turned towards America. One of his first projected poems was an epic on the Revolution. He was a diligent reader of transatlantic books. Thus he lays the scene of his " Exile," and other poems, in that land of freedom, though he never was there. He had a strong desire to emigrate, and was, no doubt, in correspondence with one or two friends who had done so. From their descrip- tions, and from the works of Audubon and others, he drew many of those pictures which seem taken on the spot. Could he have gone to that land of his love, we should doubtless have had a poem filled with all the power of personal experience, and entitled, " The Emigrant." One of his own favourites was "Miranion, a Tale of the Conquest of Quebec." It is more finished than many of his poems, and, as a poem, might form a companion-piece with West's cele- brated picture of "The Death of Wolfe." The following is an instance of rapid narrative : — " The rocks frowned darker o'er the shoreward fleet. First on the strand stood Wolfe. Boat followed boat, And warrior, warrior. With uplifted sword He pointed to the rocks ; and swift, and strong, And resolute, they scaled the steepness there. Silent, and each assisting each, they rose From tree to tree, from cliff to cliff ; and soon, High on the summit, twenty veterans waved LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 77 Their Highland blades. Mute thousands followed them, With labour infinite and cautious tread, And breathing half suppressed ; and painfully Their slaughtering cannon weighed from pine to pine." As the work of an uneducated man, "Mira- nion " will bear comparison, even in classical cor- rectness, with the prize poems of a collegian. Southey produced no better epic. Those who have formed their opinion of Elliott chiefly from his political rhymes, will scarcely credit the excellence of his heroic poetry. The poet appears in two aspects — a kind of Janus — one face glowing with the godlike muse of Romance — the other contracted with the scowl of embittered trade. I have dwelt the more upon the merits of his unpolitical poetry because I am apprehensive that, as an Apollo, Elliott is still a stranger in the land, he being more known as a Vulcan ; but if he was a Vulcan, he was a forger of celestial armour. We now proceed to regard him more particularly in this latter character, a forced one to him, whose aspirations were for a more con- genial sphere. " Oh that I were all thought and memory, A winged intelligence invisible ; Then would I read the virgin's fears, and tell Delicious secrets to her lover's heart, By spectre-haunted wood or wizard stream." 78 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. CHAPTER IV. CONTAINING A HISTOEY OF THE COEN-LAW EHYMEES POLITICAL POETEY. We have already seen the influences which bore upon the youthful mind of Elliott and made him a poet. We have now to remark those which operated to make his poetry political. In the first J place, we must observe that he was born a radical ; for his father was one, and he was brought up in that school, as his class generally are. His father was his tutor ; and however that stern republican might complain of his son's dullness in other respects, he, no doubt, found him apt in this. But no induction would have availed to one who, like young Elliott, began, as soon as he could think at all, to think for himself; unfortunately, however^ his thoughts were of a nature to rivet his first impressions. Ebenezer Elliott could not be kept in mental childhood ; as he grew to man's estate, nay, while yet a boy, he thought as a man. This unhappiness affected his health — for what had he to think of? England was at war with France, not to put down French freedom — that had gone LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 79 mad and destroyed itself; but to control the power of a Usurper who, imitating the despots of ancient Rome, set enslaved States free but to bring them in bondage under himself. The French Revolution had failed because, while professing to make that of America its model, France could but produce a Robespierre in place of a Franklin — a Bonaparte instead of a Washington. No doubt, in common with other youthful minds, Elliott had enthusias- tically hailed the rising of that sun which so soon, alas ! was to set in blood, and to give power, or ] rather pretence, to petty despots, to insult the hopes of disappointed patriots, and to rivet their chains. He longed to escape to America, but his lot forbade. In the meanwhile such scenes as those at " Peterloo," never to be forgotten and never to be forgiven by a true radical, inflamed him with a hero's passion and a martyr's zeal. At the same time, his father's affairs, which involved his own, went w T rong ; and whether this was caused by indi- vidual mismanagement or the turn of the times, the consequences were not likely to improve his temper. His mother did not survive the shock, nor was his father long a mourner. Our poet has versified this most calamitous period of his life in the following passage from the * Village Patriarch :"— "But danger lurked where safety seemed to be, And cloudless thunder turned his hopes to dust ; 80 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. While navies sank on fortune's sunny sea Unskilled to save his little bark was he. In dreadful calm the viewless storm increased; Most fatal when least dreaded came the blow, That still was nearest when expected least, And none who felt the stroke could see the foe ; But all was wondering fear and helpless woe. The servant took the master by the nose ; The beggared master slunk aside to die ; Down dropped the cobweb Croesus, stunned : he rose, And fell again he knew not how nor why. Like frost and thaw in April's fickle sky, The wretched rich, and not less wretched poor, Changed places miserably ; and the bad Throve while the righteous begged from door to door. None smiled save knaves ; but loudly laughed the mad, Even at their prayers, and then they kicked the sad ; And still men fought with shadows and were slain ; For ruin smote, nor warning gave at all, Unseen, like pestilence, and feared in vain ! " Ebenezer Elliott shared the fate of thousands, but thought more about it than they all, and felt it deeper. He left the tale untold because it could derive no public interest, save from its connexion with such a man as himself. Thousands at the present day might tell similar tales, more in- structive than entertaining to the general reader. Elliott attributed his disasters to the Corn-laws, and he was not one to suffer without seeking a remedy. We have seen from his non-political poetry that he could sympathise with fictitious grief, nor did this make him fashionably callous to the real. Yet he dwelt not on his own grief, but as an item in the general account. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 81 Our poet and steel-merchant, at the age of forty, had to begin the world anew. True, it was not without a stock of deeply-bought experience, and past failures sometimes prove the foundations of future success. He left Rotherham, where he had been unfortunate, and began business at Sheffield with a borrowed capital of 100/. This, he said, "tippled right over its head." A re-action had taken place, and he now received the benefit of the fresh-strung nerve of commerce. His first place of business was in Burgess-street, where he dealt in the raw material of Sheffield cutlery. Here it was that, as Howitt reports him to have said, he made 20/. a day, sitting in his chair, without seeing the goods that came to his wharf and left it with such profit to him. But this was only for a time. It lasted sufficiently, however, to enable him to make his fortune. Prosperity and the Corn-laws could not continue together long. Trade was ever fluctuating like a strong spring tide, that carries what floats on it to a high flood, but then, with low ebb, sweeps back again. Elliott's former reverses had taught him prudence. He never acted as if good luck was to be permanent, but provided against the turn of the times. " While others, therefore, were increasing their liabilities by augmenting their stocks, Elliott prudently kept his within the narrowest compass. e3 82 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. This saved him from embarrassment when the tide turned, and enabled him to do business profitably when many who had hasted to be rich were over- whelmed." But all the prudence in the world cannot preserve the fair trader from the effectsof monopoly or class-legislation. Elliott was doomed to a second reverse. In a letter to Mr. Tait he says: — "In 1837, when the commercial revulsion began, I ought to have retired from all business, as I then intended, being aware that without Free- trade no tradesman could be safe. But my unwil- lingness to lead an idle life (which being inter- preted means, my unwillingness to resign the profits of business) tempted me to wait the crash — a crash unlike all other crashes in my experience. I lost fully one-third of all my savings ; and after enabling my six boys to quit the nest, got out of the fracas with about 6,000/., which I will try to keep." Elliott had a scape-goat on which to lay all his misfortunes and all the sins of the nation — viz., the Corn-laws. To these he attributed the tanta- lising uncertainties of trade, so vexatious both to employers and the employed — its struggles to mount upwards ever ending with a sudden down- fall — capitalists compelled to lower wages or to stop work, and the strikes of labourers who only saw the stick and not the hand that held it. That hand, said Elliott, was the Bread-tax. In Sheffield, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 83 indeed, lie had found a congenial sphere ; it was here that he first succeeded in business, and here he began to be popular as a poet. This large manufacturing town, with its many thousands of intelligent operatives — men of steel, true to the cause of truth — this "town of the cloud," as he called it, which ever seems to wear the cap of Liberty — a pillar of smoke by day, turning at night into a tongue of flame — this town of industry, with its romantic scenery, supplied him with materials for his muse and gave him audience fit and not few. Here he organised the first " Anti- Bread-tax Society;" almost alone he did it, for his associates were all of the working-class. They formed the nucleus of a society which, had not the Reform Bill intervened, would soon have numbered many thousands ; but the agitation for the Reform Bill caused them to suspend their operations in order that they might assist in promoting that measure. Parliamentary reform had become the grand question of the day. The state of the national representation was found to be greatly at variance with its theory, and presented many remarkable absurdities and anomalies. It was thought the people's voice would reform all abuses, and cure all corruptions. Elliott expected from it the immediate repeal of 'the Corn-laws. Always in 84 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. earnest, he threw his heart into whatever cause he advocated. But neither the hopes of the Reformers nor the fears of the Anti-reformers were realised. The Reform Bill, regarded as a panacea for all evils by the one, as a Pandora's box by the other, proved, after all, a nullity. It is in the nature of parties to sever as wide as possible, leaving Truth standing in the midst, exclaiming, Peace ! But Truth is not listened to, and there is no peace. The representation of the people was little improved. Men of birth and wealth could still command most votes ; intimidation was at work ; and the new electors, though Reformers, found themselves obliged either to lose their livings or to vote against their consciences. We must not be surprised if the majority adopted the latter alter- native. In the House, interest still overruled prin- ciple, faction still overcame patriotism; and the hopes of the Anti-Corn-law party were frustated by a clause introduced by the Marquis of Chandos, which gave a vote to tenant-farmers of 50/. a year rental. Elliott saw the necessity of resuming his Anti-Corn-law agitation. He had assisted the advent of Reform by several spirited songs, written for the Sheffield Political Union, of which he was a member. One or two of these are worth quoting : — LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 85 SONG. To the tune of" Scots wha ha'." " Hands, and hearts, and minds are ours, Shall we bow to bestial powers ? Tyrants ! vaunt your swords and towers, Reason is our citadel. " With what arms will ye surprise Knowledge of the million eyes ? What is mightier than the wise ? Not the might of wickedness. " Trust in force ! — so tyrants trust ; Words shall crush ye into dust. Yet we fight — if fight we must — Thou didst, Man of Huntingdon. " Heirs of Pym ! can ye be base ? Locke ! shall Frenchmen scorn a race Born in Hampden's dwelling-place ? Blush to write it, Infamy. " What we are, our fathers were, What they dared, their sons can dare ; Vulgar tyrants, hush ! beware ! Bring not down the avalanche. " By the death which Hampden died, By oppression, mind-defied, Despots ! we will tame your pride, Stormily or tranquilly." The trumpet that sounded the charge also cele- brated the victory. THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM. To the tune of " Rule Britannia." " No paltry fray, no bloody day, That crowns with praise the baby great ; The deed of Brougham, Russell, Grey, The deed that's done, we celebrate. Mind's great charter ! Europe saved ! Man for ever unenslaved ! 86 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " Oh, could the wise, the brave, the just Who suffered — died — to break our chains, Could Muir, could Palmer from the dust, Could murdered Gerald hear our strains, — Then would martyrs throned in bliss See all ages blessed in this." His own prosperity never made Elliott indif- ferent to the welfare of others, particularly of the poor. He was by nature their friend. No poet or man of large and universal sympathies can be indifferent to the welfare of any of God's crea- tures, more particularly of those who, like the children of nature, are dependant on Providence for their food. Business, however profitable, still left him leisure to advocate the cause of the people. He wrote, lectured, and attended public meetings on their behalf. Right ! was his one- worded motto, and his thoughts and deeds always corresponded. He had lived through the worst times, when the horrors of the Reign of Terror had given to George the Fourth and his Ministers power to persecute all under the ban of radicalism. The escape of Home Tooke, Thelwall, and Hone probably secured his own. The arm of the Sid- mouths and Castlereaghs had been shortened, and on the accession of William the Fourth, a patriotic king, the hopes of the people revived. Elliott's ill success in the world had called his thoughts from the regions of romance home to himself and family, and he had renounced the LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 87 visionary speculations of poetry to consider why such a man as himself was unsuccessful. To what cause could he attribute this ? Of course, to the Corn-laws ! There was no occasion to employ his muse in fiction ; there were truths, more strange, that invoked her. The weapon he had used for Reform he could use for the repeal of the Corn- laws ; and he sharpened it upon his wrongs to make it more cutting. The subject came home to his business and bosom. Here, then, is the secret of his "Corn-law Rhymes." Not that his per- sonal losses rendered him selfish, any more than Ins gains made him sordid. He wrote for the nation as for himself — for all fellow-sufferers. He says, " If my composition smell of the workshop and the dingy warehouse, I cannot help it ; soot is soot, and he who lives in a chimney will do well to take the air when he can, and ruralise now and then, even in imagination. But we are cursed with evils infinitely worse than a sooty atmosphere — we are bread-taxed. Our labour, our skill, our profits, our hopes, out' lives, our child- ren's souls, are bread-taxed." Trade was fettered by the operation of certain laws that had been enacted for the benefit of land- owners, because their party was the most powerful in the State, and had rendered a factitious service to Government in its late wars. Those laws imposed 88 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. a duty on all foreign corn imported into England, thus keeping up the price of bread here by law, and enabling tenants to pay high rents. This, in itself, would not have been felt a hardship if trade had uniformly continued good, for high profits would have enabled manufacturers to pay high wages, and workmen could thus have afforded to pay a high price for bread. But trade declined. The manufacturers found that their customers abroad were becoming rivals — formidable, because their bread was not made dear by law. Accord- ingly, the manufacturers called for the abolition of this impost ; they were not afraid of competition if they could meet their foreign rivals on fair ground. They hoped that when corn should be imported duty free, foreigners would betake them- selves to corn-growing as a better speculation, and leave manufacturing to those who were more adept at it. Thus the strife of competition would be shuffled off their shoulders upon those of the land- owners. Trade not being so healthy, so steady, nor so agreeable an occupation as agriculture, seemed to require some immunities; but the manu- facturers called for none, except that the land should not be protected at their expense. This was the question; and we must not wonder that Ebenezer Elliott, born and bred a manufacturer, whose interests were all embarked in trade, whose LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 89 very bread depended on its being made free, should be, or become, what was called a Free-trader. How warmly he thought and felt on the subject, owing to his repeated sacrifices and sufferings, may be gathered from his own nervous prose. " When suicidal anti-profit laws speak to my heart from my children's trenchers, when statutes for restricting the industry of a population, which is only superabundant because it is oppressed, threaten to send me to the tread-mill for the crime of inflicted want — when, in a word, my feelings are hammered till they are ' cold-short ' — habit can no longer bend them to courtesy ; they snap and fly off in sarcasm. Is it strange that my language is fervent as a welding heat when my thoughts are passions that rush burning from my mind like white-hot bolts of steel?" Southey, when he wrote " Wat Tyler," possessed much of Elliott's nature; but he suffered the world so far to win him that he afterwards expressed scorn of the unsophisticated feelings of his youth, and deprecated this language of Elliott. Southey would have advised Elliott to dip his white-hot bolts of passion into the slack-trough of prudence. With admirable conventional tact, the Laureate, when writing a review of Elliott's poems, desirous to serve the author and yet not to offend his own patrons, steered a middle course, and, by dint 90 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. of tacking and veering, manoeuvred Ms vessel through. Elliott, who disdained to trim, would rather have run her on shore. Southey was a scholar and a gentleman, who had not been worn and torn with the tug of commercial war. Elliott's wrath was that of the dove, that in defence of its young will peck the eagle. He wept as he wrote. Such scenes as a large manufacturing town pre- sents in times of distress were enough to render him, whose heart was so feeling, frantic with grief and rage. He had been more or less than man could he have written coldly. Elliott's politics had rendered his poetry practical — he " stooped to truth and moralised his song." He denounced the Corn-laws and all their sup- porters — nay, the whole system of Government and society that could uphold them. He sympa- thised with their victims, being himself one. He became a political poet. The first fruits of this change was " The Ranter " — a sermon in poetry. Why he called it " The Ranter," I cannot con- ceive. There is no rant in it — and no ranter could or would have written such a sermon. Nor is there any cant in it. It might have been preached on the mount which overlooks Sheffield. It is a sermon full of radical Christianity. As a poem, it is more regular than any of its prede- cessors, having a beginning, a middle, and an end. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 91 He intersperses his usual beautiful descriptions of natural scenery with his fervid human feelings, and writes from actual life, from what himself had seen, and felt, and remembered of England's evil days and his own. " The Ranter " was the first poem that made him popular but with the class for whom it was written only. Yet individuals of all parties must have admired the poetry, if not the politics. The following may serve as a specimen, and it shows the author's favourite method of illustrating Free- trade from its analogy with Nature : — " Look on the clouds, the streams, the earth, the sky, Lo ! all is interchange and harmony. Where is the gorgeous pomp which yestermorn Curtained yon orh with amber, fold on fold ? Behold it in the blue of Rivilin borne, To feed the all-feeding seas ! the molten gold Is flowing pale in Loxley's crystal cold. To kindle into beauty tree and flower, And wake to verdant life hill, dale, and plain, Cloud trades with river, and exchange is power ; But should the clouds, the trees, the winds disdain Harmonious intercourse, nor dew nor rain Would forest-crown the mountains ; airless day Would blast on Kinderscout the heathy glow. No purply green would meeken into grey O'er Don at eve ; no sound of river's flow Disturb the sepulchre of all below." The " Ranter " is remarkable for an attack on Methodism, which the author accuses of Jesuitism. Is it true that these people, having humbled them- 92 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. selves to be exalted, now make a despotic use of their power, and more than imitate the world- liness of the wealthy institution from which they seceded ? " There is the moral of all human tales, Tis but the same rehearsal of the past — First freedom, and then glory. When that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption — barbarism at last." With the " Ranter " appeared " Corn-law Rhymes ;" a strange, unpromising title, as if the poet had taken the wings off his Pegasus, and turned her into a common hack for the highway. Having reached middle age, what had he to look back upon but a youth spent in vain toil — in sufferings and sacrifices, such as he believed no other man had ever endured — such as had often made him exclaim, when thinking of his narrow escape from drowning when a child, " The more the pity \" Well would it have been for the landlords if Ebenezer Elliott had been quietly allowed to write poetry or attend to his business without being driven to politics — well also for his own fame, because that portion of his poetry which he wrote before he rhymed politics is his best. He says truly in the preface to the " Ranter," " I have published poems which con- tained no political allusions, and the worst of them all might justly claim a hundred times the merit LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 93 of the " Corn-law Rhymes." He himself seems to have wondered at the sndden popularity which attended these. But there was nothing to wonder at. His readers were interested in the subject — he wrote on what concerned them. Thus inferior poetry rose superior in the estimation of the people, because on topics of temporary interest. But the occasion past, what is to prevent all his poems founded on it from passing likewise? The repeal of the Corn-laws repealed the " Corn- law Rhymes." Like " Junius' Letters/' nothing but their vigour of style will preserve them. The " Corn-law Rhymes " are short pieces, all the more effective for being short. Many of them are mere versifications of maxims in Colonel Thompson's works on Free- trade. They are written in every variety of style or measure, fit to be sung, read, or recited. Their chief fault lies in their spirit of personal invective. He does not reason with the enemy — he keeps no terms with him, gives him no quarter ; he runs a muck at all Corn-law supporters, real or imaginary, and makes a scalping-knife of his pen. His sarcasm is indeed very bitter — his words are drops of vitriol. He lashes himself up to frenzy, and growls and tears with savage fury. Like Hamlet he seems to exclaim, — " Why, I will fight with them upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag." 94 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Like Coriolanus : — " Let them pull all about mine ears ; present me Death upon the wheel, or at wild horses' heels ; Or pile ten hills upon the Tarpeian rock, That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still Be thus to them." He never attempts to soften or persuade, never argues ; but, like a wolf, whose native wildness no art can civilise, spends his vain fury on his bars and chains. Elliott's creed was, that milk and water never cauterised a national cancer ; and in words that might have been written by the author of " Be Kent unmannerly when Lear is mad," he says — " Be Supplication dumb When Charity is deaf." He knew that selfishness would listen to no voice but that of alarm ; and therefore he does not say— " Let gentleness our strong enforcement be," but, let us speak with thunder and lightning, that terror may teach the selfish there is more to fear by refusing justice than by granting it. After all, the landowners had themselves to thank for all this. One class, as it ought not to, so it never will, thrive long at the expense of another. The plundered combine, and the fat are no match for the hungry. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 95 It is well if retribution does not fly back to retali- ation and revenge. Elliott speaks right out what he thinks, and would act what he thought. He insults without mercy. The landed aristocracy are all paupers kept by the poor, whose bread is taxed to support them in luxury ! And he repre- sents those Pharaohs as requiring the tale of bricks without straw — as famishing the very slaves whose labour supported them. He utters warnings like those of Noah when he prophesied the flood. Yet let it not be supposed that he desired to see the revolution which he foretold. He himself would have been one of the first and greatest sufferers. Revolutionists do not warn, they con- spire secretly. But Elliott suffered the fate of all prophets, from Peter the Hermit downward. He was adjudged as one who desired the accomplish- ment of his own prophecies. True it is, that while he roused the fears of the landlords, he excited the feelings of the people ; and had he inadvertently kindled a conflagration, his well-meant intentions would not have quenched it. The reader may be desirous to see a specimen of those far-famed " Corn-law Rhymes :" — SONG. To the tune of " Scots wha ha'." " Others march in Freedom's van ; Can'st not thou what others can ? Thou a Briton ! — thou a man ! What are worms if human thou ? S6 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " Wilt thou, deaf to hiss and groan, Breed white slaves for every zone ? Make yon robber feed his own, Then proclaim thyself a man. " Still shall paltry tyrants tell Freemen when to buy and sell ? Spurn the coward thought to hell ! Tell the miscreants what they are. " Dost thou cringe that fiends may scowl ? Wast thou born without a soul ? Spaniels feed, are whipped, and howl — Spaniel ! thou art starved and whipped, " Wilt thou still feed palaced knaves ? Shall thy sons be traitors' slaves ? Shall they sleep in workhouse graves ? Shall they toil for parish pay ? " Wherefore didst thou woo and wed ? Why a bride was Mary led ? Shall she, dying, curse thy bed ? Tyrants! tyrants ! no, by Heaven !" It may be some excuse for Elliott that losses in trade, against which no skill nor industry were of avail, and public neglect, which had been the sole reward of his merit, had soured his temper. " Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong, Imputed madness," had, as in Tasso's case, worked a cankering effect on his mind and health ; but all honour to poetry which could spring up in this arid soil, and make the wilderness bloom like a garden. The " Corn- law Rhymes" themselves present several instances of the admirable effect of poetry in controlling LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 97 and soothing the ungovernable and embittered rage of politics. His politics bade him curse, but his poetry involuntarily blessed. As, for instance, in the " Jacobin's Prayer :" — " Avenge the plundered poor, O Lord ! But not with fire, but not with sword — Not as at Peterloo they died, Beneath the hoofs of coward pride. Avenge our rags, our chains, our sighs, The famine in our children's eyes ! But not with sword, no, not' with fire, Chastise thou Britain's locustry ! Lord, let them feel thy heavier ire ; Whip them, O Lord, with poverty ! Then cold in soul as coffined dust, Their hearts as tearless, dead, and dry, Let them in outraged mercy trust, \nd Jind that mercy they deny !" And, again, in " O Lord, how long ?" " Oh, vengeance ! — No, forgive, forgive ! 'Tis frailty still that errs : Forgive ? Revenge ! — shall murderers live ? Christ blessed his murderers." Politics apart, what would the poet have been ? Let his own prayer inform us : — A POET'S PRAYER. " Almighty Father ! let thy lowly child, Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold ; A patriot bard, by sycophants reviled, Let him live usefully, and not die old ! Let poor men's children, pleased to read his lays, Love for his sake the scenes where he hath been ; And when he ends his pilgrimage of days, Let him be buried where the grass is green. F 98 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT, Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late, To hear the bee his busy note prolong, There let him slumber, and in peace await The dawning morn, far from the sensual throng, Who scorn the windflower's blush, the red-breast's lonely song." In the preface to the " Corn-law Rhymes/' Elliott endeavours to vindicate the union of poetry with politics. He says, "All poets are fervid politicians." True ; but not in the sense that he was. They are politicians abstractedly or gene- rally. They are lovers of liberty, for poetry inspires the love of liberty ; and even those who in their lives were opposed to liberty are, in their poetry, its advocates. But poets do not pick out a law, and harp on that string till their song dis- gusts and tires. They write not for trade. Elliott as a denouncer of the bread-tax was a poet ; as a Corn-law rhymer he was a politician. The care- less reader may say this is a distinction without a dif- ference ; but the discerning one will see otherwise. Shakspeare was a politician when he wrote Hamlet's soliloquy. Milton was a politician, but more in his prose works than in his poetic. Otway was a poli- tician when he wrote in " Venice Preserved \" " Fools shall be pulled From wisdom's seat ; those baleful, unclean birds, Those lazy owls, who, perched near fortune's top, Sit only watchful witli their heavy wings To cuff down new-fledged virtues, that would rise To nobler heights, and make the grove harmonious." LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 99 Burns was a politician when he wrote — " It's hardly in a body's power To keep at times frae being sour, To see how things are shared ; How best o' chiels are whyles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, An' ken nae how to wair't." Many nohle stanzas in " Childe Harold" declare Byron a politician. But these poets turned politics into poetry ; they did not, like our Rhymer, turn poetry into politics. None, like Elliott, were statute-law politicians ; and yet if that law, by taxing the bread of the people, forced them to relieve the miseries of want by death or crime, surely its abolition was as worthy of a poet's advocacy as that of the slave-trade, so eloquently denounced by the poet Cowper. Yet, for the sake of Poetry, let us hope that she will not in future be made a politician. The Muses have always been represented as belonging to the softer sex, and we should be sorry to see them out of cha- racter. Politics should be confined to prose ; for if there be any two things more unaccordant with each other than poetry and politics, let them be named, that we may know how to speak when we would express our ideas of extreme contraries ; and that the phrase, "As wide as the poles asunder V may become obsolete. We grant that true politics, which are pure patriotism and philan- f2 100 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. tliropy combined, are fit — perhaps the fittest — subjects for poetry ; but that lower species known by the name of party-politics, which is little better than personal strife, cannot be etherealised into poetry. You may turn them into verse, just as you make a rhyming satire or a lampoon ; but true poetry, which is the real made ideal, or the ideal made real, flies from politics like a retort in chemistry. Poetry deals with great principles — its engines are the heart, and mind, and soul ; policy resorts to little expedients, and sets the baser passions of our nature at work. Poetry loves the still life of retirement, like the lake which, when calm, reflects the face of heaven ; politics are the same lake agitated by the winds, and throwing up the lees from the bottom to mingle with and mar the bright aspect of its waters. The poet cannot bend to the world, and therefore is often broken upon it, as upon a wheel; while the subtle and intriguing politician suits himself to all its turns, and becomes, in time, the prime mover of the rolling machine. Political poets must fail as poets, however they may succeed as politicians. Where is the political poetry that is popular ? Much has been written, but who reads it? Who does not deplore the waste of poetic talent on such a theme as politics ? Party -purposes may be served at the expense of LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 101 the general interests of mankind; and politics may be served by poetry at the expense of the general interests of literature. We do not say but that the politician, even if a party man, may be honest and conscientious — may act up to his principles, and speak what he thinks; but party politics form too narrow a basis for the universality of genuine poetry, which builds from earth to heaven; while the political tower too often resembles that of Babel. Politics are as the hooded falcon, trained to fly at a given quarry ; not like the free eagle, that soars to the sun, and sees the whole world lying beneath its feet. Too many selfish and sordid passions mingle with politics to suit the genius of poetry. Poetry makes its escape, not merely from political, but from social strife ; and, having regained the calm regions of literary musing, says, in the words of Byron, — " Clear, placid Leman '. thy contrasted lake With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing That warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing, To waft me from distraction. Once I loved Torn ocean's roar ; but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet, as if a sister's voice reproved That I with stem delights should e'er have been so moved.' • Poetry is as the telescope, which discovers to us the beauties of the moon and stars ; politics more 10.2 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. resemble the microscope, whose purpose is to magnify the little things of earth, and to give them an importance not intrinsically their own. The political poet seems to reject the harp of Apollo, and to choose a jewVharp; his themes will not admit of poetry, however harmoniously he may handle them — just as a cleaver and marrow-bones cannot be called musical instru- ments, though you may strike out a tune with them. The poet's words are bees that make honey sweet as that of Hybla; the politician's more truly resemble the stings of those bees. Poets, in their proper sphere, may render much service to politicians, by supplying them with maxims for quotation; and thus Shakspeare is a great authority in the House of Commons. Poetry, which is of an abstract and ethereal nature, may be made of use to elevate the tone of politics; but not if the poet descend to the politician — he must keep ever above him. We have had poets who have integrated politics in their poetry, and have fared the worse for it. The Corn-law Rhymer is a noted instance. Who, on reading the title of his poems, " Corn-law Rhymes \" would not suppose that the Corn- laws were put into rhyming verse ? But, in fact, you might as well think of turning an Act of Parliament into a poem as of making poetry of LIFE OF EBENEZER F.LLICTT. 103 politics. According to a homely proverb — " You cannot make a silk-purse out of a soVs ear." " Corn-law Hymns \" — a still further desecration. But, luckily for literature, and for the fame of the poet, the Corn-law Rhymer has written much poetry that has nothing to do with politics, and this portion of his poetry will live and transmit his name to posterity. Elliott has, in fact, obtained a European reputation by his poetry for the poor. He is the most honest poet the poor ever had. Not like Burns, who was more a poor man than a poet of the poor. Not like Crabbe, who paints poverty sternly in its effects, and gives it a repulsive, not to say a disgusting, aspect, but who never shows us the cause ; who sometimes, indeed, wins our sympathy for the oppressed, but does not excite our indignation against the oppressor; who is the gaoler that shows us the criminal, but does not tell us that he who drove him to want and crime should be there in his stead. Not like Wordsworth, whose poor are inhabitants of the country — waiters upon Provi- dence — freed, in a great measure, by their rural situation from the effects of that system which in towns often drives the unfortunate victim, in spite of his own endeavours, to become the inmate of a prison, or a workhouse, or a lunatic asylum. Elliott was the true friend of the poor ; he loved 104 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. them because they were poor ; and he hated those who did not love them because they were poor. But general denunciations of the rich, or execrations of a system of government, or of society, serve not the cause of the poor. More is done when one victim is selected, in the manner of Sterne, and we are made to pity him, and desire, from very self-love, his relief or redress, and, in his, the general enfranchisement of his fellow- sufferers. Elliott is not deficient in this ; as, for instance, where he speaks of the poor woman who was compelled, by want, to sell her linnet, that had belonged to her dead brother, though its keep cost but a groat a-year ! and of the children who go about begging — " Till the stones of every street Know their little naked feet." God forbid that we should say that disagreeable truths are not to be spoken ! They ought to be the more repeated the more disagreeable they are, just as a wound is probed to prevent mortification. But let not poetry, which ought always to speak to the whole of mankind, aim to enlist our sym- pathies for party or political purposes — it is as if the poet volunteered to sing a song, and after- wards taxed us for listening to it. Poetry should leave politics to prose : for let us LIFE OF EBEXEZER ELLIOTT. 105 see what politics have done for poetry. Some- times the politics of a poet have recommended him to a partial and temporary notice, and some- times the reputation of the poet has done the same for his politics ; but men feel that there is no natural alliance between the two. In fact, the politician laughs at the poor poet. Politics have been as fatal to the poet as to his poetry. We do not recollect one successful political poet. Dryden is better remembered by his " Ode on Alexander's Feast " than by his political satires ; and Pope's " Abelard and Eloisa" shows more of the poet than even his moral satires. Swift's verses have got a keen, ironical edge, which makes them dry and cutting as a north-east wind in frosty weather ; but they are not poetry. Thom- son's " Liberty" is not relished like his " Seasons," though he thought it the finer poem; nor is Goldsmith's " Traveller" equal to his " Deserted Village." Butler is more a wit and a humorist than a poet. Canning was a political poet ; but the politician in him quite eclipsed the poet. His story of the " Needy Knife- Grinder," who had got no story to tell, is a good exemplification of what poetry can do in politics. Many of our minor poets have dabbled in politics ; but we need not enumerate them, as most of their names are to be found in the Dunciad. f3 106 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Poetry should ever be a peace-maker ; it mis- takes its mission when it becomes a stirrer-up of political strife. Its office is to still and soothe the angry passions to which politics give rise; and for this purpose it should use the tender lute, not the fierce trumpet. Poetry belongs to nature, which pursues its unvaried course with a calm indifference to the petty passions of men. Poetry is not a stormy petrel, but rather a halcyon, that loves to brood on a smooth surface, where its own painted image can be reflected, like Wordsworth's swan. When party politics run high, the still small voice of poetry is drowned ; and it is only when they are spent with their own vain fury, and a lull ensues, that the eternal chime can be heard, like the sound of a distant waterfall, which comes in between the pauses of a storm. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 107 CHAPTER V. ''THE VILLAGE PATRIARCH." " THE SPLENDID VILLAGE." "CORN-LAW HYMNS." The longest but not the best of Ebenezer Elliott's poems, is a The Village Patriarch." It can scarcely be called a poem — it is a string of poetic passages, each a little poem in itself, but which have little connexion with each other, except what Enoch Wray, the Village Patriarch, gives them by being made the peg on which this bundle of desultory descriptions and reflections hang, just as " Childe Harold " is introduced by Byron to give some de- gree of concatenation to the poet's musings. Har- vey's "Meditations," Young's "Night Thoughts," Wordsworth's " Excursion," are works of this kind. If we ask Enoch Wray for his story, he might reply with the "Needy Knife- Grinder" of Canning, " Story ? God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir." Was it that Elliott could not invent a story — could not create fictitious characters — could not contrive incidents — could only delineate or repre- sent, and could not embody or identify ? The poet says of his poem — u It is the incarnation of a 108 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. century." Had lie made old Enoch Wray relate to his sons, grandsons, great grandsons, and great great grandsons, unto the third and fourth genera- tion, his own life from infancy to youth, manhood, middle age, and old age, with all the changes that had happened in the political, social, and moral world in that century of time, then, indeed, an interesting, retrospective, biographical history might have been written. But Enoch Wray does not do this ; he does nothing and says nothing ; he is as dumb as blind — but he dreams a dream. Elliott's genius was too impulsive to submit to a regular plan ; but this very tendency to the indul- gence of wild self-will required all the more that he should have possessed the bridle-rein and guid- ing hand of art. His spur needed the curb. Unity of time, place, and action, there is none in his epic. It is divided into ten books ; and we need but give the contents of one of those books to show how desultory they are : — "BOOK III. — Contents : — Comparative Indepen- dence of Skilled Labour — Fine Sabbath morning — Sunday Stroll of the Townsmen — Coach-race — Misery and Misfortunes of the Poor — Congregation leaving the Village Church — Old Mansion — Country Youth working in the Town — Poacher of the Manufacturing Districts — Concluding Reflections." This is the true Pindaric style as ridiculed by Peter : " A cock — a bull — a soldier roasted." Some LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 109 of the paragraphs of this poem merit quotation. The following street scene might have furnished a subject for the pencil of Hogarth : — "Where draymen bawl, while rogues kick up a row ; And fishwives grin, while fopling fopling meets ; And milk-lad his rebellious donkey beats ; While dwarfish cripple shuffles to the wall ; And hopeless tradesman sneaks to alehouse mean ; And imps of beggary curse their dad, and squall For mammy's gin ; and matron poor and clean, With tearful eye, begs crust for lodger lean ; And famished weaver, with his children three, Sing hymns for bread ; and legless soldier, borne In dog-drawn car, imploreth charity ; And thief with steak from butcher runs forlorn ; And debtor bows, while banker smiles in scorn ; And landed pauper, in his coach-and-four, Bound to far countries from a realm betrayed, Scowls on the crowd, who curse the scoundrel's power, While coachee grins, and lofty lady's maid Turns up her nose at bread-tax-paying trade, Though master bilketh dun, and is in haste." He thus eulogises the town of which he was the bard : — "Ere Bedford's loaf or Erin's stye be thine, Cloud-rolling Sheffield ! want shall humble all. Town of the unbowed poor ! thou shalt not pine Like the fallen rustic, licensed Rapine's thrall, But first to rise wilt be the last to fall ! Slow are thy sons the pauper's trade to learn ; Though in the land that blossoms like the rose The English peasant and the Irish kerne Fight for potatoes, thy proud labourer knows Nor workhouse wages nor the exile's woes. Not yet thy bit of beef, thy pint of ale, Thy toil-strung heart which toil could ne'er dismay, 110 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Nor yet thy honest skilled right hand, shall fail; Last from thy hearths the poor man's pride shall stray, And still shall come thy well-paid Saturday, And still the morn of rest be near and sure." Head, and pity the poor post-horse : — "Oh, blessed Sabbath ! to the coach-horse thou Bringest no pause from daily toil. For him There is no day of l'est. The laws allow His ever-battered hoof, and anguished limb, Till, death-struck, flash his brain with dizzy swim. Lo, while his nostrils flame, and, torture-scored, Quivers his flank beneath the ruthless goad, Stretched on his neck, each vein swells like a cord ! Hark ! what a groan ! The mute pedestrian, awed, Stops, while the steed sinks on the reeling road, Murdered by hands that know not how to spare ! " But, thanks to science, what neither the Sabbath, nor the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nor Martin's Act could do, has been done to a great extent by the steam-engine. It may not be amiss to hear Elliott's summary of his contemporaries : — " Scott, whose invention is a magic loom ; Baillie, artificer of deathless dreams ; Moore, the Montgomery of the drawing-room ; Montgomery, the Moore of solemn themes ; Crabbe, whose dark gold is richer than it seems ; Keats, that sad name which time shall write in tears ; Poor Burns, the Scotchman, who was not a slave > Campbell, whom Freedom's deathles s Hope endears ; White, still remembered in his cruel grave ; Ill-fated Shelley, vainly great and brave ; Wordsworth, whose thoughts acquaint us with our own ; Didactic, earnest Cowper, grave and gay; Wild Southey, flying, like the hern, alone ; And dreamy Coleridge, of the wizard lay." LIFE OF EBENEZUR ELLIOTT. Ill THE GRINDER. "There draws the grinder his laborious breath ; There, coughing, at his deadly trade he bends. Born to die young, he fears nor man nor death ; Scorning the future, what he earns he spends. Debauch and Riot are his bosom friends. He plays the Tory sultan-like and well ; Woe to the traitor that dares disobey The Dey of Straps ! as rattened tools shall tell. Full many a lordly freak by night, by day, Illustrates gloriously his lawless sway. Behold his failings ! hath he virtues too ? He is no pauper, blackguard though he be. Full well he knows what minds combined can do ; Full well maintains his birthright — he is free. ! And, frown for frown, outstares Monopoly ! Yet Abraham and Elliot both in vain* Bid science on his cheek prolong the bloom. He will not live ! He seems in haste to gain The undisturbed asylum of the tomb, And, old at two-and-thirty, meets his doom ! " THE MOORS. " The moors — all hail ! Ye changeless, ye sublime, That seldom hear a voice save that of Heaven ! Scorners of chance, and fate, and death, and time. But not of Him whose viewless hand hath riven The chasm, through which the mountain-stream is driven ! How like a prostrate giant — not in sleep, But listening to his beating heart — ye lie ! With winds and clouds dread harmony ye keep ; Ye seem alone beneath the boundless sky : Ye speak, are mute — and there is no reply ! Here all is sapphire light and gloomy land, Blue, brilliant sky, above a sable sea Of hills, like chaos ere the first command, 1 Let there be light !' bade light and beauty be." * Mr. Abraham improved, it is said, and Mr. John Elliot in- vented, the grinder's preservative, which the grinders will not use. 112 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. OLD BLIND MAN. " Ye who can gaze on beauty-breathing day, And drink intoxication with your eyes, Compassionate the sightless on his way. With gloomy trepidation sympathise, When faithless snows the icy way disguise . With pity hear his faint and feeble call, With pity see his quivering lip and cheek — His grasping hands that try to catch the wall ; His wild, wide eyes, that helpless trouble speak ; His sliding feet ; his knees bent, trembling, weak ; His hatless locks, which frantic dread uprears ! The beauteous girl, too, trembles, and, in tears, Pale with her grandsire's fear, laments its cause." The redeeming points in the " Village Patriarch" are the bits of natural scenery which are every- where interspersed, and which, with their sunny smiles and fragrant beauty, are felt particu- larly refreshing after the sickening descriptions of town-misery with which the poem abounds. One great truth is told which we cannot refrain from quoting : — " Shall /, lost Britain, give the pest a name That, like a cancer, eats into thy core ? — Tis Avarice, hungry as devouring flame ; But, swallowing all, it hungers as before, While flame, its food exhausted, burns no more. O ye hardhearts that grind the poor, and crush Their honest pride, and drink their blood like wine, And eat their children's bread without a blush, Willing to wallow in your pomp, like swine, Why do ye wear the human form divine ? Can ye make men of brutes, contemned, enslaved ? LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 113 Can ye grow sweetness on the bitter rue ? Can ye restore the health of minds depraved ? And self-esteem in blighted hearts renew ? Why should souls die to feed such worms as you ?" There are also one or two episodes well worth extracting, particularly one of a widow whose cottage has been unroofed by a village satrap named Esra White, who detects her and her silly daughter re-roofing it, and assaults her, but is killed by the daughter. The mother is tried and hanged for this. Crabbe alone could have told the tale as Elliott tells it. But the best thing in the poem is Enoch Wray's dream, which is hor- rible as Dante's " Inferno." It begins with low, muttered tones of complaint, suddenly bursting into wrath and defiance, or into a crash of execra- tion and despair, and anon relapsing into melan- choly wailings, like the music of the organ or of the wind-harp, which unites all instruments in one ; or it resembles a torrent, " dashing or wind- ing," sometimes visible, sometimes not — some- times playful or prattling, at others murmuring or moaning, and at last leaping into an abysm — " Among rocks of jet, That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set." But, with the want of true taste that makes us sometimes regret that Elliott did not receive a classical education, he does not sustain himself, but, like Milton's fiend, creeps as well as flies, 114 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. steps from the sublime to tlie ridiculous, or falls into vulgarity and coarseness. He makes Enoch Wray go to tell his dream to an old snuff-taking gossip, named Alice Green, and the interview between the patriarch and the crone is the most successful instance of Elliott's attempts at humour. But the dream was not for such ears as hers ; " let him that hath ears to hear, hear it." In the preface to " The Village Patriarch" Elliott says, " I am called, as I expected to be, an unsuccessful imitator of the pauper-poetry of Wordsworth ; I might be truly called an unfortu- nate imitator of Crabbe." Byron styled Crabbe " Nature's sternest painter, and her best." I do not see how the sternest painter of Nature could be her best. Elliott is a better painter of nature, because more sympathetic. Crabbe was an ana- tomist who laid bare the bones, and muscles, and nerves of the body politic ; but feeling flies before him. He was an artist that used the stick end of his brush — a matter-of-fact poet, more head than heart. Being a clergyman, he was restrained from Elliott's freedom. He writes like a gaoler, or the keeper of an asylum, or a Poor-law guardian. His lines are cast, like cast-iron. There is nothing Utopian in him ; he is hard and literal, without mellowness of tint or tone. Crabbe enlightens the mind, but Elliott warms the heart. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 115 Crabbe possessed more knowledge of the world, and reasoned better, bnt felt less j Elliott is more eloquent, more oratorical. Crabbe was the phy- sician, the lawyer — Elliott the friend. What would have moved Crabbers feelings would have put Elliott in a passion. Satire in Crabbe would have been sarcasm in Elliott. Crabbe was formal and precise — a kind of dry crab-stick j Elliott was the crab-tree itself, growing. Neither of them made fiction real, nor idealised fiction ; they were literal transcribers, of the Dutch rather than Italian school ; or, shall we say, they were British to the bone. " The Splendid Village" is a more equal poem than " The Village Patriarch." It seems to chal- lenge a comparison with Goldsmith's " Deserted Village." Elliott is more powerful, but less pleas- ing; more sad, less sweet; more angry, less sor- rowful : more mad, less melancholy. The follow- ing passage, however, might have found a place in Goldsmith's poem : — " But me nor palaces nor satraps please ; I love to look on happy cottages. The gems I seek are seen in Virtue's eye ; These gauds disgust me, and I pass them by. Show me a home like that I knew of old, Ere heads grew hot with pride, and bosoms cold ; Some frank good deeds, which simple truth may praise ; Some moral grace on which the heart can gaze ; 116 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Some little hopes that give to toil its zest ; The equal rights that make the labourer blest ; The smile in which eternal love we scan, And thank his Maker while we look on man." It is worthy of remark, that the Corn- law Rhymer in this poem almost forgets his politics — is scarcely true to his creed as a manufacturer. His heart was homed in the country ; he had a father's fondness for flowers. Rural life won him from life in towns. He gave the preference to a farm over a factory — to a peasant over a mechanic ; in a word, to agriculture over trade. Yet his poli- tical principles, pushed to the extreme, would cause our villages to be deserted for towns, the plough for the loom or the forge, and England to become a workshop, where no green fields grow. He says, " Should we not be better without agri- culture altogether than bread-taxed as we are ? Should we not have cheaper bread, and more of it ? — higher profits and wages, that would purchase a larger quantity of food by at least one-third ?" Now that the bread-tax is taken off, the question is, Cannot something be done to enable farmers to grow corn as cheap as it may be imported from abroad, making allowance for freightage, &c. ? Farmers should scorn to ask for protection ; Fair play ! should be their cry. Rents should be lowered, in order that pomp and luxury should LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 117 not destroy skill and industry. The true political economist will legislate in favour of that interest which, makes the State most powerful ; but why should one have the preference over another? Cannot all live and let live ? Why must the world for ever be moved, like a watch, by contrary wheels? When the country was nothing but agricultural, it could not defend itself from the Roman conqueror, nor from the Saxon, nor from the Norman ; and who will say that it was not trade and commerce that kept Bonaparte from our shores? Had Parliament represented the manufacturing rather than the landed interest, America would not have been lost. What but commerce conquered for us in the East and West ? This is all very true ; and yet, what is England but the land ? Trade and commerce are birds of passage, and may migrate to other climes ; then what would preserve this country from sharing the fate of Venice — what but a well-supported landed interest ? Elliott certainly was no respecter of conventional life — he strips the tinsel off society, and lays bare its wretchedness. He shows things as they are, not as they should be or ought to be. In his Preface to the " Splendid Village," he says — " Only in a sinking land, a land of taxation without repre- sentation, of castes and Corn Bills, of degradation, 118 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. cant, and misery, of wretched poor and wretch- making rich ; where destruction grows like a weed, and where capital and skill are alike profitless, could such a poem as the ' Splendid Village' have been written or conceived." If Elliott truly showed the very age and body of his time, its form and pressure, it must be confessed that its features were hideous. Elliott did not only bring poetry and politics, dictated by patriotism and philanthropy, to aid in the cause of Free-trade — he also enlisted religion in its service. His " Corn-law Rhymes " derive an awful power from their pious character. Nor did he use the name of God as some of our poets do, merely to heighten the effect of his poetry. He was sincerely devout. No man more truly abhorred cant and hypocrisy. Doubtless, he deemed himself a practical Christian in his cru- sade, or holy war, against the Corn-laws. " Corn- law Rhymes " were followed by " Corn-law Hymns." He entertained sanguine hopes that they would be sung in churches ; but the Church of England would deem the very thought sacri- lege. Fitter that they should be sung in an unwalled temple, uncircumscribed by any roof save the floor of heaven. Elliott poured forth his whole soul in those orisons. His feelings as a father, a husband, a fellow-citizen, and, shall I add, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 119 as a tradesman, filled them with the fervour of his genius as a poet. The reader, if not a super- stitious bigot or fanatic, will judge for himself. CORN-LAW HYMNS. No. 4. " Father ! thy nation-girding seas Obey alike the storm and breeze To clasp us all in one embrace, Not sever wide our social race. " To feed, not famish, human kind, Was laboured land by thee designed ; To yield us food, not tax our bread, And libel thee with mouths unfed ! " Yet prosper they who curse the soil, Ordained to feed the sons of toil ! They who make pain of sun and rain, Of seas and winds a dungeon-chain ! " God of the poor ! shall labour eat, Or drones alone find living sweet ? Lo ! they who call thy earth their own Take all we have, and give a stone ! " They toil not, neither do they spin, But call us names of shame and sin ; Eat e'en our lives, our very graves ! And make our unborn children slaves !" No. 8. " Lord ! bid our palaced worms their vileness know ! Bleach them with famine till they earn their bread, And, taught by pain to feel a brother's woe, Marvel that honest labour toils unfed. " They never felt how vain it is to seek From bread-taxed trade its interdicted gain, How hard to toil from dreary week to week, And, ever labouring, labour still in vain. 120 LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. "They never heard their children's grim despair Cry, " Give us work, ere want and death prevail," Then seek in crime or in desponding prayer A refuge from the bread- tax- crowded gaol ; — " They never saw the matron's breaking heart Break slowly o'er her son's desponding sigh, Nor watched her hopeless mate, when glad to part From all he loved and left beneath the sky. " They heed not, though the widow wrings her hands Above her wo-worn husband's nameless grave, When her last boy departs for distant lands, Rather than live or die a bread-taxed slave. " But, Lord ! thou hearest when the sufferer cries ; Thou markest when the honest heart is rent , Thou heedest when the broken-hearted dies ; And thou wilt pardon — when thy foes repent. " Then let them kneel — oh ! not to us, but thee ; For judgment, Lord ! to thee alone belongs. But we are petrified with misery, And turned to marble by a life of wrongs." Believing, as Ebenezer Elliott did, that the Corn-laws were the cause of bankruptcies, of want of employment, of extinction of trade — that, indirectly, they occasioned famine, pestilence, and crime — peopling gaols, mad-houses, and work- houses with starved operatives and law-made widows and orphans — believing all this, nay, seeing it — having in his own person and family experienced some of these evils — who shall say that his hymns were not religious, that he was not a true Christian, following, not only the pre- cepts, but the very example, of Christ, who fed the LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 121 multitude before lie preached to them, and gave them bread, unbought, imtaxed. True that Elliott's " prayers were curses ;" but let those who did the wrong bear the blame. Strong con- victions were the basis of his strong expressions. He said, "Whoever does not oppose the Corn- law is a patron of want, national immorality, bankruptcy, child-murder, incendiary fires, mid- night assassination and anarchy. Therefore every supposed moral or religious man, every school- master, every teacher of religion especially, should oppose the Corn-law, or he cannot possibly be either moral or religious, and the Devil would be more fit to be a teacher than he/' Elliott justly considered that the ministers of religion were in duty bound, by their calling, to come forward and relieve him of his task — a stern task of soul not likely to meet its reward here. He feelingly alludes to the painfulness of his posi- tion in the following lines : — " But who will listen when the poor complain ? Who read or hear a tale of woe, if true ? Ill fares the friendless muse of want and pain. Fool ! wouldst thou prosper and be honest too ? Fool ! wouldst thou prosper ? Flatter those that do ! If, not unmindful of the all-shunned poor, Thou write on tablets frail their troubles deep, The proud, the vain will scorn thy theme obscure. What wilt thou earn, though lowly hearts may steep With tears the pasre in which their sorrows weep ?" 122 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Here he had found that honesty is not the best policy ; that to be good is not to be happy ; yet he was determined to be honest and good, because his feelings were unsophisticated and rung true to every touch of Nature. Fools who dote on folly and heed not the misery of others, knaves who regard their own interests only, these could not be shamed with the truth, though it is said to shame the Devil ; these endeavoured to shame the truth-teller by raising an outcry against him ; yet, like the moon in Scott's incomparable simile, Elliott steadily pursued his course through good report and bad report, more sorry for the ill reception of truth than of his own. His method of doing good was to war on those that do evil, though thereby he brought a host of foes upon himself more unscrupulous than he in their mode of warfare. What firmness was required in this man, who not only had to beat down the repugnance of his own nature, but to defend himself against the malice of those whom his virtue had provoked — without allies and beset with traitors ! Nothing could have saved him but the celestial armour of his cause. In the prologue to his "Corn Law Rhymes, 5 ' he says : — " For thee, my country ! thee, do I perform Sternly the duty of a man born free, Heedless though ass, and wolf, and venomous worm LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 123 Shake ears and fangs, with brandished bray, at me. Alone as Crusoe on the hostile sea, For thee, for us, for ours do I upraise The standard of my song ! for thine and mine I toll the knell of England's better days, And lift my hated voice that mine and thine May undegrade the human form divine. Perchance that voice, if heard, is heard too late : The buried dust of Tyre may wake and sway Re-conquered seas, but what shall renovate The dead-alive who dread no judgment-day — Souls whom the lust of gold hath turned to clay ? And what but scorn and slander will reward The rabble's poet and his honest song? Gambler for blanks ! thou play'st an idiot's card ; For, sure to fall, the weak attacks the strong. Aye ! but what strength is theirs whose might is based on wrong ?" Elliott had a soul tuned to excellence, yet was compelled to brood over misery — misery occa- sioned, not by his own sins, but by the sins of others — misery the more painful because absurd — misery inflicted on merit at the behest of wan- tonness. He might have sung, like the wild birds, to cheer himself, but that would have been mockery ; how could he enjoy the gladness of Nature while there was so much want and woe calling for sympathy and redress ? Pity that he could not have always breathed the mountain breeze — yea, have been the zephyr itself; but then he would have ceased to waft the fragrance of flowers, and gone, like the sigh of a Howard, to fan the cap- tive's cheek. Who does not lament that the world g2 124 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. would not allow this poet to realise his own aspira- tions as expressed in the following beautiful and touching passage ? — " Oh that my poesy were like the child That gathers daisies from the lap of May, With prattle sweeter than the bloomy wild ! It then might teach poor wisdom to be gay As flowers, and birds, and rivers, all at play, And winds that make the voiceless clouds of morn Harmonious. But, distempered, if not mad, I feed on Nature's bane, and mess with Scorn. I would not, could not if I would, be glad, But, like shade-loving plants, am happiest sad. My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarled With gloating on the ills I cannot cure. Like Arno's exiled bard, whose music snarled, I gird my loins to suffer and endure, And woo Contention, for her dower is sure." When we see what politics had done to the poetry of Elliott, well may we exclaim — " Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown, Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh !" " The British Government," says Elliott, " is the only one that ever legislated against the bread of its people." He would have made the whole world our harvest-field, that bread might be obtained as cheaply as possible. Tax anything but food. Famish not the poor. Fasting sorrow is the worst to bear. Make the poor pay a high price out of their hard earnings for bread, in order that the rich might enjoy their luxuries ! His feelings and understanding were outraged by these cruel and LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 125 absurd laws. A few privileged persons, by virtue of class legislation, had been enabled to procure a monopoly of the sale of food — the most oppressive of all monopolies — and their avarice had set Elliott his task to undo what they had done. He was the first man to found an Anti-Corn-law association. Strange as it may seem, considering how many thou- sands were concerned equally with liimself, he stood alone in this ; and much ridicule, much obloquy did he encounter. More distinguished men would not come forward till the road was cleared for them by humble pioneers like Elliott — till a party was organised for them to take the lead of. Some bowed to the existing law because it ivas law ; others attended to their business, and remunerated themselves for the bread-tax by selling their goods at a higher price, or by reducing the wages of then- workmen ; others supinely left the work to be done by the more zealous. Elliott complained of this. He said in the preface to the " Corn-law Hymns :" " The worst symptom of the malady which is preying on the vitals of the body politic is the apathy with which our first-class merchants and manufacturers, and, I may add, the base middle classes, generally regard the insane and suicidal power which, straining the cord that binds us to fatal competition with our best friends, converts customers into rivals." 126 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Not only at his desk, but in the lecture-room and on the hustings, did the indomitable Rhymer take up the subject of the Corn-laws. He spoke of nothing else in common conversation, and became almost a monomaniac, for — like poor Lear, who fancied, when he could no longer think, that ingratitude was the sole cause of all distress — Elliott imputed every evil under the sun to the Corn-laws. There is a remarkable instance of this in one of his poems, where, speaking of a man found dead in the mountains, Who knows, says he, but this was a victim of the Corn- laws? Such exaggeration proceeded from the frenzy of an enthusiast, but it was the language of one thoroughly in earnest. Persecution, as is generally the case, did but increase his zeal. He was charitably deemed mad by some — a rebel by others. The Attorney-General was instigated to prosecute him as a promoter of revolution, whereas he only foretold that keeping the Corn- laws would bring it on, and that the only way to prevent it was to repeal them. Fearful were the warnings which he uttered. u Can we compete for ever with un-bread-taxed rivals ? No ! Capital will go where it will pay ; skill will follow capital ; and our manufactories will at length stop, simul- taneously and for ever ! The immense camp of London will then be without pay ; the immense LIFE OF EBENEZEIl ELLIOTT. 127 ramp of Glasgow will be without pay ; the immense camp of the West Riding of Yorkshire will be without 'pay, and almost within shout of a still more multitudinous camp — that of Lancashire — also without pay ! And all this may happen, and if the Corn-laws remain much longer on the Statute-book, will happen ; perhaps in one and the same week, day, or hour \" Here was a man born for the time. Had Ebenezer Elliott not lived, it is quite possible that the Corn-laws would not have been repealed. And what was this man? Let not the reader suppose him a Wat Tyler or a William Tell. He has been described as a " burly ironmonger;" but nothing was farther from his per- sonal appearance. It may be supposed that he was the image of the smith in Goldsmith's " Village," who " Relaxed his ponderous strength and leaned to hear" — or one of those who, as Shakspeare expresses it, " gape and rub the elbow at the news of hurly- burly innovation." No. He who was chosen of God for this great work was a small man, of nervous temperament, weak in body, but possess- ing a soul like a good sword within an ill sheath. There is a miniature of him when he was about twenty-five. A more meek, quiet, boy-looking man never wore a white cravat, and prayed or preached in a conventicle, with light blue eyes and straight hair. Yet he was all energy of spirit, and 128 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. what he thought he should do, that he would do. He was endowed by nature with the feelings of an Indian or aboriginal — a man new made. His native honesty was kept pure and strong by his love of the country, which imparted all its pristine influences to him. Such a man could not but be susceptible of deep and tender emotions, and, indeed, his sympathies were continually vibrating with torture, like the strings of the iEolian harp in a rough wind, sending forth music that yelled with the shrill dissonance of anger or agony. We have seen that he expected from the reformed Parliament the repeal of the Corn-laws, but was disappointed. His advocacy of that measure had been purely for the sake of this ; he had no place to seek by displacing others, no power to gain, no personal ambition to gratify. His reasons were the cries of the oppressed for their rights where- with to prevent future wrong. Equally indignant and pitiful, his wrath drew its lightning from the cloud that contained the tear-drops of his pity. True, he might have remained at home at ease, and viewed the strife through " the loop-holes of retreat," but there would have been no peace for him at his own fireside while there was war without; he could not remain ingloriously in a safe harbour and see his brethren struggling at sea in the storm. Like Cowper's goldfinch, he had obtained his own LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 129 freedom, but then his fellow-prisoner remained behind. One of those gluts of prosperity which alternated with scarcity having prevented the parties most interested in a repeal of the Corn-laws from joining Elliott in his movement, and quiet to his quick soul being unendurable, he joined in the Chartist agitation which now sprung up, hoping from the Charter the accomplishment of his long-baffled desires. The working-classes had assisted the middle classes to obtain the Reform Bill, and got a New Poor Law for their pains. They now called on the middle classes to assist them to obtain the Charter, saying that they would exercise the fran- chise more fearlessly j but the answer of the middle classes was, " The Ballot/' The working- classes refused to agitate for this, as it would have proved of no benefit to them, and only have afforded the middle classes a cloak for their own interests. Thus a split took place between them, though a few individuals of the middle classes advocated the Charter on principle. Among these, Elliott was one of the foremost. As a delegate from Sheffield, he attended the great public meeting held for the Charter in Palace-yard, Westminster, in 1838. In 1837, when Chartism first sprung up, the people seemed entirely governed by principle and guided by experience, making former errors their g 3 130 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. beacons ; but their leaders were each actuated by some crotchet of his own, and sought popularity for selfish ends. Attwood, a banker, wished an alteration in the currency ; Oastler and Stephens, men living in the manufacturing districts, sought the restriction of factory labour ; Eeargus O'Con- nor had got a land lottery in view. Elliott only was a sincere Chartist and Corn-law Repealer, till, under the insane guidance of O'Connor, the Chartists were made to repudiate Corn-law Repeal, and were put in antagonism against it ; then Elliott withdrew his name from the association, and wrote the following letter : — "TO THE SECRETARY OP THE SHEFFIELD WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION. " Can't your enemies starve you fast enough ? If they can, why do you seek to get yourselves butchered like sheep ? The Convention, by defending monopoly and advocating physical force, are fighting the battle of the aristocracy under the people's colours — a battle ultimately for self-destruction, and which these magnificent wretches are well able to fight for themselves without your assist- ance. I learn, from the newspaper of Saturday last, that your representatives in the Convention (with the concur- rence of your own men) are about to send deputies into the country to advocate the starvation laws ! Of those laws you will very soon have quite enough ; and so, thank God ! will their authors. If you like such laws, what use do you intend to make of the franchise when ob- tained ? I have no wish to force rny opinions on you. No ; you will soon be starved to your heart's content, for we shall not long have to wait. But, in the meantime, it must not be supposed that J am one of a body of men LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 131 who are willing to be represented by persons capable of supporting such barbarous legislation. If, then, my name is on your list of members, please erase it; and oblige your fellow-townsman, " Ebenezer Elliott. " Sheffield, May 6", 1839." Elliott now turned his sole attention to his favourite measure again, and with better auspices, for now the middle classes began to move in right earnest. Cobden, Blight, Fox, and others took up the banners of Repeal, and carried them, like the fiery cross of the Highlanders, throughout the country. Funds were raised for sending Repeal members to Parliament. The war of the League commenced, and was carried on with the spirit of the Protestants under Henry of Navarre. An un- expected ally, like Blucher at Waterloo, turned the scale of victory, and the odious law was for ever blotted from the Statute-book of the realm. Sir Robert Peel was the statesman of cheap bread — a cautious politician, who seemed ever to act as if he thought that Government should be a drag upon the will of the people, to prevent them being too precipitate ; but who, when the moment arrived for taking off that drag, immediately sunk the poli- tician in the patriot, and became a philosophic statesman, whose name will stand high in history as the emancipator of the Roman Catholics, the enactor of the Reform Bill, and the great repealer of the Corn-laws. 132 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. CHAPTER VI. CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE EDITOR'S VISIT TO EBENEZEE ELLIOTT, AT UPPERTHORPE, NEAR SHEFFIELD. A short period previous to the events which I have anticipated in the latter end of the last chapter, I became acquainted with Ebenezer Elliott. I had heard by common rumour his name, and that he was a poet famed for uttering what he thought, and for thinking freely. Having published a volume of lay sermons, I dedicated them to him as follows : — " To Ebenezer Elliott, author of ' Corn- law Rhymes/ this volume is dedicated by an un- known admirer of an honest man." Some time afterwards I wrote to him, requesting him to write me a prologue for a play entitled "Wat Tyler." He answered as follows : — EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. "Sheffield, 2\st January, 1836. " Dear Sir, — I thank you for your favour of yesterday, and for dedicating your lay sermons to me. If you will give me the title of them, I will order my bookseller to procure them for me. I will try to write you a prologue, on this condition, that, if you should not like it, it shall be rejected by you, and not printed ; for, as I never yet could execute successfully a prescribed task, it is more LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 133 than probable that I shall fail. If you wish to be useful, I would, for many reasons, advise you not to write plays. The highest success is impossible ; for who can equal Shak- speare? Theatricals are going down, and cannot get up unless a truly patriotic Government would adopt the theatre as the most powerful of state engines, which is not likely to happen in my time. Let no honest man expect any success with the theatres — besides, we have a censorship. If you can write an opera, with nothing in it, you may put money in your purse, but you will not serve the people. I have had disastrous dramatic experience, having written, before I was twenty- five, three rejected dramas, one of which is published in my third volume ; its title is ' Taurassdes.' I am decidedly of opinion that the very best and only remunerative vehicle of a patriot-poet's opinions is the novel. I am, in haste, dear sir, Yours, very truly, "Ebenezer Elliott. " P.S. But though I advise you not to write plays, I shall be happy to read your play, if you think me worthy ; but I have very little time, Sunday being my only day for reading, writing, and out-of-door exercise. The " Westminster Review" is my favourite book, but so little leisure have I that I seldom get through it in less than six weeks. " Do not address me Esquire. I have been a hard- working man all my life, and am now a humble trades- man with a very large family to maintain, and so they call me a big man, because we cannot get into a very small house. Surely I should read Scott's works. I have not yet read them, and I believe I never shall, unless God send me a slow death, and I read them during my last illness." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, 24th February, 1836. " Dear Sir, — You have dedicated to me one of the most beautiful little books I ever read. The first sermon is a fine poem ; all the better for being in prose, and such 134 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. prose ! With the exception of a few passages in Rous- seau, I scarcely remember to have read anything finer or more eloquent. " In ' Wat Tyler' you have resolutely thrown away a triumph. Instead of idealising you have vulgarised your hero, as it seems to me, to exemplify a theory which I believe to be false, and which is still more lamentable if true. Wat Tyler and his followers, while successful,. committed much fewer crimes than their betters were ever known to commit when victorious. Had he wanted moderation, he would have refused the conference, or have said, ' Get thee behind me !' Moderate rebels are almost always hanged, drawn, and quartered. Confound your blank verse — not because it is bad, for it is just the reverse — but because your prose is infinitely better. Your best characters are John Ball (why have you not given him something more to do?) and Jack Straw ; the latter is Shaksperian, and the epilogue is capitally ima- gined. How came one-childed Smith to be so very poor ? In those days he could easily have lived by deer-stealing, and you might have connected a trespass of that kind with the oppressive forest-laws. The parents part with their child too easily. But I must return to the master -fault of your drama. If I possessed a tithe of the dramatic power exhibited in every page of your prose dialogue, I would myself write a play on the story of W T at Tyler— although I have perpetrated about half a dozen dramatic failures already — that I might snatch it from hands that most perversely mil not be worthy of it. You give no sufficient reason for the sudden change for the worse in your hero, and it is quite incompatible with the good things he is made to say and do. Your mind being more intellectual than imaginative, it is strange that you should be deficient in constructive power. If you must needs put royal blood into your hero's veins, let his mother, in a powerful scene, reveal his birth to him, and afterwards, in her proud weakness, urge him to marry royalty. You may then bring before us the struggle of duty, ambition, and love, and, giving the triumph to his LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 135 better nature, suffer him to die, as he undoubtedly did, by treachery, and while uttering, perhaps, words meet for eternity. No man would have acted as Walworth did, had he not been aware that Tyler was betrayed ; and malice, you know, is even now commonly — and in those times was always — the historian of unsuccessful rebellions. Read the life of Hofer, and then revise or re-write the 4th and 5th' acts. " I am much struck with the excellence of your prose, and yet I suspect you are, like me, self-taught, despite your Latin. I, who never could learn a single rule of grammar, have more than once quoted (from a book of mottoes) both Latin and Greek, knowing, perhaps, as much about them as some of the learned seem to do of English" The working-men of Whitby having called on me to come forward and be their advocate,, I accepted their call, after having in vain referred tliem to one or two more distinguished reformers in the town. I proceeded to organise them as a branch of the National Charter Association. For this purpose I was desirous to obtain more infor- mation than an obscure local district could afford, and I resolved to visit my friend Elliott. I had also hopes that my play of " Wat Tyler " would be brought out at the Sheffield theatre. After a ride of 100 miles, on a cold, clear, frosty day in December, 1838, I arrived at Sheffield, much pleased with my journey's end and the warm welcome of a good fire in an inn. Next day I called upon a friend who took me through the town and showed me the country round. The 136 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. chief objects of attraction are the manufactories and show-rooms of cutlery, which are rendered doubly interesting by the civility and intelligence of those employed in them. But what chiefly in- terested me was the poet. The first time I saw this remarkable man he was coming out of a book- seller's shop in the neighbourhood of his own business-premises, in Gibraltar- street, for he had removed from Burgess-street. I immediately re- cognised him by the portrait in his works, pub- lished in three volumes, by Steill, of Paternoster- row, though he looked older and yet better. I followed him into his premises, but though I was not a minute behind him, he had gone out again. I was desired by a tall young man, his son and foreman, to sit down and wait his return, which, he said, would not be long first. I accordingly took a seat in the counting-house, a dingy place, up a flight of wood stairs, proper enough for the business of an iron and steel merchant, but giving no indi- cations of the poet, and, with the exception of a newspaper and a franked letter or two, none of the politician. I was with difficulty reconciling my previous impressions of Elliott from his poetry with the scene around, when the poet himself made his appearance ; a man rather under the middle size, slightly formed, with features marked by the small-pox, a light blue eye, eye-brows very shaggy, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 137 thick grey hair, and long upper lip; his looks were expressive of one "frenzied by disease or woe/' as Byron says of Rousseau, but sometimes a smile like a wintry sun- bean lit up the habitual sadness of Ins countenance. I rose on his entrance and shook hands with him, telhng him my name. On resuming my seat, I said I had come from Whitby to see him. He seemed now to recollect me, and shook hands with me again, more warmly than at first, saying he had read my little book and liked it exceedingly. I am a bad hand at introducing myself, and so, by way of giving a bet- ter colour to my visit than that of mere curiosity, I told him my errand to Sheffield. He said he would take me to the Secretary of the Working-Men's Association, but proposed a walk in the meanwhile, asking me if I was a good walker. I told him I should not tire if I had him for a companion. He led the way, talking as he went on various subjects, among which the Corn-laws were the most pro- minent. His words on this topic sounded some- what mystical to me, and, indeed, he complained he could not get people to see the evil clearly as he did. He said if he had known the French language he would retire to France to avoid the coming revolution, for the sake of his children. I thought it strange that one whose writings seemed calcu- lated to excite the people to a revolution should talk in this manner ; but I endeavoured to dispel 138 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. his forebodings, and as for his children, I said, the world would have a good feeling towards them for his sake, and when he was gone that feeling would grow stronger. I told him of the ferocious idea which those who did not know him enter- tained of him from his writings ; he smiled at this, and said—" I would not hurt a fly, not even if it stung me." He said competition was ruining trade, and when trade was gone England would go. He spoke of his family, saying he had two sons in the Church ; it was not a trade that he would have chosen for them. We met a poor man dirty and drunken. Elliott exchanged a nod with him ; he told me that that man had been a fellow- workman of his in his younger days ; he said that he himself was once a sad drunken dog, but that he had got a taste for botany, which led him into the fields, and poetry followed. I could not but give the glory to literature that had made such a difference. We reached a wood with pathways through it — he lamented that, being winter, everything appeared to disadvantage, and a mist which hung over the scene prevented a distant view. He pointed out the scene of "The Ranter," which first made him popular as a poet. He had taken a Sabbath walk with his children, when he saw a preacher holding forth in the open air. The scene struck his fancy ; and, shifting the venue to Shire- LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 139 cliff e, he had painted the view as in his poem. He pointed ont a tree, into which he had climbed to obtain a better view, and which he had distin- guished by driving a nail into it. Sheffield was hid by its smoke; but a diversified prospect lay before us. There was Loxley, where he had pur- chased a piece of land for a burial-ground. We returned by a different route. His chief talk was still about the Corn-laws, which seemed ever uppermost in his mind. I was told by a friend of his that, on every occasion, when speaking in public, whatever might be the object of the meet- ing, he invariably brought it to this complexion at last ; and when cries of " Question, question," arose, he replied, " I am coming to the question ; this is the question ; for without bread we cannot live : all questions depend on this !" But we had some literary talk in spite of the Corn-laws. He spoke of Scott, and likened him to Shakspeare. He said Scott's ruin was owing to his receiving paper money for his works and paying gold for his land- Byron being mentioned, I said that he was morbidly sensitive. He denied this, and said that Byron's mind was naturally healthy, but that, born and bred as he was, it was a wonder he was not a much worse man. We returned to Sheffield. A fox-coloured terrier which accompanied us waited with me in the street, while he went into the bank. 140 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. He took me to the Mechanics' Institute, where I heard him argue in a very tolerant humour with one who differed from him, as if seeking to gain a point for the other rather than for himself. He left me here, after telling me to call at his ware- house and he would give me a letter to the Sheaf- works. I availed myself of this, and saw the process of iron from the raw material to the finished razor. Also his son showed me their process of converting iron into steel in the furnace. He invited me to come on the following Sunday, and spend the day with him at his house at Upperthorpe ; but I was engaged to go to Castleton on that day — so he appointed Saturday, and said he would have a walk up the Rivilin, his favourite valley, and the scene of many of his poems. I accordingly went, and found his dwelling- house at Upperthorpe from his description of it — a neat stone building with a slated roof, standing on an eminence in the midst of a large garden that was surrounded with a wall. The postern-door was left open for me, and he himself opened the front- door of his dwelling, and ushered me into a breakfast-parlour which had two windows, com- manding different prospects. The room was gen- teelly furnished. The first thing that struck me was a portrait, in oil, of himself, which, though a likeness, I did not much admire, because it LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 141 rather caricatured him. His wife told me it was taken during the agitation for the Reform Bill, and that might account for its wild look. There was another picture, a better one, that of his son William, who had died of consumption, well painted, and very life-like, especially about the eyes. There was also a bust of himself, with rather a ludicrous expression, which was increased by a woman's cap that had been placed, either by accident or design, on its head. On the mantel- piece stood a full-length small figure of Scott, and an extract from Channing, " On the Reasonable- ness of Christianity," written in his own bold hand, and framed. A few books lay on a table with Sowerby's " Botany," which he told me first made him a poet. After breakfast we sallied forth, and took our course up a hill, till the vale of the Rivilin opened to our view, which he described with the eye of a painter. The mills on the stream, and the weirs belonging to them, made a succession of beautiful landscapes. We looked in at one of those mills, and saw an old man of thirty, a grinder. He said they seldom reached forty, yet would not use the grinder's life-preserver, because, if they prolonged their lives, there would not be work for them all, and they preferred to die of the disease rather than of starvation. The poet was now at home — he 142 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. pointed out the little pink buds on the firs, and seemed to be acquainted with every tree and flower, speaking of them as of personal friends. We walked about five miles up the valley, till we came to a streamlet which he had christened Bibbledin, from the music of its waters as it flowed. We came to a little waterfall at the head. He said it was Nature's boudoir; and, indeed, it might have served for a fountain for Diana. After crossing the stream on bridges of fallen trees, and remarking the great age of the hollies, we clambered, with some difficulty, which he made light of, up a rocky ascent, and returned by the moors, first sitting down on a large grey rock to partake of luncheon. Our drink was a flask of home-made wine, concocted from the fruits in his own garden, and racy enough. In listening to his talk, I almost forgot the scenery, till we reached a point where a circumference of landscape was visible, which we stood to admire. We arrived at his house with a good appetite for dinner; after which we resumed our table-talk over a bottle of claret. He said he was very sorry to hear a man like me speak ill of Byron. I told him there was no poetry that satisfied my mind more fully than his, but maintained my Opinion of the man; for, being a public man, I said, he was all the more bound to lead a LIFE OF EBEXEZER ELLIOTT. 148 private life. Mrs. Elliott joined me. He got up, and said he would leave us two to tear him to pieces. He had once seen Byron, he said, in a bank at Sheffield, and thought that the noble poet looked at him with a sneer ; for it was a time, he said, when I was in great distress ! He likened Byron's complexion to a marble bust. I had now an opportunity of studying him more closely. When I had first seen him at his ware- house, he was dressed in a suit befitting the place, but now his appearance was that of the gentleman. He wore a black surtout with a velvet collar, and bore eye-glasses suspended with a ribbon. He walked with a rather jaunty air, or with a slight swing of the body from side to side, as one desirous to appear younger than he really was, though he did not disguise that he was fifty-eight. He was somewhat nervous, and had got an idea that he would not live long; indeed, he said he had been dying four years of consumption. His general look expressed a kind of severe benignity. His head was not what phrenologists would term a good one ; it was small, and of an oval shape, but his forehead was neither high nor broad. He said his wife was his critic. Her familiarly affectionate manner of addressing him as Ebby, or Eh, sounded rather oddly in my ears. He could not write, he 144 LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. said, unless he was warm and comfortable, and generally sat near the oven, which was his muse. He generally walked about while he talked ; stopping when uttering anything particular. His voice was deep and solemn, and had a kind of dying fall. No one could read his poetry like himself. It was as if he was reading Scripture with all the fervour and unction, but, at the same time, some of the monotony, of a zealous preacher. In reciting he was very vehement. He startled me with a passage from his speech at Palace-yard. " They poisoned Socrates — they crucified Jesus — and they are starving you !" The climax he delivered with all the force of his stentorian lungs. It was his constant habit to disparage himself, and to speak in a tone of hyperbole of the merits of others. Thus he said, " I have one of the poorest intellects that God ever made. I have no mind. I cannot create. I wish I could write like you; your prose is perfect. If I were to read your play to you I would make you wonder at 'the merit of it \" On giving him a few M.S. verses to read, he said, " They were beautiful as an expression of the writer's feelings, but were not poetry." I asked what was poetry? And he answered, " It is the heart speaking to itself \" He said, if you wish to know what human LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 145 nature is, you should solicit subscriptions for a poem. He had done so, and one man said, " D — n you ! Why don't you write something a gentleman can read ?" Another, " Well, I sup- pose I must patronise your vanity, or what you please to call it I" We talked of dramatic writing, and of the condensation it required, which makes it so difficult. He said, he had made several attempts, but failed, because he could not go out of himself; that Byron failed for the same reason ; and that Scott, though his novels were dramatic, could not write a good play. He sang, " Ye Banks and Braes o' bonny Doon," and then recited it, to show the difference, saying that the artificiality of singing spoiled the effect of a simple and natural piece of writing. In his conversation, as in his writings, he was ever recurring to the one dear thought, which he kept thinking over almost to madness. He said, " If a man were to be tried for the murder of my father, and I were on the jury, when asked for my verdict I would say, Place the Marquis of Chandos at the bar instead of the prisoner ; for I can prove him guilty of this murder; the Corn-laws are the cause of all the crime that is committed." I rather stood up for agriculturists, and said they were a useful class of men, who ought to live. He said, if they could not live by that trade they ought to choose 146 LIFE OF EBENEZEK ELLIOTT, another ; they ought not to live by robbing and murdering the manufacturers. I mentioned Iris fellow-townsman Montgomery, and said that, although a Whig, the Tories had pensioned him. Elliott said, he had been offered a pension at the same time, but had refused. He said he cared not a straw for money, except for his children, whom he wished to render indepen- dent, because poverty is a crime in this country. His youngest daughter laid on her mother's lap, a shy timid girl, more fit to be a flower-gatherer than to encounter the trials of the world. His eldest daughter joined us at tea, but retired as soon as it was over ; and I heard no more of her except in a tune from a piano in another room. When I came away it was late in the evening, and the stars shone brightly. He accompanied me through his garden. I quoted that line in Byron — " Ye stars that are the poetry of heaven !" I said I had heard some one remark that he could see no sense in it. Elliott, with a slight smile, replied, you should have said to him — " Ye plums that are the poetry of pudding !" We parted with mutual expressions of goodwill, which, on his part, took a paternal, and on mine a filial tone. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 147 Two anecdotes which I heard of him may serve to indicate the fearless self-will of his character. He had taken a pipe of wine from a merchant, in liquidation of a debt. The merchant's creditors requested the wine to be given up, and employed a solicitor to write to him about it. The cholera was then raging, and he returned for answer, " If you were all dying of the cholera, and one drop of that wine would save your lives, you should not have it \" It was his custom, when speaking in public, to hold a card in his hand, on which he had written the heads of his address. Getting up on one occasion, putting on his spectacles, and taking out his card, a person in the meeting said, " He's going to read his speech \" Elliott glanced with ineffable disdain at this person, and said, " Do you think I am such a fool as you — to come here and not know what I am going to say?" I returned to Whitby, wearing a political medal which Elliott had given me. I proceeded to advocate the principles of the Charter; but the current of persecution set in under a Whig Government, and I was arrested and committed to prison, to be tried for sedition. Lord Nor- manby, then Secretary of State, interfered, how- ever, on my behalf, and released me from the gripe of the panic-stricken magistrates. Having h2 148 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLTOTT. consulted my friend Elliott on my situation, I received the following letter from him : — EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, 9th November, 1839. " Dear Sir, — -I duly received both your letters, and have long been impatient to answer the first of them, dated so long ago as the 25th March last ; but, postage being a heavy tax, my wish was to send with my letter a copy of the new edition of my poems, which I find is delayed another month. I wish time may confirm your high opinion of the merit of my poems, for, in that case, men [of inferior natural powers will learn from my example the probability of supplying the want of genius by earnest well-directed industry and single-heartedness, and perhaps they will do so, for, as you can yourself write well, you ought to be a sound critic. I read your Sermons aloud on Sunday last, instead of taking a long walk, the day here being rainy ; and I can assure you that reading aloud is no bad substitute for out-door exercise, if the latter cannot be had. " I scarcely know how to answer your last letter. It would grieve me to hurt your feelings, yet, on again reading the letter, I am still, like Shakspeare's Moor, w perplexed in the extreme.' The conduct of the Chartists, in listening to no advice but that of their worst foes, has convinced me that it would be wrong to concede universal suffrage, except through the educational franchise, which, offering a premium for education, would ultimately, and soon enough, be universal suffrage. But when I find you— a man not only well-educated, but of strong natural powers of mind — making an idol of a person who must be weak, or wicked, or both, I almost doubt whether any form of government will ever avert from society its hitherto constantly-recurring evils of legislation. It is true, I praised your god in Pal ace -yard. But what did I say of him ? ' That he has a brazen face, a loud voice, and a big bread-basket,' which, as Lillibullero says, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 149 1 nobody can deny.' The words I used, quoted from Homer, were the following : — ' But when the deep and mellow bass breaks forth from his broad breast, the breath of all is hushed, all listen, all are still.' Yes, my friend, the aristocracy know how to choose their advo- cates ; and it will turn out, I fear, that certain sham radical newspapers have been established, and certain Chartist leaders paid, to prevent the workmen from seeing the Corn-laws. I do not wish, as you suppose, ' to postpone the franchise to the Corn-laws.' But what can the Chartists want the franchise for, if not to get rid of such evils '? The truth, however, is, that they have efficiently supported them, and that this is all they have done. Had they been fit to exercise the franchise, they would have made the Corn-laws their pivot. " I find nothiag in your lecture except the word 1 fight' that can even be considered improper. But, as you have honestly got into a scrape, I trust you will not think of getting out of it by any improper submission. Why not plead your own cause? You may carry a half-hours speech on a three -inch card, memorandummed on both sides ; and a card twice as large would hold your notes of reply, with which, of course, you would precede your prepared speech. This is what, I think, I should do in your place." I had some thoughts of writing a History of Chartism, and wrote to him to speak for me to his publisher, Mr. Tait, on the subject. EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, 24th January, 1840. " Dear Sir, — I have by this post told Tait all I know about you, and that I think you will write a good History of Chartism, if you avoid the partisan's fault — diffusion. A more awful and important subject no author could desire. " Nothing can be less dramatic than your no Corn-law 150 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. epilogue — a manifest after-thought — to your New Poor- law drama. I read the play instantly on its arrival ; but we have not yet read it in divan ; something or other has always put us off; but by-and-bye you shall have our opinion. Up to a certain point you are excellent, as in Wat. " I am much indebted to you for thinking of me. Pray excuse me, for I can hardly hold the pen, having been bed-rid for nearly three days with the rheumatism." As he was retiring from business, he was desirous of purchasing a house — the one he dwelt in at Upperthorpe not being his own. I had hopes of getting him for a neighbour, and invited him to Aislaby to look at a house that was for sale. EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, 25th May, 1840. " Dear Sir, — I think you may conclude that I shall not come over to Aislaby, though I very much wish to see the property; but my son being ill, I am a sort of prisoner here. Without a strong motive, it would be wrong to leave my affairs in the hands of mere work- men, and I should be justly blamed for so doing. I have, however, ordered the newspaper which contains the advertisement, and, if I get it, may decide to come. You do not say of what tenure the property is. u There are some expressions in your last letter which I do not like. You say, you thought your drama ' too homely.' Why? Have you forgotten ' Margaret/ in Goethe's Faust ? or Crabbe's ' Ruth ?' " Alluding, I suppose, to the physical-force leaders — tools of the aristocracy — you complain (if I understand you) of having been misled. Did Napoleon place him- self at the top of things by doing what others bade him do ? When Danton organised forty -four thousand unions in France, was he obeying his enemies ? LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 151 " You do not seem to be aware that every proprietor of a magazine employs a critic of his own. On sending a critique you are opposing his man of affairs ; and Tait's man, I am told, is one of the cleverest that ever wore petticoats. ' A Iways keep thick with the lasses! " One of Elliott's young friends, whom he most liked, with whom he walked and talked the most, was Francis Fisher, the son of William Fisher, Esq., of Sheffield, a friendly and ingenious youth, whom the world lost early. Through the kindness of his father, I am enabled to place Elliott's cor- respondence with this amiable and talented young man before the reader. EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. "Sheffield, 26th May, 1840. "Dear Sir. — Wishing to make two kindred minds acquainted with each other, I send you a book, which you will read (twice, perhaps), and then carefully return to me. It is a friend that I cannot afford to lose. When I despair of human nature I read this litttle book. The author *is John Watkins, Esq., of Aislaby Hall, near Whitby, a lover of the beautiful, a hater of oppres- sion — a man who looks on suffering -with the eyes of the heart. " I am, dear Sir, " Yours very truly, " Ebenezer Elliott.'' francis fisher to john watkins. "Bank-street, Sheffield, \%th June, 1840. " Dear Sir, — A few weeks ago, our mutual friend, Mr. Ebenezer Elliott, sent for my perusal a small volume of lay sermons, by yourself, thinking that I, a lay preacher, should have pleasure in reading the 152 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. productions of a ' kindred spirit' I have since read and re-read each sermon with such delight, and, I trust, heart-benefit, that I cannot restrain myself from thanking you, who have spoken to me with the power and weight of a mind deeply imbued with a sense of human duty and responsibility. I often regret that the vices you so justly reprobate and expose are so little treated of by preachers in general. They are the stain and reproach of the age and of human nature. Most rightly do you denounce the fastidious taste which leads men to be 'more shocked at the mention of crimes than at per- petrating them.' Much of the misery that exists in society flows from the unrestrained licentiousness which sacrifices thought and feeling at the shrine of brute passion. " Mankind are fed with the frothy food of sectarian theology instead of the true bread of life, which came down from heaven in the moral teachings of Christ. Your volumes contain this bread in abundance. I hope they have had an extensive sale, for great and salutary will be their influence on every well-regulated mind and feeling heart. " Accept my grateful thanks for elevating my opinion of our common humanity, and believe me to remain, your brother in soul, " Francis Fisher." JOHN WATKINS TO FRANCIS FISHER. " Aislaby, near Whitby, June 20, 1840. "Dear Sir, — The circumstance of receiving a note from a friend of Mr. Elliott gave me more pleasure than the praise of myself which it contains. Neverthe- less, I highly value praise when it proceeds from one evidently sincere, and of good understanding. Such praise is true fame : would I were more worthy of it ! " I am sorry to say I am not the man I was when I wrote the sermons you have read. The wear and tear I have suffered in the world has somewhat sophisticated me, although I frequently endeavour to wash the dust off my heart by laving it with nature's baptism. I gave LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 153 those sermons to the public with a pledge, that such as they were such would I be ; but I dare not read them now — they would make me ashamed, not so much of them as of myself. You are right in saying that much of the misery in society results from the vice of individuals. " ' How small of all that human hearts endm-e, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure !' So says Goldsmith, though he partly contradicts him- self in the same poem by saying : — " ' Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw — Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.' " The truth is, the example of the higher classes is too readily followed by the lower, who cannot so readily exonerate themselves from the effects. One sins with more impunity than the other. The splendour and selfishness of the rich deludes and destroys the poor. Education is what is most wanted. Israel must first know before it will consider ; and consideration is the angel that ' must whip the offending Adam out of us.' " Books not calculated to please a false appetite are seldom popular. He who publishes Truth throws down a gage to the world, which will not accept the challenge, but falls foul on the author. The ill opinion expressed of my sermons by 'good kind of people,' and the ill-will they bore me for writing them, made me deem the volume unworthy to have been dedicated to Ebenezer Elliott ; but his good opinion of it, now con- firmed by yours, will occasion me to think better of it — at least to thank it for having obtained for me the friend- ship of two men whose suffrages must outweigh a whole host of others. Thanking you for the evidence which your note affords me that I possess some degree of use- fulness, " I remain, dear Sir, " Your fellow Pilgrim, "John Watkins. " P.S. Forgive this note." h 3 154 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. "Sheffield, 18^ May, 1840. " Dear Sir, — How could you imagine you had dis- gusted me ? Anything but that. I owe you an apology. I have been much to blame ; but I will state the facts. Having read your ' Yorkshire Tragedy,' I thought it such an impressive commentary on the time, that I determined it should be heard by some friends, par- ticularly John Fowler, secretary of our Mechanics' Institution, an enthusiast in theatricals and a good dra- matic critic ; but circumstances, some of them of a very painful nature, prevented the parties from meeting. I still wish this had been otherwise. But on receipt of your letter of the 13th instant, I determined to read the play to such members of my family as might be present, which I yesterday did. Mrs. Elliott thinks you must have suppressed two acts, cutting down a five -act play into three acts, and withholding from the audience information essential to the due understanding of the story. She agrees with me that it might easily be made a most interesting and instructive composition. As it is, I would give all my writings to be the author of it ; for though I could not have written it, I possess the powers which would enable me to make it what it ought to be. If you perfect it, you must study proba- bilities in little matters. Read Crabbe and Wallenstein, and study Schiller's characters of Gustave Wrangel, Butler, Octavio Piccolomini, &c. The facility with which Manless exhibits his baseness in the first act is unnatural even in a mother-spoiled lord. The truth is, such persons are prone to hide their baseness even from themselves under assumed motives. Exaggerate nothing ; there is no need. The catastrophe will be sufficiently dismal if James and his dame survive to attend the funeral. But if James must die, warn the audience that he is in a dying state, instead of suddenly killing him first. By no means forget the inquest. You could draw a good Conservative coroner ; and (if LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. ] 55 you are determined to haul the Corn-laws intu your New Poor Law drama) you may put into the mouths of the witnesses Manless, Stockton, Nodd, and Bluefly the actual words of Lord Richmond, Yarmouth, Darlington, &c. Show the audience distinctly that John is trans- ported — that Mary has born twins ; let them see her heroic struggles to avoid the workhouse, her begging at the hall of Manless ; and to account for so poor a person having poison in her possession, let them know that she has long meditated suicide, and that she steals in the forlorn hope of avoiding the more horrible catastrophe. All this should be done in action. Are you not aware that single speeches are as heavy on the stage as narra- tive itself? Besides, he who could draw the characters of Nodd, Stockton, and the two Bluefiies, need not resort to the idle trick of soliloquy. Is it usual, in your neighbourhood, for the children of the poor to remain unweaned till they are old enough to go a begging? What is the clap-trap of the poisoned suck worth? Less than nothing. Do not be in a hurry to get your play acted or printed. All its faults, I suspect, are the results of constitutional indolence in you ; but if so, you can for once struggle with your nature, remembering that whoever has written a masterly tragedy has done one of the greatest things possible to man. Omit the epilogue ; it is dull and dead as a stone, and has nothing to do with the subject as you have treated it. " The Yorkshire Gazette is not taken in here r Could you describe your neighbour's property ? How far is it from Whitby ? How far from the nearest neighbour ? Is the water good? How many bed-rooms, &c, does the house contain? How much land is there in all? What would be the probable price? And when and where will the sale take place ? liberties with you, but you will excuse me." 156 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. CHAPTER VII. LETTERS TO JOHN WATKTNS, FRANCIS FISHER, AND EBENEZER HINGSTON. EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, 30tk May, 1840. " Dear Sir, — After the great trouble I have given you, I ought to come over and view the property, but I am now too late for the sale. If it should not be bought by auction, and you can learn that it might be had for about 7507., I will come and see it ; but I think it will sell for more. Judging from your drawing, I should think the house must have twenty windows in it. A less house would suit me better, for my family generally will not exceed six — myself, Mrs. E., two daughters, a servant-maid, and lad; and after distributing 2,0007. among my grown-up sons, my affairs, unless things mend, will not realise above 8,000/., a small income for a big house. " A young man should not like such poems as the ' Winter Speedwell.' But you have been hit ' by the archers' and ' are sad of spirit.' You must change all this. Acquire, if you have it not, a taste for landscape- drawing, which will lead you often into the fields ; and then you can return, and sit down to write such things as the preface to your Sermons. You were in a healthier state of mind when you wrote them than you now are. But there are portions of your last letter which please me. I am glad that you can give reasons for the faith that is in you — that your mind is your own — and that you are ready to defend your sayings and doings against all impugners. This is as it should be. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 157 " Nothing is more common than for persons to sup- pose that they ' love the poor.' Your observations on this subject are connected with a deep and high philo- sophy. " Am I really to conclude that you have read ' Tau- rassdes' through ? Then three persons have peformed that feat — yourself, John Fowler, and the author. Well, you may derive advantage from the perusal. If ' Taurassdes' had been as attractive as it is the reverse, it could not have succeeded in representation, unless the information communicated to the reader at the close of the play had been given in the first act. " I have often wondered that we have no drama of Robin Hood. And don't you think that the Common- wealth and its men, connected with the early settlement of America by the Pilgrim Fathers, would furnish a noble subject for a national epic poem?" EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, Uth August, 1840. " Dear Sir, — I find it no easy matter to get out of business; and my endless and painful occupations in trying to get out must plead my excuse for not sooner answering your favours of the 2nd and 20th June. " Before I write a prologue for your ' Robin Hood,' I should know how you treat the subject. I shall be happy to comply with your request. " Exempted from the necessity of getting money (your father having got it for you), forgive the scorn of those who in this bread-taxed land must get money or go to the guardians. You cannot too soon seek and find some pleasing task, that will occupy all the powers of your mind for a length of time. What think you of balladising the history of Parliamentary Reform ? * Some Passages in the Life of a Radical,' by Samuel Bamford, would fur- nish you with excellent hints, and the exercise would strengthen and mature your powers for the composition of a Radical epic, say ' Robin Hood.' 158 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " It is a positive duty to marry, and also to be a Radical, that goodjegislation may allow marriage to be as happy as it ought. That marriage, with all its troubles, is happier than celibacy, is proved by the fact that mar- ried men live longer than bachelors. Yet, and although I drew a great prize in the lottery of matrimony, and have enjoyed, perhaps, more than the average of happi- ness in the married state, I cannot advise you to marry until, by some stern and continuous exercise of your faculties, you have done your self-oppressed mind and self-oppressed heart justice. Can you blame others for tyrannising over the world while you continue to tyran- nise over yourself? God meant you to be happy. You have a sound body, good health — that first of blessings. If, then, your mind is out of health, inquire if you are not yourself the cause of the disease ? Why should an honest man be unhappy, if God have not visited him with ill health or other physical calamity ? Toil and be strong ; and remember this precept applies both to mind and body. But I know how it is with you. You must have sympathy. You cannot be properly said to live without some one to sympathise with you. So much the better ; for you possess one great (the greatest) requisite for domestic happiness. But in the present state of your mind, you might easily commit a fatal mistake — one which to you, or any man like you, requiring sympathy, would indeed be a calamity. For one moment suppose yourself married to a woman who cannot and will not sympathise with you ! The chances are fearfully against the supposition that at present you would choose the right one." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. Sheffield, 3rd September, 1840. " Dear Sir, — In sitting in judgment on your melo- drama, I shall suppose myself in the presence of Shak- speare and his master pieces ; for why should my friend, if he is a man of genius, aim at anything lower than excel- LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 159 lence ? I am aware, also, that the author of five rejected and abortive dramas can have no right to criticise you but the right you have given him. You could not, if you would, write anything positively bad, and there are in your drama lines that would not discredit Words- worth — passages sweetly idiomatic, which remind me of our Elizabethan poets ; but the play, as a drama of Robin Hood, the people's hero, has utterly disappointed me. The first scene, with all its faults, is perhaps the best ; but it is dramatically fatal, for after reading it the reader is in doubt whether the earl or your hero is the viler reptile. Indeed, you seem to delight in lowering the latter ; for in the only scene in which he displays a bit of honest spunk (that where he saves George -a- Green), he seems to do so merely because he happens to have fallen in love with Marian — a passion which does him no great credit, for a more vulgar spitfire than you have painted her never talked brandy in peacroft. It may be doubted whether there is in the whole play a single character ; certainly there is not one for whom the reader cares a straw, unless it be Friar Tuck. The senti- ments he expresses are beautiful, and, in him, appropriate ; but Robin Hood never used a pen, except to sign his mark. Much that is out of place in his mouth might have been properly uttered by the worthy friar. Comedy is pro- bably your forte, perhaps satire ; but I doubt still whether you can write serious drama. The play ought to have opened with the expulsion from his lands of the yeoman (not the lord), George-a-Green. Your hero should have witnessed the scene, pitying but unable to help the victims ; and he should then for the first time have seen Marian. The audience should have seen him trying to restrain the aristocratic tendencies of his father; seen Wm grossly and repeatedly insulted by that father, yet always retaining his dignity ; and when at last he retreats to the forest, carrying with him all our sympathy and respect, this would have enabled you to perform a philosophical and Shakspearian purpose, by showing the bad effects of the exercise of arbitrary power and a vicious 160 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. system, even on good natures; and naturally good your earl must have been, or the words you make him utter in the first scene of the fifth act are sheer nonsense. Indeed, the great thing to do in treating such a subject as yours is to show that the victimisers, plaguing all around them, make victims of themselves. This you have only half done, and I have hinted to you before that you are mistaken in supposing yourself a Radical. I am a rank aristocrat, but more Radical than you. Never was there so poor a creature in Sherwood as the Robin Hood you have drawn; the delineation is quite unworthy of you and the subject. Compare it with that of Charles Moor in Schiller's " Robbers." But, to return. When Robin rescues George-a-Green from Scarlet and Scathlock, he should then see Marian for the second time, and fall deeply in love with her. In this way Shakspeare and Nature manage such matters. I am sorry you should have introduced Ellen and Allen-a-Dale merely, as it would seem, to exhibit Marian as a brimstone virago, and swell the numbers at a wedding dinner. What noble objects in a drama of Robin Hood, the people's hero ! Mind, I do not say that your play is a bad melo-drama ; on the contrary, I think we have few melo- dramatists who could have written it ; and it will act much better than it reads." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Sheffield, 4th September, 1840. " Dear Sir, — I thank you for your criticisms ; and am glad that there is one person who thinks, with me, that my prose is better than my verse. I have long thought so ; and if Tait would have printed my speeches, and published letters with the poems, the book would have sold better. As you, too, decide that the 'Village Patriarch' is a desultory poem, I must have failed in my intention to connect with Enoch Wray the changes which have been caused in a century by the progress of population and machinery — changes which, but for our absurd legislation, would have benefitted all mankind. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 161 " If the ' Village Patriarch' will not live, all my poetry must go the way of all flesh ; not because it is based on temporary politics (for it is based on the eternal prin- ciple of free action in man), but for another and quite sufficient reason. The truth is, I am not a poet. The thoughts of genuine poets flow without effort, as from a fountain : I have to pump for mine ; and the well is not my own. But whenever I meet with a man who is not what Carlyle calls a ' sham,' I find a well. Not that I steal the thoughts of others, but that the written or spoken minds of self-sustained men originate thoughts in me. You have discovered the true source of my merit, if I have any. Earnestness will be found at the root of every useful or successful thought or thing in the world. Proverbially, half measures (born of half convic- tions) never come to good. I have not yet returned your play, Mrs. Elliott wishing to read it to, or with, a lady -friend. I suppose she doubts the inerrability of my sovereign decision in your case as in all others." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. "Sheffield, Wth January, 1841. ; ' Dear Sir, — I thank you for your favour of the 6th instant (received this day), which I hardly think I deserve. But the advertisement reached me a few days too late ; for I have just now contracted for the building of a humble cottage of about eight rooms, on ten acres of bad land, at Great Houghton, near Bamsley. This, I am told, is a great error, for the estate is seven miles from the nearest town. 'Great Houghton is the road to nowhere,' said the lawyer, when I purchased. ' Just so,' said I ; ' therefore I buy.' But it is only 2| miles each from two North Midland stations. There is a weekly carrier from Pontefract and Rotherham ; a post three times a week ; and a village two miles off, where anything can be had but fish. I shall not lay out so much money in it as to make it dear to let for 4 \ or 5 per cent, if my family should not like it Perhaps it will cost me 700?. for ten acres of land, house, stable, &c, and 162 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. thirty-five oak, ash, and beech trees, about forty years old. A spring of excellent water runs through it, the roads and the neighbours are good, the air excellent, the prospects from it fine ; and hard coal is to be had at 7s. per ton, slack coal 2s. 6d., at the pit two miles off. " There is nothing in your last letters at all discreditable to you ; and there is much in them that deserves and will receive my immediate attention. I was prevented from attending to them by engagements which I could not neglect. " But unemployed men of ardent minds are necessarily unhappy. Do something, then, even though it be a drama on Frost and Williams ; but surely it is unworthy of you to write satires on a petty attorney. Besides, there is danger in such things. I almost think your satire a libel. And the world will always have dirty work to do. It must be done by somebody ; and it is sure to be well paid for. Will you do it ? No ! Heaven forbid ! Then don't blame the used besom for being a dirty besom. I will write you a long letter very soon, and beg pardon in due form." Some cessation occurred in our correspondence at this time. I left the little lifeless town of Whitby and went to London. Lovett, taking advantage of the imprisonment of O'Connor, made an attempt to get the leadership of the Chartists into his own hands. For this purpose he concocted a traitorous plot called the " New Move," which being de- tected, was exposed, and the " New Movers " lost all influence with the people. But this attempt to form a party caused a factious division in the people, who, before that time, had been united in one body on principle. O'Connor set himself up as an idol, and passion once inflamed with LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 163 party-spirit, the Chartists apostatised from their own cause, and became his man-worshippers, denouncing all who would not bow the knee to him. Thus Chartism was narrowed into O'Con- norism, and this enabled him to bring forward his long-meditated land-lottery, which, appealing to the selfish cupidity of his followers, drew them from the Charter, just as a red-herring trailed across the scent of a pack of hounds diverts them from the true chase. How miserably they were duped by this Irish demagogue ; how much more wretched slaves and victims of his they became than they were of the Government whose tyranny and injustice they complained of, the newspapers have published to all the world. O' Connor, as Hume told the House of Commons, is the greatest enemy that Chartism ever had; he has sunk it too low in public opinion for it ever to rise again, except by virtue of an educational qualification, and this makes it a matter of regret that Fox's Education-bill should have been thrown out, unless it was to make way for a better. Having made several vain attempts to rouse the independence of the Chartists, sunk under the " Im- perialism " of O'Connor, I found that the middle classes were right when they warned me, at the commencement of my advocacy, that the people were not fit for the franchise. For if they 164 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. were to give their votes to such men as O' Connor, what would become of England ? The next letter which I received from Elliott was dated from his new residence at Hargitt Hill : — EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. "Hargitt Hill, Great Houghton, near Barnsley, April 27th, 1842. " Dear Sir, — Your verses on the ' Strike of the Masons' are egg-full of good sense, and, as verses, equal to Pope's or anybody's. There is something striking in your observation that his merit is founded on good sense, ' the rock that England stands on.' Fine ! and flattering to us Englishers. Where are your proofs of England's good sense ? Are they found in our sub- mission to a tax which costs, or destroys, or prevents the earning of 150,000,000 a-year, for the supposed benefit of 20,000 lords and lordlings, who only pocket about one-fifteenth of the amount wasted ? Or are they found in the support which you and the Chartists and their god, O'Connor, have given to that tax ? Don't you think that Norway, the poorest of whose peasants lives in a house larger at least, if not better, and certainly better supplied, than mine, has a much juster claim to good sense than food-taxed England has, with her popu- lation working harder for less than any other people, and cabined, cribbed, garretted, cellared, and dog-holed ? I rejoice that the eyes of your heart are opened. Your father fought the fight for bread when victory was pos- sible. Here it is no longer possible. Of what use, then, is it to repeat to you, ' That happiness is to be found in active and useful exertion only?' Nor have I any hopes but in two or three men, Tories, for the Liberals can do nothing. Peel, I have long thought, sees our position clearly : not so Wellington, or he would have acted on his convictions. But I trust his eyes, too, will be opened before 20,000 harpies shall have anarchised 20,000,000 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 165 of human beings who will begin the work of horror by butchering first their best friends. I have sent your lines to Tait : but advise you to write prose. Such compo- sitions as Howitt's 'Visits to Remarkable Places' are sure to find readers. Write to me often, your letters are always refreshing to me ; and pray pardon my neg- lect, not my forgetfulness, for we often speak of you. I have had hard work in getting out of business where — competition being a death-struggle by Act of Parliament — there must soon be less kissing or more food." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, 4th May, 1842. " Dear Sir,— Your letter of the 30th ult., I think, is one of the best you ever wrote to me. I like the pluck with which you defend your convictions, right or wrong. "Wellington and Peel, you say, do not fear revo- lution. Did the French Marshal Broglie fear it ? What could he do with it when it came ? We know what he did — nothing. There are two sorts of mobs. That which ivill riot can be put down, not so that which must ; for the latter is everywhere at the same moment, while the force which should suppress it is nowhere, or a part of it. " You seem not to be aware that ' Lara' (if you mean Byron's poem) has been dramatised already. The characters of Osmyn and Zara, in Congr eve's ' Mourning Bride,' furnished Byron with hints for his Conrad and Gulnare in the ' Corsair,' of which poem ' Lara' is the EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Great Houghton, 1st July, 1842. " Dear Sir, — With the exception of an exercise in what Dr. Johnson might have called ' metrical episto- lary composition,' I have done nothing in the rhyming way lately; nor have I anything to send you at all 166 LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. likely to please. How poor must the bard be who is destitute even of rhymes ! The inclosed, if you print it, will offend every bigot and hypocrite among your readers or patrons. If I can bring my poor old drape of a muse to her milk, you shall have something better from her. I am glad to learn that you mean to lecture. Thousands may hear for one that vail read. The enemy know this well, and strive to keep to themselves the grand instru- ment of noise — the pulpit." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Great Houghton, \§th Sept., 1842. " Dear John, — As you like to discover merit in working-men, I send you a poem of merit written by a working-man. I know not what sort of a working-man he may be, but I have letters from him that might make the college-taught ashamed." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, Uth March, 1843. " Dear Francis Fisher, — How came I not to think of the ministry as a profession for you? Even as a matter of conscience you ought to decide on becoming a preacher. What though a man born under a three- penny planet cannot reasonably expect sixpenny luck as a preacher among the Unitarians, still the emolument will be sufficient for a bachelor who can dine deliciously on milk-creved rice, and requires no stronger beverage than God's own cloud-distilled. Supposing, then, that you have come to this right decision, you avoid both the dangerous ford and the morass : ' The Lord will be with you, for the ways of holiness (wisdom) are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.' " But when shall we expect you here ? If you will inform us by post, a few days before you start, on what day and by what train you will arrive at Darfield Sta- LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 167 tion, I will meet you there with my magnificent equi- page, which cost 10/. for gig, horse, harness, and repairs. "The story of 'The Exile' is fictitious; but it is quite true that Virginia was originally colonised by white slaves (involuntary emigrants), and that the result (esta- blished slavery) is worthy of the cause. How unlike that of free emigration in New England ! "Tell Mr. Knowles that most of my best poems are written on the very subject which he suggests, and that I have to this hour vainly recommended a remedy for the evils he deplores in universal free-trade, which would soon (and alone can) put an end to competition for human pigsties. " Peel's attack on Cobden was a base blunder, little short of a deliberate attempt to assassinate the character of an opponent for a political purpose. If ministers of the Crown can play such pranks with impunity, legisla- tion through representation is mere mockery. " I have received a letter from Dr. Holland, in which he greatly over-estimates my merit as a poet, setting me in some respects above Wordsworth, for reasons, however, which set me above nobody. I have not answered the Doctor at large on this subject, but as you entertain similar opinions, I will set you right, by producing my ' exquisite reasons,' to show that you are both mistaken. " ' The child is father to the man.' Now, from child- hood upward I have been deemed by those who know me best one of the weakest-minded of human beings. I am like a thick horn lantern with the dullest of slow souls for a candle ; but I claim a merit which is my own, that of having, with feeble abilities, done well- intended deeds which have excited some notice, while persons of far superior powers have effected and attempted nothing. If, when I attend a public meeting, I find that I am the least efficient person there; if, when called on to act or decide, I can always tell afterwards how I ought to have acted or decided ; if I am best known in my own house at this hour by the name of 1 Tom Fool,' or more significantly, ' Old Tom Fool ;' if 168 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. they who thus sincerely designate me (having had the best opportunities of estimating me rightly) cannot be altogether wrong in the estimate they have formed ; then I must be physically, mentally, perhaps morally, inferior to the generality of men ; and I doubt the possibility of such a person writing any book worthy of lasting remembrance, for nothing can live but truth. He who invents an original character or fable has discovered a new truth, which will live because it is interesting, and is interesting because it is true. But how few in all ages have been the discoverers of truth ! Assuredly, the ' Tom Fools,' old or young, have not been of the number ; and the world will have long to wait for another Christopher Colon, or James Watt, or Walter Scott, if he is to be sought only among them. But let us now turn to my writings themselves. Can you find in them all one spark of invention, one original character? — anything like the wildness of 'Thalaba,' or the ethereal beauty of 'The Lady of the Lake ? ' — anything, in short, giving evidence of the presence of genius ? No, no. There may be sunbeams in cucumbers, but my ganister stone is not made of sunshine. Oh, but I am national, says the Doctor. Yes ; but it is the reverse of nationality, it is universality that gives immortality to poems. But I can describe well, he says. So can any tolerably sensible person, who will attend to the objects before him. But then, I write a condensed style. Yes, be- cause I am compelled, by my defective memory and the morbid melancholy of my constitution, to contemplate all sad things with an almost mute direness of feeling, and express my miserable thoughts so briefly that the utterance of a dozen sentences pumps me dry. And yet, forsooth, I have got repute as a public speaker ! and, depend upon it, I am quite as much an orator as a poet, though I never delivered an unprepared speech con- taining twenty sentences, except on one occasion, and it was only a reply to a lecture recommending paid or forced emigration, by H. G. Ward, Esq. I happened LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 169 to think, with my master, Colonel Thompson, that the breeding of white slaves for exportation here, at this time, must be a losing trade, on the whole, and I was full of the subject ; yet I was twice conscious of break- ing down in the course of my harangue. Some of my speeches, however, are still readable; I can actually read them without falling asleep ; and if you can select from all my poetry a poem like ' Death and Dr. Hornbook,' combining humour with pathos or sublimity, I will be- lieve that it may keep my book alive for a few years. But the mere heaviness of my poetry will sink me. I sat down to read it yesterday, beginning with the ' Vernal Walk,' and in ten minutes I was asleep, with the volume at my feet. The strongest proof that it will not live is the fact that it is dead already. What Sheffielder reads it except yourself and the Doctor? Are there fifty persons living who can truly say they have each read ten pages of my verse ? I once had an opportunity of examining a copy of my works presented by me to a ' great admirer of my genius.' He had commenced reading ' The Ranter,' a poem of some laboured merit, but he stuck fast half-way. All the pages except twenty- three were uncut; and I found that the 'admirer of my genius' probably did not know by name 'The Village Patriarch,' 'The Exile,' 'Both well,' 'Withered Wild Flowers,' 'They met in Heaven,' 'The Record- ing Angel,' ' Come and Gone,' ' The Splendid Village,' &c. No, it is not an easy matter for fools ' to live in all de mouths of their posteriors.' See the ' Louisiad ' of Peter Pindar, a forgotten immortal !" EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, 29th May, 1843. "Dear Francis, — Having long wished to try my hand at ' metrical epistolary composition,' as the great lexicographer would probably have termed it, I have addressed to you a lengthy rhymed letter, written, I confess, chiefly as an exercise, and to drive away painful I 170 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. thoughts ; and I must apologise for sending it to Mr. Tait, although there is nothing in it which, if printed, could hurt your feelings, or in any degree otherwise injure or pre- judice you. Of course, I do not know that Mr. Tait will like it ; I, however, think well of it, as daddies usually do of their youngest bairn. Your last letter, though it informs me that we shall probably meet no more on this side the unutterable deep, is the best I ever received from you ; and your almost unconscious praise of your father is the sweetest hymn of the affec- tions I ever read. Since I received it, I think of you more frequently, for you are become scarce. In the mornings, when I am saddest (it is in the morning that people hang themselves), you come to my assistance. I live over again your visits — your holdings forth — the little sermons ! Surely those hours were happy hours, and my house at Upperthorpe, on your account, a happy place. I often think of our wanderings to the Rivilin, and how we always paused when we reached Walkly Bank, to take into our souls the sudden burst of glorious prospect on the right and the left, beneath and before us, over cloud-loving Stannington to what a Hebrew bard might call ' The moors of God.' I am glad that you have got to Dorchester, and that you like your little flock. The fame of you will soon go forth. By-and-bye, you will address larger congregations; and in a few years (weeds only grow fast) obtain a salary that will decently maintain you. Then if, in the meantime, you have sufficient self-denial to remain unmarried, and will marry (if you marry) a healthy lady of forty or upwards (as I have before advised you to do), you will be a happy man. Such a partner will not be too old and hard for new impressions, and she will always be ready and happy to bless God with you. But, whatever you do, don't marry an old cat of a widow. If you do, she will lock your bed-room doors when she goes out, and put the keys in her pocket, lest you steal your own things. Thanks for your newspaper. With the best respects of Mrs. E. and my daughters, I remain," &c. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 171 EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, bthJune, 1844. ". Dear Francis, — Please tell me if the enclosed will would be a good and safe one ? If it would, please return it to me. If it would not, please send me one that would, with your charge, and I will remit you a Post-office order. My wish, you will see, is to leave the income of all I have to Mrs. E. during her life, for the maintenance of herself and daughters ; and, after her decease, to divide the principal, share and share alike, among all my children, without appointing a stranger trustee, if it can be safely, that is legally, avoided. " In your last, you said I might send you the number of ' Tait' containing my rhymed letter, if I could do so without expense to myself or you. Finding that Mr. Innocent charges me fourpence for every number of 1 Tait' which I receive through him, I concluded that I could not send the number without expense to you, and therefore did not send it. " I am not hearty at present ; but heartily wishing you all possible good, I remain," &c. EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. "Great Houghton, 27th May, 1845. " Dear Francis, — In reply to your favour of the 24th I inclose a note to Mr. Tait, and heartily wish you success. The attempt itself is creditable to you : there are glory and good omen in it, even if you fail. " Mr. Tait declined to risk the publication of my prose some time ago ; and he understands such matters. Since I wrote or spoke it much of it has been said better by Cobden, Bright, Fox, and others. A few days make sad havoc with the immortals of a fortnight ! Even old Morrison is forgotten ! " ' Why should futurity give me or thee hopes, If not a pinch of dust remains of Cheopes ?' i2 172 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " I begin to think that the sun has shifted his quarters farther north ; if so, you will be likely to be warmer where you are than I am here. If you were to see how the cold lifts my back up you would think me an old man! Mrs. Elliott rejoices with me in your heroic expedition northward, though she is not at all surprised to learn — " ' What a grandeur, what a spirit, What a bold genius you inherit ! ' It is, she says, precisely as she expected." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. " Great Houghton, 22nd September, 1845. " Dear Francis, — I am sorry you did not succeed at Edinbro' ; but, never mind, you did your best. Napoleon met with a rebuff when he asked to be a fourpenny lieutenant ; but it could not be said of him that he did not make the attempt. " Burns, I fear, understood the Scotch character well, and has drawn it truly ; but I am surprised that Sawney should want courtesy. To say of a man that he is not civil is to say that he is deficient in good sense. Well, Sawney has done great things in his time. We must take him as he is, and be thankful. " I should like to have another stroll with you before I die, if only that I might feel assured that I have legs. I feel nothing so much here as the want of some one to walk with. At Sheffield, I had you, and Paul, and Fowler always come-at-able. I would rather chat or dine with you here than in that Heavenly House of yours ; not that I have any dislike to it, but it seems so far off, and so long to wait, if we are not to get at it before the resurrection-day. And then those confounded worms in the meantime, and the cold ! The very thought of it gives me the rhumatizm. Don't laugh at my bad spelling. I have not only lost my dictionary, but almost the use of speech. Sometimes I think that I have lost my tongue, and that 'Ar Mester' has lost LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 173 her's ; but that is a mistake sure to be rectified. You know nothing of these ' mysteries of Hymen/ which is very unfortunate for you. Seriously, I will see you at Dorchester, or elsewhere, before I ' gang hanie.' I must not conclude without saying, that had you been Mrs. Elliott's own and only son she could not have been more sorry than she is at your want of success at Edinbro'." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO FRANCIS FISHER. " Hargitt Hill, near Barnsley, Ath April, 1846. " Dear Francis, — I rejoice to hear that you are going to Lincoln. Old as I am, I shall hear of you being Unitarian Bishop of Liverpool yet ! " I had once customers at Lincoln ; but I have almost forgot their very names. Jepson, lord mayor ; Sharp, boat-owner ; Barrett, machine-maker, &c. Pickslay (once of the firm Green and Pickslay, of Sheffield) was an apprentice of Jepson's when I knew Lincoln. " It is luxury for one to read your letters, so full of love for all good creatures, and particularly for your excellent parents. God bless you ! I shall never see you again in this world. Never mind. In the next we will have a roast duck cooked by Ar Mester, and cramfull of boiled onions. " Our agriculturists here seem fully aware that they must soon quit the nursery for six foot infants, and be baptised in the fire of competition. They looked as if they had been too well dosed with jalap and scammony by Act of Parliament. Mrs. E. begs to be remembered to you." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO EBENEZER HINGSTON. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, Uth November, 1843. " Dear Sir, — I duly received your favour of the 8th instant. The poets of our day have a glorious prospect before them, if they will pursue their own interests through the wants of the age, and write in prose. I 174 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. should have written few verses if, before I had acquired the bad habit of rhyming, I had been honest enough to confess to myself that my thoughts were not good enough for prose. The best poetry of the age — the only poetry that is read — is written in prose, and to be found in the prose of Scott, Dickens, Richter, Thomas Carlyle, and others. Verse is a trick which the age has seen through and despises. It is utterly unsaleable, and absolutely unread, even by the writers of verse themselves. Nobody buys it. My poetry does not sell. The poems of Robert Nicoll have not paid the expenses of printing. To be able to write poetry in these days is anything but an enviable distinction. Tait is offered more poetry every month for nothing than would fill his Magazine ; and his lady-manager, with equal honesty and frankness, calls the writers of it ' rhyming bores.' Why, then, labour for disappointment and contempt, by "writing composition which, when printed, is unpublishable ? If you are resolved to be an author, write prose. But you will not succeed by brooding over your own pain. Look abroad on life — use it, and serve it ; and rest assured, the poetry that is in you will not be less poetical for being made useful, and expressed in the best way, that is, in honest prose. " I am, dear Sir, yours very truly, " Ebenezer Elliott. " How shall I return you your manuscripts ?" EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO EBENEZER HINGSTON. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, 24th November, 1843. " My Dear young Friend, — I am sorry you should have thought it necessary to apologise for writing to me. I think your correspondence an honour — it is certainly a compliment ; and I shall always be happy to hear from you. If I have given you pain, pardon me, as I deserve to be pardoned ; for I could not have written otherwise than I did, had I been writing to my dearest child. " Before poetry can become extinct, earnestness and LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 3 75 honesty, sorrow and gladness, the great mystery itself in which we live and die, must also cease to be ; and before I turn my back on the muse she must give me the oppor- tunity. I am not a poet, but, on the contrary, one of the dullest and slowest of minds, writing in the sweat of my brow. It is true, I can write good verses ; but so may almost any man, woman, or child, that will take the pains; for though there is no art or mystery which requires a longer apprenticeship than this of verse -making, success in it implies no mental superiority. If you will read my lectures on poetry (my best compositions) in 'Tait's Magazine,' you will find that I by no means think this age unpoetical. Never was poetry better appreciated than at present. But verse is not poetry. It must be essentially cmfa-poetical, if it restrains the free 'expression of feeling. Shakspeare and Milton rejected rkyrue for blank verse, and Scott both for prose. Shakspeare has written prose which, as poetry or as language, is equal to his blank verse, and consequently to any verse whatever ; and this is especially true of Milton, one of the greatest masters of versification that ever wrote. " Dramatic narrative is Carlyle's forte. In style, and in matters still more important, he is good and bad ; but more bad than good : one of the best and worst of authors. He is dreamy and inconclusive, suggesting rather than expressing thoughts. But it is something to suggest a thought. I hate his metaphysics and every- body else's. I have not found one useful precept or hint, scarcely one good thought, in all the metaphysics I have read. If you like metaphysics in verse read ' Festus,' a drama by a genuine bard. " That there is nothing in you do not you believe. Your compositions — your letters particularly — prove otherwise. But if there is nothing in you, put something in ; and be sure of this, that if you are a man of genius, the thoughts that get in will come out improved. Get knowledge, thoughts, no matter whose ; wed thought to thought, and make them breed ; the offspring will be 176 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. your own. And sometimes write to me, I pray you do, that I may live with you some of my young years over again." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO EBENEZER HINGSTON. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, Jan. \bth, 1844. " Dear Sir, — I do not know your age, but if you are not more than 25 years old, I ought to read with wonder your letter of the 28th December last, especially when I compare it in imagination with what would probably have been my best had I attempted a similar production at your age. This cannot all be owing to the superior advantages which young men now possess. I do not remember the time when I was not sensible of my natural inferiority to others in all respects, physical and mental ; my merit, if I have any, being my own. Perhaps I owe it to my natural dullness that I have not been troubled with misgivings like yours. Even now I can- not doubt that all God's creatures are safe in his hands. True it is, that as I approach the edge of darkness my thoughts darken too ; for I have always dreaded death, or rather pain ; and yet, if it shall be consistent with the designs of our Father to give me a quick death, I believe I shall die cheerfully. There is a more dreadful King of Terrors than 'Bumless Old No-belly;' his name is ' Want,' as the greatest of our few great men, Colonel Thompson, has finely said. " On the subject of metaphysics, I will confess to you, my young instructor, that I have not spoken quite sin- cerely. Though I have found that this life is made of solid pudding, I do sometimes indulge ' those thoughts that wander through eternity,' and your rebuke, ' severe in youthful beauty,' makes me feel like Satan in the presence of Abdiel. " Another of my young friends, John Watkins, Chartist leader, alluding to my assertion that Cowper's muse was conscience, said ' Yes, a creed-conscience.' True, it was LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 177 a creed-conscience ; but let us not forget that when the. future nerve-shaken bard was a boy, he did not dare to lift his eyes above the shoe-buckles of his bigger school- fellows, and that not one of those tyrants has done any- thing worthy of remembrance. I have not his works, or your blushes should keep mine company; but I know he somewhere uses words to this purport : ' Oh, could I worship aught beneath the sun, I would let fly a cap- tive bird into the boundless air, and kneel at thy altar, Liberty !' "I will now try to answer some of your queries. When I was a boy I was remarkable for dullness and slowness of apprehension (as I still am), but quite confi- dent that I was making progress. In my thirteenth year I could not understand the Scripture phrase, ' All flesh is grass,' and it would do you good to feel how wise, how great I felt, when I discovered its meaning, that ' All flesh was frail.' You seem constituted quite differently from me. Fifty years ago my convictions were exactly what they are now. I have never had occasion to rat out of my political creed, for I was always Jacobin through bone and marrow, and I have never doubted the great truths of Christianity. But I do sometimes doubt whether the end of my existence has been answered; whether I have not done more harm than good; whether the balance of usefulness is not against me. And yet it is certain that any man who can and will fairly earn more than maintains him, may, if he pleases, leave the world in a better condition than he found it ; it is the grand curse of monopoly that it will not let men earn fairly more than will maintain them. " I thank you for your letter ; it is a fine compliment to my grey hairs. I have ordered the edition of Shelley you name. ' Festus ' is out of print, but another edition is forthcoming. I have not the book, or I would give you the information you ask. " Go on getting and keeping knowledge ; make other men's thoughts your own by reflection, and fear not the issue. There is now a medium through which a clever i3 178 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. man may at any time reach the public. The readers of novels, it is true, do not read for instruction ; and it is also true that one page of original thinking will keep an amusing book from oblivion. But there are minds that can transmit to posterity copies of themselves in little ; and if it is possible that the writings of Moliere can perish, the maxims of Eochefaucault, which could be printed on half a sheet of foolscap, may outlive every other book in the French language. " Do you know that De Foe was a Free-trader ? The kernel of our new politico-economical philosophy is to be found in him. " I do not know what lines you allude to, but I have a son called Francis, to whom I was on the point of send- ing vour M.S." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO EBENEZER HINGSTON. " Great Houghton, 8th May, 1844. "Dear Sir, — If you can write for the Magazines prose that will interest the general reader, you will soon find yourself on the road to success. Both Carlyle and Dickens started in Magazines — Tory, I believe. Do not despond if your first contribution should be rejected. If Coleridge had sent his 'Ancient Mariner' to a periodical, would it have been accepted ? I believe not Would its rejection have proved its worthlessness ? Certainly not, but the poem would have been all the better, could it have been made acceptable to the general reader. Some of my best pieces have been rejected by Mr. Tait, and very properly. " If I do not always answer you at length, do not conclude that your letters are not welcomed by me. They are exceedingly beautiful and surprising. They both please and instruct me — yes, and cheer me also. "I am sorry to hear of your illness — not surprised. Your mind is ' O'er-informing its tenement of clay.' But I know it is vain to warn you. I might as well say to the pot on the fire, ' Don't boil.' " LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 179 EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Great Houghton Common, near Barnsley, 10/A May, 1842. " Dear Sir, — Did you ever read Cowper's letters ? Your's want only the sweetness of his to be perfect. " Yes, there is hope for America. Ifiuell governed, the rate of profit in the United States will go on steadily increasing for centuries ; but that those States are not well governed at present their frightful currency errors fully prove. The other evil of the Union, slavery, will cure itself; for the blacks breed faster than the whites, and the latter will be forced to offer the former, not only the right hand of friendship, but the lip of love. America, however, unless you can be your grandfather, or turn Yankee in earnest, will not suit you. " Happy, indeed, should I be to walk with you through the lanes of Surrey, your account of which almost makes me repent building here. If ever you come this way, and can contrive to spend a fortnight with me, I will show you some pretty walks in this neighbourhood ; not like Rivilin, though. " I am sorry to say I do not know one bookseller in London." EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Great Houghton Common, near Barnsley, 3rdJune, 1842. " Dear Sir, — I thank you for your beautiful letter of the 1st instant. Your fine descriptions of the localities of Battersea make me ashamed of those of Great Hough- ton, and, lest you should form extravagant expectations relative to my present residence, I will briefly describe it to you. It is found fault with by architects, landscape- gardeners, and other such cattle, because the kitchen - garden is seen from the windows ; but to a cottager, whose motto, copied from the squire's, is, ' Beware of poachers,' the cabbages, all round which he has so often 180 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. travelled, is an object of importance. My impugners would be right if my bouse were a villa or mansion ; but it is a simple, gable-ended, old English farm- cottage, with its garden, orchard, croft, and field (about ten acres in all), a plain dwelling for a plain, retired old man : just such a place as a sensible bachelor of 300?. a year, with his black hair turning gray, would like to live in for the shooting season. The orchard, from behind the house, breaks over a steep bank in front of it, mingling with the kitchen-garden ; and immediately before the porch is a flower-garden or lawn. The high ground on which the house stands commands varied and extensive prospects, but I am happy to say they are not all visible from the house itself ; and I think of excluding some that are visible, for the greatest defect of the place is want of seclusion. I have, as yet, no walk in my grounds where I can saunter unobserved to collect and enjoy my thoughts in the cool of the evening. Poets, you seem to think, are not swans. But neither are they birds of any kind. They are fish ; and I think they have a right to complain that they are not cased in shell, like lobsters. Unable to provide meat and cloth- ing for themselves — the only article they can command for outside and inside wear being water — they must be fish of some sort. In my opinion it is wrong to pension them off on anything but water. I don't say, Drown them; but I say, Throw them into their proper ele- ment! If they sink and rise no more, so much the better for them and the other fish, or such of them as can eat bones. "I have had a contest with the Owenites myself. They will not see that competition is the law of God, unerring as that which carries the earth round the sun. Repeal that law, and there will be no pig so swinish as man. What worse than beasts we should be but for our necessities ! The food monopoly is a vain attempt to repeal the eternal and all-merciful law of competition. Look at the consequences." LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLJOTT. 181 EBENEZER ELLIOTT TO JOHN WATKINS. " Great Houghton Common, 2\st August, 1842. "Dear Sir, — I am very much pleased with your critique on my lecture on Cowper and Burns. ' Cowper's,' you say, ' was a creed-conscience ;' true, and he was not the less conscientious on that account. There is some- thing striking, and, I think, new, in your observation, that, 'Byron was the poet of conscience.' Perhaps I shall steal it. I much doubt whether there is one good thought in all my writings that I have not stolen from somebody. " In your last, just received, you ask, ' Why say that the food-monopoly killed Nicoll?' I say it, because that monopoly did kill him ; but I am quite aware that I have dragged the subject of the Corn-laws into the lecture, as it were, by the head and shoulders. It is also true that the food-tax has stopped the mills in Lan- cashire; but not, I fear, without orders from the employers of your god. Madmen ! as if in bread-taxed England the mills were not likely enough to stop of themselves ! But as the old French aristocracy did so will ours do, even the work appointed them. " How strange it seems that the best-conditioned and most fortunate rascals in the universe should force their multitudinous victims, not merely to learn the art of war (the simplest in the world, for it is nothing but the art of skulking or fighting out of the reach of the enemy), but also to adopt a mode of fighting which the oppressor can neither resist nor imitate, and which (if they are forced to adopt it) must succeed. But was Napoleon a skulker ? Yes ; he never fought but when he believed he had got a longer staff than his opponent ; and there- fore he was always the assailant, but not the less a skulker. Every improvement in the accursed art, and every weapon invented from the beginning of time — the staff, the sword, the shield, the lance, the arrow, the musket, the cannon, the rocket, the shell — have had but this one cowardly object, to fight, as it were, out of reach. 182 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. In two years the bread- taxers will be at war with the Executive. Can they induce their victims to join them, as the French aristocracy did ? I fear they can. They are trying hard to Foulon it — in the end they will Affgawn it — in a country where there is more cover than in the American forest. " How liable to error is figurative reasoning ? for porcelain and delf-ware are, perhaps, equally permanent. But it is mournful to think that a fragment of either may possibly outlive London itself. " What comparison, even as an editor, will O'Comior bear with poor Robert ? As a noise-monger, of course, Robert could not compete with him of the loud voice, brazen face, and broad ; or, as I translated these terms for the cockneys, ' Your own O'Connor, too, whose eloquence reminds me of that of Ulysses in Homer ; for when the deep and mellow bass breaks forth from his great breast, the breath of all is hushed — all listen, all are still !" LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 183 CHAPTER VIII. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AND DRAMAS. Elliott's miscellaneous poems show most of the mam if not of the poet. He was the man of his times — a Cobbett in rhyme ; one of the main instruments of Reform and Corn-law repeal; a Chartist, too, till the Chartists took the wrong road, and compelled him to leave them. He was not less excellent in the private relations of life. Compare him with Burns, and though he may fail in some respects as a poet, how much superior he rises as a man ! Elliott, misunderstood and misrepresented, was not appreciated in his lifetime ; but time will tell the truth of him. Burns, feted and caressed by the great of his land, had a sufficient sum of money subscribed to enable him to stock a farm; yet because he did not succeed the first year, he lost all perseverance, and sought, with degrading avidity, the unpoetic and unpatriotic trade of a gauger, for the gratification of wild and unsettled propensities. Elliott had to begin life again at a more advanced age than that at which Burns died ; and was sober, industrious, 184 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. and fortunate. In their poetry, the chief advan- tage possessed by Burns was in his vein of humour; he was a better describer of manners and cha- racter. Did he possess more sensibility ? No ! His songs are chiefly in praise of love and liquor. Bacchus and Cupid were his gods. He says himself — " For me, an aim I never fash ; I rhyme for fun." Elliott rhymed for a better purpose. His ambition was not to raise a laugh ; he thought too much of the wrongs and sufferings of his fellow-country- men. Let them rejoice that could rejoice; as for him, he would rather weep with those that wept. Like the sorrowing minstrels at Babel's stream, he hung his harp on the willows. Burns was a man of impulse — Elliott was only a poet of impulse. Burns might possess finer qualities ; he was a genial, hearty good fellow, but more vices mingled with his virtues. The one was not more national than the other. Manly humanity equally characterised their writings ; but was found more in the life of Elliott. Elliott's greatest praise, a praise not due to Burns, was, that he not only endeavoured to raise man politically, but socially, or morally. He wished to give the working-man a taste for those fine arts which might redeem him from the grosser LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 185 impulses of his nature. He was well aware that though the bad government of others might occa- sion us much misery, our bad government of our- selves occasions more. A moral renewal is full as much needed as a political one. But would not political reform induce moral reform ? for when men are elevated in their own opinions it occasions them to seek the good opinion of others. I have already quoted very liberally from Elliott's poetry j but I cannot refrain from making a few more extracts. The following is a perfect treble and bass : — FOREST-WORSHIP. " Within the sun-lit forest, Our roof the bright blue sky, Where fountains flow, and wild flowers blow, 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 1 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 ! " The preacher prays, ' Lord, bless us !' 1 Lord, bless us !' echo cries ; 'Amen!' the breezes murmur low, — ' Amen !' the rill replies. 186 LIFE OF EBENEZER, ELLIOTT. 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 !" FOOTPATHS. " Wolves with the hearts of devils ! They steal our footpaths too ! The poor man's walk they take away, The solace of his only day, Where, now unseen, the flowers are blowing, And, all unheard, the stream is flowing ! What worse could devils do ?" Burns has not a more pathetic ballad than the following : — HE WENT. " He left me sad, and crossed the deep, A home for me to seek ; He never will come back again : My heart, my heart will break ! To see me toil for scanty food, He could not bear, he said ; But promised to come back again, His faithful Ann to wed. " Bad men had turned into a hell The country of his birth ; And he is gone who should have stayed To make it heaven on earth. A heaven to me it would have been, Had he remained with me ; Oh, bring my William back again Thou wild, heart-breaking sea ! " He should have stayed to overthrow The men who do us wrong ; When such as he fly far away, They make oppressors strong. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 187 But, oh, though worlds of cruel waves Between our torn hearts rise, My William, thou art present still Before my weeping eyes. " Why hast thou sought a foreign land, And left me here to weep ? Man ! man ! thou should'st have sent our foes Beyond that dismal deep ! For when I die, who then will toil My mother's life to save ? What hope will then remain for her ? A trampled workhouse grave ! HE WROTE. " He did not come, hut letters came, And money came in one ; But he would quickly come, they said — ' When I,' she sighed, ' am gone !' Thenceforth she almost welcomed death, With feelings high and hrave ; Because she knew that her true love Would weep upon her grave. " ' No parish hirelings,' oft she said, ' My wasted corpse shall bear ; The honest labour of my hands Hath purchased earth and prayer ; Nor childless will my mother be — ' The dying sufferer smiled — ' Thou wilt not want, for William's heart Is wedded to thy child.' " But death seemed loth to strike a form So beautiful and young ; And o'er her long, with lifted dart, The pensive tyrant hung ; And life in her seemed like a sleep, As she drew nearer home ; But when she waked, more eagerly She asked, 'Is William come ?' 188 LTFE OF EBENEZEK ELLTOTT. " ' Is William come ?' she wildly asked. The answer still was ' No !' She's dead ! but through her closing lids The tears were trickling slow ; And like the fragrance of a rose, Wb.ose snowy life is o'er, Pale beauty lingered on the lips Which he will kiss no more. HE CAME. " At length he came. None welcomed him — The decent door was closed ; But near it stood a matron meek. With pensive looks composed. She knew his face, though it was changed, And gloom came o'er his brow ; ' They're gone,' she said, ' but you're in time j They're in the churchyard now.' " He reached the grave, and sternly bade The impatient shovel wait — ' Ann Spencer, aged twenty -five,' He read upon the plate. ' Why didst thou seek a foreign land, And leave me here to die ?' The sad inscription seemed to say — But he made no reply. " Her mother saw him through her tears, But not a word she said — Nor could he know that days had passed Since last she tasted bread. She stood, in comely mourning, there, Self-stayed in her distress ; The dead maid's toil bought earth and prayer. Sleep on, proud Britoness ! " But thou, meek parent of the dead, Where now wilt thou abide ? With William, in a foreign land, Or by thy daughter's side ? LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 189 Oh, William's broken -heart is sworn, To cross no more the foam ! Full soon will men cry — ' Hark ! again ! — Three now ! — they're all at home !' " Several of Elliott's best pieces may be found in his "Miscellaneous Poems/' and some that seem not to have been written by him, so different are they to others in thought and expression. For grandeur and beauty we may refer to " Win-hill/ ' " The Wonders of the Lane/' " The Excursion/' &c. ; for pathos, to "The Dying Boy and the Sloe Blos- som/' " Thomas/' " Poor Andrew /' for power and eccentricity, to " Great Folks at Home/' " Bawl Brawl Hall," "The Storming of Badajoz /' for good purpose, " Bub or Rust/' " The Home of Taste/' &c. In the preface to his " Miscellaneous Poems/' Elliott beautifully exemplifies the purity and dis- interestedness of his motives in a passage of prose unsurpassed by all his verses. " I am sufficiently rewarded if my poetry has led one poor despairing victim of misrule from the alehouse to the fields ; if I have been chosen of God to show his desolated heart that, though his wrongs have been heavy and his fall deep, and though the spoiler is yet abroad, still in the green lanes of England the primrose is blowing, and, on the mountain-top, the lonely fir, with her many fingers, pointing to our Father in Heaven." There is also in this preface an 190 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. indignant attack, in self-defence, upon one of his false accusers. " Rhymed Rambles" suggest that Elliott might have made a Childe Harold's Pilgrimage through England. Of all Elliott's productions, none are less happy than his dramas. Of these we have two specimens, one entitled "Kerhonah," the other "Taurassdes." They are not only unfortunate in title, but in sub- ject. The former is an attempt to dramatise the subjugation of the Indians by the whites, our sym- pathies being enlisted on the side of the Indians ; the latter is an Eastern story, but inexplicable. Elliott was a bad plotter, and could not indi- vidualise character. We are left quite in the dark in his drama, or led away by Will-o'-Wisp gleams of poetry or passion. The story of a drama should be obvious from the commencement, that he who runs may read. The author should embark his reader in a torrent of action, and carry him along with him; but Elliott leaves us lost and wondering at his meaning. His characters come and go, "with the motions of a pewterer's ham- mer/' we know not how nor why. There is no central figure, round which all the rest are grouped. The story does not run, like a hare, to return and die where it set out, or, like the image of eternity, with its tail in its mouth. Hamlet says, "The LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 191 players cannot keep counsel ; they tell all." So should it be ; we should see and hear all to know all. But it is not to be regretted that Elliott did not succeed as a dramatist ; there is no true reputa- tion to be gained by writing for the stage in its present degraded condition. It is not a laudable object of ambition. Managers do not understand their duty, or have not the virtue to practise it ; actors are servile tools of managers, and authors of both. The ill name which the drama got in the reign of Charles the Second has not been wiped off; public opinion, instead of being conciliated by a drama of pure morals, has been defied by the licentiousness of the stage; the respectable portion of the community have been driven away, and rakes and libertines courted. Thus the stage is now under a fatal necessity to pander to vitiated tastes and corrupt fancies. The acted drama is adapted not to reform but to harden the vicious and immoral ; and all who write dramas " chaste and noble," may print them for the closet, but must not expect to see them on the stage. This is the true reason of the decline of the drama, nor must we look for its revival until the system is entirely changed, and the stage taken out of the hands of private speculators and managed by the public. 192 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Having compared Elliott with Burns, let us see what comparison he will bear with Byron. No two beings could come into the world under more diverse auspices than those winch attended the births of Lord Byron and Ebenezer Elliott. The former was born at the top of Fortune's wheel — the latter underneath its rolling weight. Both were victims of our high state of civilisation, but at the opposite ends of attraction and repul- sion. One felt the "fulness of satiety" — the other the pressure of adverse circumstances. Yet it may be questioned whether the facilities afforded to the former were more favourable to the develop- ment of his powers than the trials which strength- ened the genius of the latter, and refined and purified it. Strong indeed must have been the poetic impulse in Byron to make him proof to the allurements of aristocratic life, and the dis- appointments and disgusts of authorship. "A nobleman a poet \" the sneering world exclaimed, and made him, in a fit of spleen, curse the pen which had gained him honourable envy — even as a ruined gambler curses the dice that have been the fatal instumentsof hisundoing. YetdidByronlabour in his vocation to the last ; and how industriously let his voluminous poems testify ! Equally strong must have been the same impulse in Elliott, which could make him, a working man, toil with thought, LIFE OP EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 193 the hardest pioneer, after bodily labour had indis- posed him for mental exertion. As the truth and nature of Byron were not spoiled by the flatteries of Fortune, so neither did her frowns prevent the genius of Elliott. A classical education did not encumber the mind of the former with pedantry, nor did the want of such an education make the latter an ignorant barbarian. Both were self- taught ; for, indeed, who can teach the man of genius ? Can originality be learnt ? Genius knows more by intuition than mere talent can acquire by study. Nature's gifts are superior to the endowments of schools ; and he whom she inspires arrives at once, by a happy flight, at that summit which plodding art can reach only step by step. Byron says he hated the " drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word." Yet did he read and observe much, but think more. Book- learning to the man of genius is necessary in no further degree than the bucket of water which is poured into a dry pump, to make it yield the stores of its own inexhaustible spring j or as the " drink" which is technically given to wet the whistle of a flute, and make it discourse most eloquent music. It is the manure which, spread on a good soil, quickens its latent fecundity, and causes it to bring forth, in some thirty, in some sixty, in some a hundred fold. 194 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Shakspeare was little the worse for not having had the advantage of a classical education, and Ben Jonson's Latinity was an absolute impedi- ment to his native English tongue. Theory and practice differ on this point. Whether prosperity or adversity is the most favourable to genius may also be questioned. Too free a facility may weaken the force of ideas ; too much repression may stop their current, or divert the flow of them. Gray, in his incomparable " Elegy," says, — " Chilled penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul." But adversity, if not crushing, is probably less fatal to genius than prosperity. Virtue that is strength- ened by adversity is too often corrupted by pros- perity. The flower that sickens in the sun blooms sweetly in the shade ; the plant that springs from underneath a rock, though probably distorted in its growth, waves its green branches triumphantly overhead, but would have degenerated to a weed in the fulsome warmth of a dunghill. A mixed or struggling state, teaching various experiences, and keeping the mind exercised, is best. Poets have ever been regarded as camomile, that grows faster when trod upon ; or as flowers, that shed most fragrance when crushed; or as bees, that make most honey under the driving system — that is, when allowed none for their own share. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 195 Genius is a self-willed thing, and seeks the food necessary for its powers wherever instinct leads it. This is generally of a desultory and miscellaneous kind, like the herbage of the fields, where many different grasses mix their sweets. Hard bodily labour is, perhaps, the greatest obstacle to mental improvement. Ordinary capacities are apt to make it an excuse for not striving to improve themselves, or for sinking into brutal or demoral- ising ignorance. It is therefore greatly to the credit of genius that it will pursue knowledge under difficulties ; that its desire of fame is a con- tinual spur to excellence ; and, moreover, that it rescues the being whom it favours from idleness or debauchery, and elevates him to seek pleasures, not of the senses, but of the soul. It may not, and, indeed, too seldom does, enable its possessor to break the chain of worldly adversity, but it pre- vents the iron which enters the soul from rusting there and cankering it. Had it not been that this divine gift redeemed him from self, Byron would doubtless have spent much of his life in the follies and dissipations of his rank ; and Elliott, instead of raising himself into a master manufacturer and merchant, would most probably have given himself up to that despair which, hopeless of good, makes evil its good, or, in other words, turns bad to worse, k2 196 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. because that is easier than to make it better. Blessed, therefore, be poetry and love ! They are divine missionaries, to convert the mind and heart, and to make fallen humanity regain its original divinity. Politics are the burden of Elliott's song, and a heavy burden they are ; poetry and politics do not agree. Poetry will ever escape from this u work- ing-day world," and soar "to realms apart, to regions of her own/' You cannot marry immortal verse to such an unequal and unseemly mate. But Elliott attributed the social evils which he had ex- perienced, and which he saw others suffer, to political causes ; and whatever a poet feels most strongly, he is apt to make the theme of his genius. Perhaps it is more to his honour, as an honest man, that his poetry sung the sorrows which had moved his feelings and sympathies, than if he had tuned his lyre to gain the ear of pride or power. The Corn-law was, to his imagination, the serpent from the sea, and he a second Laocoon, who was linked with his children in a chain of torture. All his efforts are bent to slay the monster that had bound him in its tortuous folds, and " stung his every thought to strife." He succeeded at last, and now his ei¥i.gy may stand with this dragon under his feet. Happily, however, for his fame, he has written many poems that are not political. His muse fre- LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 197 quexitly tired of sounding the trumpet of exaspera- tion, it was a task that was torture to her, and she soothed herself with the " soft complaining lute." His Castalia was not always a fountain of bitter waters, it sometimes flowed sweetly and pleasantly, like a stream in Arcadia. Elliott had suffered too severely to allow his muse to beguile him long from what he deemed "the cause." He takes the first opportunity to recur to his troubles. The Corn-law was a base string, which evermore checked the bird just as it was beginning to wing its happy flight to its woodland home, and by which it was drawn back to its cage, where, like Byron's falcon, it beat — " Its beak and breast against its wiry dome, Till the blood tinged its plumage." His steel-trade was in fault for this. His political poetry was inspired by the furnace ; his irons are heated in the chimney of his own manufactory. His muse recruits her wing in the country ; in the " town of the cloud " it droops, and becomes dingy. Elliott possesses much of the compressed vigour of Byron; but lacks his philosophical tran- sparency of thought, and classical elegance of expression. In Byron, each word is a thought that revolves around the ruling idea, reflecting the light which it receives, like the satellites of Jupiter. 198 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Byron's darkest gloom is instinct with a light that renders that darkness visible. Elliott is more chaotic ; his passions emit with the fitful force of a volcano's flames, not clearly traceable as the course of the lava stream. He is frequently ab- stract to mystification ; there is a want of individual character or separate idiosyncracy in him. Byron's poetry resembles a river, rapid yet clear, you see the bottom as it runs. Elliott's is turbid with the violence of its motion. Probably Elliott's feelings are as passionate as Byron's, but he dees not refine upon them so well ; that is to say, he does not so clearly illustrate his meaning with the force of intellect, as to convince at the same time that he excites. His ideas seem as if poured from a bottle, rather than an urn, bubbling, not flowing forth. His muse labours, and her deliverance, like that of the Pythoness, is with the inspiration of pain. He is declamatory rather than argumentative ; he does not always carry our understanding along with the torrent of his feelings. His denunciations strike with a stunning force, that drives the apprehension back for a while to return with fuller power ; or like the shot from a gun, which reaches its object before the report can be heard. Elliott's sarcasm is very bitter ; and yet it pro- ceeds not so much from ill-will as from the irritation LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 199 of his good-will. He is bold, because honest ; bitter, because true. Yet he is not less remarkable for pathos than for invective. It is difficult to conceive that if Elliott had pos- sessed Byron's opportunities, he would not have been equal to him as a poet ; his character as a man must be deemed superior. Elliott's forte, like Byron's, is in describing re- morse — instance "sad Senena ; M but while Byron's is impenitent with pride, Elliott's is softened with sorrow, and accepts misery as a fitting judgment for sin. In summing up Elliott's merits, we may say that he is a poet of Nature's own making, though almost marred by man ; that, leaving out his politics, and making allowance for those inele- gancies which a classical education would have corrected, he is worthy to rank with the best which England has produced. As the reader may be desirous to view Elliott through other eyes than mine, I will here insert a criticism written for this work by Richard Bedingfield, on the posthumous publications of the poet, entitled " More Prose and Verse. By the Corn-law Rhymer." The reader will perceive that Mr. Bedingfield is a psychological critic, or tran- scendentalist ; and it may be interesting to know what a " ripe and good scholar" of the ideal school may think of such a realist as Elliott. 200 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " MORE PROSE AND VERSE. " The highest poetry is that which not only sug- gests the infinite, but brings down the things of Eternity to the comprehension of finite minds. This poetry is religion. God is the great Poet, whose utterances are in the stars, and, above all, in the soul of man. The soul is divine; and he who can reveal some portion of its essence must have genius — genius not only to reveal what is part of itself, but its relation to the universal. " Now that Ebenezer Elliott is dead, his claims to genius are canvassed among lovers of poetry ; and the general verdict is in his favour. To genius of a secondary order (if that is possible), there can be no question, the volumes before us have a title. To the inspiration which dwells on the mind for ever — the passionate, wise, majestic, and sublime expression of a great and a powerful intellect, and a vast imagination — Elliott has no claims. Un- equal in his best passages, and in the vigour of his life, he frequently, in these volumes, betrays the inroads which time makes on the intellect and the fancy, and wearies us with the dilution of his genius in feeble and ill-judged verses. But there are some passages we could here and there select worthy of the Corn-law Rhymer's best days, breathing the spirit of resignation and peace — the LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 201 outpouring of a full heart and fervent soul, though not bearing the strong impress of distinct indivi- duality which characterises the works of great poets. We select a specimen — " ' And to the Father of eternal days, And fairest things that fairer yet will be, Shall I no song of adoration raise, •While Passion's world, and Life's great agony, Are one dread hymn — dread progresser — to thee ? Thou, Love, art progress ! and be thine the praise, If I have ever loved thy voice divine, And o'er the sadness of my slandered lays Flings its redeeming charm a note of thine. O gentlest Might Almighty ! if of mine One strain shall live, let it thy impress bear, And please wherever humble virtues twine The rose and woodbine with the thorns of care, Thriving because they love ! Thy temple, Lord, is there!'" " The religious idea, however, is not the dominant one in Elliott's poetry, as it is in the works of a few of our imaginative writers ; for instance, Mrs. Browning, whose mind is larger and more ethereal than his. Elliott was in earnest, and wrote with fire j but he was no thinker, and there is much vacillation in the tone of his mind. In these volumes the absence of a strong directing purpose is frequently felt, and many a good thought is lost for want of clearness and condensation. It is evident that he wished not to be diffuse ; but there is painful evidence that mind and taste were largely wanting in the composition of this poet. There is k3 202 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. more of the physical than the ideal in these volumes ; and when Elliott attempts to introduce a supernatural element his muse is not propitious. The longest poem in the first volume, c Etheline/ is quite a failure; and yet passages may be found interspersed through it not devoid of sweetness and fancy. It is in the natural and the human that he is at home. Elliott's philosophy did not He much beneath the surface; and, unlike Wordsworth, he said that he did not love things for anything they might suggest, but for the simple reality they embodied. He loved a flower because it was so, and the symbolism of the universe was, therefore, lost on him. His religion was that of nature ; and a few lines which we extract will afford a favourable specimen of his sentiments on the great subject of human destiny : — " ' To live in vain ! to live in pain ! To toil in hopeless sadness ! Is this the doom of godlike man, O God of Love and Gladness ? Not so the rose in summer blows — Not so the moon her changes knows — Not so the storm his madness. " ' From storms that rock the oak to sleep, Thy woods their beauty borrow ; And flowers to-day unheeded weep, Whose seeds will live to-morrow. So man, by painful ages taught, Will build at last on truthful thought And wisdom, won from sorrow LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 203 " ' Else, what a lie were written wide By thy right hand, my Father, O'er all thy seas in crimson dyed, When morning is a bather ; O'er all thy vales of growing gold, Or where, on mountains bleak with cold, Thy clouds to battle gather !'" " Elliott was of opinion that his prose possesses higher merit than his poetry; here, however, he was decidedly wrong. If he should live (and the question of a poetic immortality is not to be sum- marily disposed of), it will be by his poetry alone. There is no remarkable excellence in his prose, and his sentiments are generally erroneous and betray a lack of judgment. We confess that, with half-a- dozen exceptions, we doubt the permanence of any poetic fame in the present century. Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, had all a genius peculiar to themselves. And not only was this a distinctive character, but it exercised a strong influence on their age. It cannot be said that this is the case with the writings of Ebenezer Elliott. With every wish to do justice to his memory, we cannot think the genius a sublime and great one that does not carry the general mind of humanity onwards in the career of improvement — not only elevating and strengthening the mind and heart, but, like the sun, creating life and developing the latent germs of thought. This, the highest and the noblest 204 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. prerogative of genius, is above all party and poli- tical questions; this creative imagination it is which ' bodies forth the forms of things unknown/ and intimates the everlasting. In the calm power of inspiration, the far-seeing insight which no study and amount of thought can give, the spirit of man evinces that it is not born of clay. In the lightning-flashes of a vivid and passionate imagi- nation, the poet often suggests great truths which even a profound philosophy seldom developes j but in the lower aspects of fancy and feeling, whatever the natural beauty and sweetness on which the eye rests satisfied, we perceive nothing save the flesh, blood, and bones of our being. To imagination and intellect Elliott has scarcely any claims, but f More Prose and Verse ' will have charms for those who do not require the highest elements of poetry, who do not seek to dive into the recesses of our deep nature, and trace the mysterious works of God to their source in Him who is the Light of all light." LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 20; CHAPTER IX. BEAUTIES OF ELLIOTT. CONSCIENCE. " Guilt hath a tongue That blabs what he would hide." SEDUCTION. " Oh, cold men ! Ye pluck the flower, and lo, it is a weed I" WRATH. " Wrath, like a serpent, wrinkled on his brow." HORRORS OF PLAGUE. " He spake — and when he ceased the firm rock reeled In deeper darkness ; thunder o'er their heads Roared and was still ; then, like the distant sound Of worlds in ruin hurled, a voice was heard — ' Plague ! wander wild among the homes of men, And leave the fates to me.' Hades fell prone. ' Didst thou not hear ?' he cried ; ' Clouds heard and fled ; Winds and the thunder heard, and where are they ? Tremendous silence ! O thou palsied earth ! Whose footsteps shook thee ? To my soul dismayed Speak, cloudless storm ! and soundless lightnings, say What 'tis ye fear ? Was it a dream ?' At once Gone were the giant angels. Where they stood Was loneliness : no living tiling was there, But the breeze lifted up the little leaf, And on the cold rock lay the moonbeam cold." 206 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. TIME. " Time ever moves, the only traveller That tires not, rests not. Dilatory man May loiter and may pause ; Time pauses not. How fast his wings have swept away the hours !" APPROACHING STORM. " Darkness was spread o'er half the sky. The moon Slept on her sea of blue. The stars appeared To dream around her, in night's awful noon ! Wild lightnings, fluttering distant, fringed with fire The growing darkness of the wrathful west ; And on sublime Potomac's troubled breast, Convolved in seeming agony and ire, The red reflection like a dragon burned. And though the coming thunder was not heard, Yet on the breezeless sky, perturbed in dread, The silent bear his gleaming eyeballs turned ; Hoarse croaked the eagle on the mountain's head ; The buffalo in ominous horror lowed ; The storm-fiend whispered from his desert cave ; The forest shuddered ; the tumultuous cloud Wandered in Heaven ; black rolled the moaning wave. CONCISE NARRATIVE. " My love went to the war, and came not back ; Prince Charles, they said, was worsted in the strife. Anxious I watched on reputation's rack, But Alfred fled beyond the sea for life. Soon I became a mother ! — not a wife ! My wrathful parents spurned me from their door. Oh, cherished like the choicest garden flower, And nurtured on the breast of tenderness, And all unused to the evil hour, How should their silk-clad daughter face distress ? Where should the outcast Emma lay her head ? I sought and found a little lowly shed, Where long we lived resigned and calm, though poor ; My active needle earned our daily bread. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 207 But sickness, then by famine followed, came ; My hungry boy looked up for food, and pined ! My wearying task was profitless ; my frame Enfeebled by disease, unnerved my mind. I would not beg the alms of charity, Nor ask the legal dole of paupery ; No, I did worse — far worse. Heaven pardon me I Thou would'st not think that Emma once was fair, Yet fair she was, or Envy's self hath lied ; And she had still some sweet and drooping charms — But she had still some virtue and some pride. I turned abhorrent from lust's venomous arms ; How could I clasp pollution to my heart ? I wept, I prayed, but want would not depart ; And my boy's asking look, so pale and sad, Drove me in one unhappy moment mad. No pitying daughter of the rich and free, With angel looks and bounty, came to me. Oh, how I envied then the spotless maid, Who passed me blushing, and almost afraid ! Spurned by the base, scarce pitied by the good, Affliction rushed upon me like a flood. No aid without, and want and woe within ; Deserted — ah, no — left — by him I loved, My fife's life was that boy, the child of sin ! What mother's heart could see his tears unmoved ? I pawned the stolen silk ! — detected — tried — In the thronged court I stood, half petrified ; And there was doomed, beyond the billowy tide, On wild Columbia's shore of tears to groan." LILY AND ROSE. ' Pale mourned the lily where the rose had died." MARY STUART. ' Perhaps the artist might, with cunning hand, Mimic the morn on Mary's lip of love ; And Fancy might before the canvas stand, And deem he saw the unreal bosom move. 208 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. But who could paint her heavenly soul which glows With more than kindness — the soft thoughts that rove Over the moonlight, of her heart's repose — The wish to hood the falcon, spare the dove, Destroy the thorn, and multiply the rose ? Oh, hadst thou words of fire, thou couldst not paint My Mary, in her majesty of mind, Expressing half the queen, and half the saint — Her fancy wild, as pinions of the wind, Or sky-ascending eagle that looks down Calm on the homeless cloud he leaves behind, Yet beautiful as freshest flower full-blown, That bends beneath the midnight dews, reclined ; Or yon resplendent path o'er ocean's slumber thrown." DARNLEY. " Pride without honour ! — body without soul ! The heartless breast a brainless head implies. If men are mad when passion scorns control, And self-respect with shame and virtue flies — Darnley hath long been mad. Thou coxcomb rude ! Thou reptile, shone on by an angel's eyes ! Intemperate brute, with meanest thoughts imbued ! Dunghill ! wouldst thou the sun monopolise ? Wouldat thou have Mary's love ? for what ? — Ingratitude.' BOTHWELL. " A troubled dream thy changeful life hath been, Of storm and splendour. Girt with awe and power, A Thane illustrious, married to a queen — Obeyed, loved, flattered : blasted in an hour. A homicide ; a homeless fugitive O'er earth, to thee a waste without a flower ; A pirate on the ocean, doomed to live Like the dark osprey ! Could Fate sink thee lower ? Defeated, captured, dungeoned in this tower, A raving maniac." MURDER OF DARNLEY. " Up, up the rushing, red volcano went, And wide o'er earth, and heaven, and ocean flashed A torrent of earth-lightning, skyward sent. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 209 O'er heaven, earth, sea, the dread explosion crashed ; Then, clattering far, the downward fragments dashed. Roared the rude sailor o'er the illumined sea, ' Hell is in Scotland !' Shuddered Roslin's hall ; Lowed the scared heifer on the distant lea ; Trembled the city ; shrieked the festival ; Paused the pale dance from his delighted task ; Quaked every masker of the splendid hall ; Raised hands unanswered questions seemed to ask ; And there was one who leaned against the wall, Close pressing to her face, with hands convulsed, her mask." REMINISCENCE. White billow, know'st thou Scotland ? Did thy wet Foot ever spurn the shell on her loved strand ? There hast thou stooped the sea-weed grey to fret, Or glaze the pebble with thy crystal hand ? I am of Scotland. Dear to me the sand That sparkles where my infant days were nursed ! Dear is the vilest weed of that wild land, Where I have been so happy, so accursed ! Oh, tell me, hast thou seen my lady stand Upon the moonlight shore, with troubled eye, Looking towards Norway ! Didst thou gaze on her ? And did she speak of one far thence, and sigh ? Oh, that I were with thee a passenger To Scotland, the blessed Thule, with a sky Changeful like woman ! would, oh, would I were ! But vainly hence my frantic wishes fly. Who reigns at Holyrood ? Is Mary there ? And does she sometimes shed for him once loved a tear ?" DEATH OF BOTHWELL. ' Champion of freedom ! pray thee pardon me My laughter, if I now can laugh (in hell They laugh not) ; he who doth now address thee Is Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Hark, my knell — 210 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. The death-owl shrieks it. Ere I cease to fetch These pantings for the shroud, tell me, oh, tell, Believ'st thou God ? Blow on a dying wretch, Blow, wind that com'st from Scotland ! Fare thee well The owl shrieks ; I shall have no other passing bell." RIVER-FLOWERS. " How the flowers freshen where the waters glide, And seem to listen to the limpid tide !" LOVE. " Love, eldest muse ! Time heard thine earliest lay, When light through 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 — The bard a cinder, uninstinct with flame. But when the heart looks through 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 ripples of the azure wave, In fiery floods green hills their tresses lave, And myriad flowers, all bright'ning 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." GUILTY LOVE. " For what is sinful passion, but the lamp That gilds the vapours of a dungeon damp, And cheers the gloom awhile with fatal light, Only to leave at last a deeper night, LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 211 And make the darkness horror ? Yet for this, This shadowy glimmering of a troubled bliss, Insensate man peace, joy, and hope foregoes ; Reckless, he plunges into cureless woes, Buys fleeting pleasure with enduring pain, And, drunk with poison, weeps to drink again." STRONG IMAGE. " Let the storm smite his hands together." FLOWER AND MOONBEAM. " Sweet as the flower on which the moonbeam sleeps." DECEIVED HUSBAND. " I was undone ! By Ann and all forgot ; Cold, naked, hungry — and she sorrowed not ; Distracted — and she soothed not my despair ; Sick and in prison — and she came not there. Night was around me, and I wept alone, Despised, neglected, left unheard to groan. But when I rose out of the earth, and light ' And Nature's face rushed lovely on my sight, How did the bosom serpent greet her mate ? With looks of rancour and with words of hate ; And wretch she called the wretch herself had made. She cursed me to my weeping eyes — she bade My children curse me ! and I wished again To hear the clanking of my dungeon chain. But Julia was the sweetest child of all ; She kissed, she blessed me ; she alone did call Her mother's husband ' Father !' While the rest, Jane and Matilda (though my own), expressed No joy their sire's long-absent face to see. Julia — the youngest — Julia welcomed me ! Dear Julia \ on my broken heart she smiled — Dear Julia ! wherefore was she not my child ?" WOMAN'S HEART. " To hush the heart is woman's hardest task." 212 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. FLOWERS. " Flowers ! ye remind me of rock, vale, and wood, Haunts of my early days, and still loved well ; Bloom not your sisters fair in Locksley's dell ? And where the sun o'er purple moorlands wild Gilds Wharncliffe's oak while Don is dark helow ? And where the blackbird sings on Rother's side ? And where Time spares the age of Conisbro ? Sweet flowers, remembered well ! your hues, your breath, Call up the dead to combat still with death ; The spirits of my buried years arise ! Again a child, where childhood roved I run, While groups of speedwell, with their bright blue eyes, Like happy children cluster in the sun. Still the wan primrose hath a golden core, The mill-foil, thousand-leafed as heretofore, Displays a little world of flowerets grey ; And tiny maids might hither come to cull The woe-marked cowslip of the dewy May ; And still the fragrant thorn is beautiful. I do not dream ! Is it indeed a rose That yonder in the deepening sunset glows ? Methinks the orchis of the fountained wold Hath in its well-known beauty something new. Do I not know thy lofty disk of gold, Thou that still wooest the sun with passion true ? No, splendid stranger ! haply I have seen One not unlike thee, but with humbler mien, Watching her lord. O lily fair as aught Beneath the sky ! thy pallid petals glow In evening's blush ; but evening borrows nought Of thee, thou rival of the stainless snow, For thou art scentless. Lo ! this fingered flower That round the cottage window weaves a bower, Is not the woodbine ; but that lowlier one, With thick green leaves, and spike of dusky fire, Enamoured of the thatch it grows upon, Might be the house-leek of rude Hallamshire, And would awake, beyond divorcing seas, Thoughts of green England's peaceful cottages. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 213 Yes, and this blue-eyed child of earth that bends Its head on leaves with liquid diamonds set, A heavenly fragrance in its sighing sends ; And though 'tis not our downcast violet, Yet might it haply to the zephyr tell That 'tis beloved by village maids as well." GENIUS. " I am Timna, called the sad, Because fond mothers still are doomed to see Their most unhappy sons resemble me : Timna, at whose approach dull spirits flee ; Who sits beneath the roof of amethyst, And treads the spacious, mountain-broidered floor ; From courts and palaces with scorn dismissed, Nor always welcomed by the friendless poor. But all the children of the forest know The leveret's playmate, the lark's bedfellow. CURE OF WOE. "Woe's dreadful cure is its enormity !" TOWN USURPING THE COUNTRY. ' But much he dreads the town's distracting maze Where all to him is full of change and pain. New streets invade the country, and he strays, Lost in strange paths, still seeking, and in vain, For ancient landmarks of the lonely lane Where oft he played at Crusoe, when a boy. Fire vomits darkness where his lime-trees grew ; Harsh grates the saw where coo'd the wood-dove coy ; Tomb crowds on tomb where violets drooped in dew, And, brighter than bright heaven, the speedwell blue Clustered the bank where now the town-bred boor (Victim and wretch ! whose children never smile J Insults the stranger, sightless, old, and poor, On Swilled Saint Monday, with his cronies vile, Drunk, for the glory of the holy isle, While pines his wife, and tells to none her woes." 214 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. WOMEN SINGING AT WORK. " Hark ! music still is here ! How wildly sweet, Like flute-notes in a storm, the psalm ascends From yonder pile in traffic's dirtiest street ! There hapless woman at her labour bends, While with the rattling fly her shrill voice blends ; And ever as she cuts the headless nail, She sings — ' I waited long, and sought the Lord, And patiently did bear.' A deeper wail Of sister voices joins in sad accord — ' He set my feet upon his rock adored !' And then, perchance, ' O God ! on man look down I ' ' NATIVE RIVERS. Five rivers, like the fingers of a hand, Flung from black mountains, mingle and are one, Where sweetest valleys quit the wild and grand And eldest forests, o'er the sylvan Don, Bid their immortal brother journey on, A stately pilgrim, watched by all the hills. Say, shall we wander where, through warriors' graves, The infant Yewden, mountain-cradled, trills Her Doric notes ? Or where the Locksley raves Of broil and battle, and the rocks and caves Dream yet of ancient days ? Or where the sky Darkens o'er Rivilin the clear and cold, That throws his blue length like a snake from high ? Or where deep azure brightens into gold, O'er Sheaf that mourns in Eden ? Or where, rolled On tawny sands, through regions passion-wild, And groves of love, in jealous beauty dark, Complains the Porter, Nature's thwarted child, Born in the waste, like headlong Wiming." BEE AND PRIMROSE. " And soon faint odours o'er the vernal dew Shall tempt the wanderings of the earliest bee, Hither with music sweet as poesy, To woo the flower whose verge is wiry gold." LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 215 FATE OF GENIUS. " Who shall credit thee, Genius ? still treacherous or unfortunate, Victim or wronger ! why must Hope still see Thy pinions plumed with light divine abate Their speed when nearest heaven, to uncreate Her glorious visions ? Aye, since time began, Creatures with hearts of stone and brains of clay, Scorning thy vaunt to wing the reptile man, O'er thee and thine have held barbarian sway ; And in the night which yet may have its day, (The night of ages, moonless, starless, cold,) If the rare splendour of the might of mind Hath sometimes flashed o'er plagues and errors old, It flashed but to expire and leave behind A deedlier gloom. But woodbine wreaths are twined Round thorns ; and praise to merit due is paid To vulgar dust, best liked when earthy most. While Milton grew self-nourished in the shade, Ten Wallers basked in day. Misrule can boast Of many Alvas ; Freedom, oft betrayed, Found her sole Washington." SABBATH IN THE FIELDS. Hail, Sabbath ! day of mercy, peace, and rest ! Thou o'er loud cities throw' st a noiseless spell. The hammer there, the wheel, the saw, molest Pale thought no more. O'er trade's contentious Hell, Meek quiet spreads her wings invisible. But when thou com'st less silent are the fields Through whose sweet paths the toil -freed townsman steals ; To him the very air a banquet yields. Envious he watches the poised hawk, that wheels His flight on chainless winds. Each cloud reveals A paradise of beauty to his eye. His little boys are with him, seeking flowers, Or chasing the too venturous gilded fly. So by the daisy's side he spends the hours, Renewing friendship with the budding bowers ; 216 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. And — while might, beauty, good without alloy, Are mirrored in his children's happy eyes — In his great temple offering thankful joy To Him, the infinitely Great and Wise, With soul attuned to Nature's harmonies, Serene and cheerful as a sporting child." MERIT. " Lo ! merit is not food to every man !" THE SOUL. " Our souls are lyres that strangely can retain The tones that trembled on their stricken chords. PARTING. " The meanest thing to which we bid adieu Loses its meanness in the parting hour." WAVES. " Like billows on the solitary shore, Where baffled wave to baffled wave succeeds, Spurned by the sullen rocks with sullen roar, And rising, falling, foaming evermore, To rise, and fall, and roar, and foam in vain." PASTORAL. " Where is the matron, with her busy brow, Their sheep, where are they ? and their famous cow, Their strutting gamecock, with his many queens, Their glowing holyoaks, and winter greens ? The chubby lad, that cheered them with his look, And shared his breakfast with the homebred rook ; The blooming girls, that scoured the snow-white pail, And waked with joy the echoes of the vale, And, laden homewards, near the sparkling rill, Cropped the first rose that blushed beneath the hill. All vanished, with their rights, their hopes, their lands, The shoulder shaking grasp of hearts and hands ; The good old joke, applauded still as new ; The wond'rous printed tale, that must be true ; LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 217 And the stout ale, that showed the matron's skill, For not to be improved, it mended still ! Now, lo ! the young look base as greybeard guile, The very children seem afraid to smile, But not afraid to scowl, with early hate, At would-be greatness, or the greedy great ; For they who fling the poor man's worth away Root out security, and plant dismay." BYRON AND NAPOLEON. 1 Lo ! as I ceased from earth a stranger came With hurried step — a presence heavenly fair (Yet grief, and anger, pride, contempt, and shame, Were strangely mingled in his troubled stare), And thus he spoke, with timid haughty air, To Russell, Fairfax, in tones low but sweet, ' I, too, am noble ! England's magnates rank Me with themselves. And when beneath their feet Fate's low-born despot, hope-deserted, sank, When torrid noon his sweat of horror drank, I joined his name for ever with my own.' ' Him then to answer, one who sate alone, Like a maimed lion, mateless in his lair, Rose from his savage couch of barren stone, His kingly features withered by despair, And heart- worn, till the tortured nerve was bare. With looks that seemed to scorn, e'en scorn of less Than demigods, the army -scatterer came — An awful shadow of the mightiness That once was his — the gloom, but not the flame, Of waning storms, when winds and seas grow tame. The stranger, shrinking from the warrior's eye, On his own hands his beauteous visage bowed, Sobbing ; but soon he raised it mournfully, And met the accusing look, and on the crowd Smiled, while the stem accuser spake aloud." THE MIND'S EYE. O look on Alfred ! — look ! the man is blind ! She whom he loved, sleeps in her winding-sheet ; Yet, he beholds her with the eyes of mind ! L 218 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. He sees the form, which he no more shall meet ; But cannot see the primrose at his feet." WORKS OF GOD AND OF MAN. " How beauteous are the dyes That grove and hedgerow from their plumage shake ! And cannot the loud hammer, which supplies Food for the blacksmith's rosy children, make Sweet music to thy heart?" MACHINERY. " Poor, blind, old man ! what would he give to see This bloodless Waterloo ! this hell of wheels ; This dreadful speed that seems to sleep and snore, And dream of earthquake." MECHANIC. " Lo ; there he moves, the thoughtful engineer, The soul of all this motion ; rule in hand And coarsely-aproned — simple, plain, sincere — An honest man ; — self-taught to understand The useful wonders which he built and planned. Self-taught to read and write — a poor man's son ; Though poor no more — how would he sit alone When the hard labour of the day was done, Bent o'er his table, silent as a stone, To make the wisdom of the wise his own." MISERIES OF THE POOR. " Some griefs the strongest soul might shake, And I such griefs have had ; My brain is hot — but they mistake Who deem that I am mad. My father died — my mother died — Four orphans poor were we ; My brother John worked hard, and tried To smile on Jane and me. But work grew scarce, while bread grew dear, And wages lessened too ; For Irish hordes were bidders here, Our half-paid work to do. LIFE OF EBEXEZER ELLIOTT. 219 Vet, still he strove, with failing breath, And sinking cheek, to save Consumptive Jane, from early death — Then joined her in the grave. His watery hand in mine I took, And kissed him till he slept ; Oh, still I see his dying look ! He tried to smile, and wept ! I bought his coffin with my bed, My gown bought earth and praye." I pawned my mother's ring for bread — I pawned my father's chair. My Bible still remains to sell, And yet unsold shall be ; But language fails my woes to tell : Even crumbs were scarce with me." SPIRIT OF LIBERTY. " Father of all ! hear thou our cry, And England shall be free ! Methinks thy nation-wedding waves Upbraid us as they flow ; Thy winds, disdaining fettered slaves, Reproach us as they blow." FORCE OF TRUTH. " They smite in vain who smite with swords, And scourge with vollied fire ; Our weapon is the whip of words, And truth's all-teaching ire." THE PRESS. " God said—' Let there be light !' Grim darkness felt his might, And fled away. Then startled seas and mountains cold Shone forth, all bright in blue and gold, And cried — ' 'Tis day ! 'tis day !' r 9 220 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " ' Hail, holy light !' exclaimed The thund'rous cloud that flamed O'er daisies white ; And lo ! the rose in crimson dressed Leaned sweetly on the lily's breast, And blushing, murmured — ' Light !' " Then was the skylark born ; Then rose the embattled corn ; Then floods of praise Flowed o'er the sunny hills of noon ; And then in stillest night, the moon Poured forth her pensive rays. '? Lo, heaven's bright bow is glad ! Lo, trees and flowers, all clad In glory, bloom ! And shall the mortal sons of God Be senseless as the trodden clod, And darker than the tomb ? " No, by the mind of man ! By the swart artisan ! By God, our Sire ! Our souls have holy light within, And every form of grief and sin Shall see and feel its fire. " By earth, and hell, and heaven, The shroud of souls is riven ! Mind — mind alone Is light and hope, and life and power ! Earth's deepest night, from this blessed hour, The night of minds is gone ! " ' The Press !' All lands shall sing The Press — the Press we bring, All lands to bless. O pallid Want ! O Labour stark ! Behold, we bring the second ark ! The Press ! The Press ! The Press !" LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 221 THE PRIMROSE. " Still thou art loveliest in the lonest place." DYING BOY'S LAMENT. " But woodbines flaunt when blue bells fade, Where Don reflects the skies ; And many a youth in Shirecliffe's shade Will wander where my boyhood played, Though William dies. " Then panting woods the breeze will feel, And bowers, as heretofore, Beneath their load of roses reel ; But I through woodbined lanes shall steal No more, no more." MAJESTY OF WIN-HILL. " To be a crowned and sceptered curse, that makes Immortal worms ! a wolf, that feeds on souls ! One of the names which Vengeance whips with snakes, Whose venom cannot die ! a King of Ghouls, Whose drink is blood ! To be clear-eyed as owls, Still calling darkness light, and winter spring — To be a tiger-king, whose mercy growls — To be of meanest things the vilest thing ! Throned asp o'er lesser asps ! what grub would be a king ? " But crowned Win- hill ! to be a king like thee ! Older than death ! as God's thy calm behest ! Only heaven-rivalled in thy royalty ! Calling the feeble to thy sheltering breast, And shaking beauty from thy gorgeous vest, And loved by every good and happy thing ! With nought beneath thee that thou hast not blessed, And noagut above thee but the Almighty's wing — Oh, glorious, god-like aim ! who would not be a king ?" STORM ON THE HILLS. " Now expectation listens mute and pale, While ridged with sudden foam the Derwent brawls, Arrow-like comes the rain, like fire the hail ; And hark ! Mam-Tor on shuddering" Stana^e calls ! 222 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. See what a frown o'er castled Winnat falls ! Down drops the death-black sky ! and Kinderscout, Conscious of glory, laughs at intervals, Then lifts his helmet, throws his thunders out, Bathes all the hills in flame, and hails their stormy shout." WONDERS OF THE LANE. " Lo ! in that dot, some mite like me, Impelled by wo or whim, May crawl some atom cliffs to see A tiny world to him ! " Lo ! when he pauses and admires The works of Nature's might, Spurned by my foot, his world expires, ' And all to him is night !" EXCURSION. " 'Tis passing sweet to wander free as air, Blithe truants in the bright and breeze- blessed day, Far from the town, where stoop the sons of care O'er plans of mischief, till their souls turn grey, And dry as dust, and dead-alive are they — Of all self-buried things, the most unblessed. O morn, to them no blissful tribute pay, O night's long-courted slumbers, bring no rest To men who laud man's foes, and deem the basest best. " God ! would they handcuff Thee ? and, if they could, Chain the free air, that like the daisy goes To every field, and bid the warbling wood Exchange no music with the willing rose For love- sweet odours, where the woodbine blows And trades with every cloud and every beam Of the rich sky. Their gods are bonds and blows, Rocks and blind shipwreck ; and they hate the stream That leaves them still behind, and mocks their changeless dream." POET'S ASPIRATION. " Even here on earth not altogether fade The good and vile. Men, in their words and deeds, Live when the heart and hand in earth are laid ; For thoughts are things, and written thoughts are seeds ; LIFE OF EBEXEZER ELLIOTT. 223 Our very dust buds forth in flowers or weeds. Then let me write for immortality One honest song, uncramped by forms or creeds, That men unborn may read my times in me, Taught by my living words when I shall cease to be." LIFE AND DEATH. " Oh, welcome in the morn the road That climbs to virtue's high abode ; But when descends the evening dew, The inn of rest is welcome too." MIND. " Mind is mightiest then When turning evil into good, And monsters into men." POET OF THE POOR. " Shall we not lift the lowly, Whom law and custom ban ? Oh, help us to exalt and praise God in the mind of man ! " In vain your pomp, ye evil powers ! Insults the land; Wrongs vengeance and the cause is ours, And God's right hand." FREE-TRADE. " Streams trade with clouds, seas trade with heaven, Air trades with light and is forgiven ; While man would make all climes his own, But, chained by man, laments alone. " Thy winds, O God ! are free to blow, \ Thy streams are free to chime and flow, Thy clouds are free to roam the sky ; Let man be free his arts to ply." NOTHINGNESS OF ALL THINGS. " The generations gone, What are they but a word? All, all that all have done, Is but Thy whisper, Lord," 224 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. PLEA FOR THE POOR. Wrong not the labouring poor by whom ye live, Wrong not your humble fellow-worms, ye proud ! For God will not the poor man's wrongs forgive, But hear his plea and have his plea allowed. Oh, be not like the vapours splendour rolled That, sprung from earth's green breast, usurp the sky, Then spread around contagion black and cold, Till all who mourn the dead prepare to die ! No, imitate the bounteous clouds that rise, Freighted with bliss, from river, vale, and plain ; The thankful clouds that beautify the skies, Then fill the lap of earth with fruit and grain. Yes, emulate the mountain and the flood, That trade in blessings with the mighty deep ; Till, soothed to peace and satisfied with good, Man's heart be happy as a child asleep." PATIENCE AND POWER. " Man endures The curse of bondage better than he cures." DEATH OF KERHONAH. " Quit not, thou ruddy tide, my harrowed cheek, Lest white men mock its paleness. Why should death Whiten the lip which fear could never change ? Weep not, my daughter, lest these tongues of serpents Say that thy tears, which bathe my breast, are mine." SORROW. " On his face Sorrow had written kindness with a tear." WOMAN. " Earth's heavenly flower." LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 225 PKOSE PASSAGES. " If we saw a brewer ordering two of his servants to pump ale into a cooler, and at the same time ordering another servant to pump that ale out of the cooler into the street, we should say to ourselves, " This is a comical way of brewing.' We should think the brewer a very silly person, and we should tell him that he was paying the wages of three men for the work of one, and wasting the ale besides ; but we should also see before us an exact pic- ture of bread-taxed England at this moment. We, the vast majority, 12,000,000 of manufacturers and tradesmen, are trying to till the cooler, while the minority, the 4,000,000 of agricul- turists, are throwing the ale out of the cooler into the street." "The Corn-law is another proof of our having annihilated Jacobinism and French principles. Over it, in embryo, the hereditary ears had long been shaken ; but when the perfection of monopoly was born, how joyful were the pangs of parturition ! how loud was the bray of absolute wisdom on the birth of the donkey of his dotage, so worthy of its father, and so like him ! The thistles of old Scotland had a holiday on the occasion, and to this hour, expecting to be food for man, disdain the approach- ing jackass !" " The Parisians talk of the ' Roast Beef of Pork,' but what would they say of the * Roast Beef of Potatoes ?' " " If the Corn-law should destroy our trade, and the agriculture of the country be unable, as it would be, to furnish even potatoes for the population, it is rather probable that 15,000,000 of Radi- cals would not die of famine without making very odd grimaces and uttering sounds which Nimrod and Tallyho could not easily mistake for the cry of a pack of hounds, though each of those gentlemen might play his character of puss or fox in the drama of retribution." " Thanes of the splendid village ! think of these things. If you have been engaged since your arrival at years of indiscretion in patronising ruin by Act of Parliament ; if your whole live r s have been spent in sapping the very foundations of society, wonder not should the floor of the social edifice sink suddenly beneath your feet, and the roof descend on your heads in thunder!" " It is a horrible fact that not one petition for peace emanated from the great body of religionists in England during twenty- rive years of war against the laws of God and the rights of man.''' " Ever)' man who would not welcome revolution should oppose the Corn-law, or it will revolutionise the kingdom." l3 226 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. CHAPTER X. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. " Great Houghton, near Barnsley, Sth June, 1843. " Dear Sir, — I could like, before I die, to prove a true prophet for once, and hear that you are become a first-class editor of some honest out-spoken newspaper, or author of a capital acting drama, or a popular lecturer and critic. Suppose you start with ' Byron as the poet of conscience ?' — are not these your words ? equally fine and true ; or ' Byron as a dramatist.' (By the way, there are not many finer things than his ' Sardanapalus.') But what sort of a gab have you to lecture with ? Is it a squeak, or a mew, or a growl, or a Rory O'Thunder ? I dare not quote the Latin for the latter term, but it (the Latin) signifies Open-gab or Round-mouth. " This ' Chartist Magazine' cannot succeed com- mercially, and it may turn out to be the greatest blunder you ever committed. If you are a shareholder in it, it may take your last penny and your honest name, involving you in bankruptcy ! Get out, if you are in. Colonel Thompson's acceptance of a share in the ' West- minster Review ' cost him 10.000Z. I am a shareholder in a Joint Stock Bank, out of which I would gladly get, with the loss of half my investments. " I don't think your first number any great shakes. Mrs. Elliott, however, thinks differently. ' The article on the Repeal of the Union,' she says, ' is cram-full of good sense.' Whew ! I agree with her that there are some capital observations in the letter to Canter ; for instance, that Abraham was a pagan (perhaps a cannibal ?), LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 227 and that Paul corrupted Christianity by his wind}' meta- physics. (Between ourselves, he owes his popularity to them.) The author of 'Poems by a Sufferer' should mystify in the same way — it luorit do to be understood, especially in poetry, which, to be sure, seldom happens. ' But the Poor-law Martyrs,' she says, ' is to be the gem of the book.' If so, I am no prophet of good, at any rate. ' Prophet of Evil ! never came good word of thine to pass,' says Agamemnon to Chacas in Homer. Have you read Samuel Bamford's ' Passages in the Life of a Radical ?' If you have not, do. " I wish my children could say of me as you say of your dad, that I am a Rothschild. I have invested badly, and am likely to become a poor man ; but not, I hope, to die in a workhouse bed. Poverty, however, prevents no poor man from shaking hands with a rich one, if the latter is willing. Should you ever find your- self at the Barnsley Station, on the North Midland Rail- way (with a fortnight on your hands that you don't know what to do with), you may there, or at the adjoining village of Cudworth, get a guide over three miles of the ugliest, dirtiest, and worst to find of all possible or con- ceivable footpaths to my miserable hut, or den in the wilderness. But I don't expect to meet you again on this side the black pond; and, on the other side, I shall not take the same road as you Feargusites. I'd scorn it." " 19 th June, 1843. " Dear Sir, — I look forward with pleasure to our meeting next month. If there are any little delicates that you can't well do without, and which can't be got on a common nine miles from the nearest market, bring a pint or two of them in a little bag, as the bag will be useful to carry provend in during our rambles. If you like fish, bring a fishmonger with you, otherwise the tiling (the fish, I mean) is hardly possible. Perhaps you can ' waft a pioneer from Battersea to the desert' a week or two before you start, that I may be sure to be at home. ' ; I am this day informed that an excellent young 228 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. man, called Webster, a lawyer, and editor of the late Tory newspaper, the Sheffield Patriot, is made bankrupt, on account of his connexion with the concern. Now, a 10s. share in the Chartist would make you liable to all you are worth ! " If you carried a resolution against Feargus at a public meeting of Chartists, certainly you have done a feat which all we Corn-law repealers put together could not have done ; but when I said that with the Feargusites ' I'd scarce gang om/ where,' I by no means meant to say that you are not a clever fellow. On the contrary, I allow that you are a critic. Of your critic might be made a lawyer ; and the personage who alone can outwit a natural lawyer must not be named irreverently." " From my Den on the Common, 6th December, 1843. ;> Dear Sir, — Well, you have mauled him ! But who would be a god to be so mauled by one of the most devoted of his worshippers ? In point of style your Philippic beats all your previous doings. I mean not to flatter when I say that I know not the. author in whose pages I should look for more vigorous English idiom. I have a theory on this subject : Let him who would successfully denounce or persuade accustom himself to public speaking. If there is truth in physiognomy, you were born a fighter ; this is obvious in the lip of your portrait, as in that of Keats. But he, poor boy, fought not. Let us hope better of you. And if we are to have a duel, let it be fought under the Wind-Gap Oak, on old Ringston-hill, that I may be the Homer of your Iliad, and also write an elegy on both the heroic defunct. In the meantime, with your terrible 'Impeachment' before me. I am almost forced to exclaim, like the valet in the play. ' Zounds ! won't it go off!' " " 15th December, 1843. " Dear Sir, — I have been revisited by my choking fits, or I would sooner have answered your favour of the 9th instant. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 229 " I am a fool, a proved, confirmed fool, desperately, incurably stupid — some say, mad ; and of me you ask advice. I will give it in all sincerity. " To a man of the poetical temperament, single blessed- ness is no small evil ; indeed, the longevity of married persons proves it to be a great one. On the other hand, it is certain that the greatest benefits ever conferred on mankind have been conferred by bachelors ; some of whom — for instance, Bentham — lived in all happiness to a great age. But you, it appears, have a friend worth all the wives in the world — a mother ! Live, then, with that best friend — not rich, but in modest self-dependence — controlling as you may the strongest of human feelings. If you are a dramatist, prove it, not as a matter of business, but of amusement ; if you are a poet, that sad fact will inevitably prove itself; but if you are a philo- sopher, how happy, how useful may you not be ! what dignity, what beauty may not your life exhibit ! Avoid at present, as you would avoid death itself, everything like business or commercial speculation. There is a trade by which, if I were put to my shifts in London, I think I could live — the bone and rag trade ; but it would not suit 'you. However, if your income is not equal to your wishes, try to increase it by obtaining, through the influence of some friend or member of Parliament (and in no other way), an agency or clerkship in some public office or company. But why submit to any such humili- ation ? You have 80/. and a mother ! and you com- plain. I shudder to think what my condition was at your time of life. I was steeped in troubles — meditating suicide, with a cast-iron weight between my legs — then ! but it stops my breath. I could tell you tales that would make your hair lift your hat off. Towards the close of November, 1819, however — when Fortune, for the first time, began truly to smile on me — I was flitting to Shef- field, with eight or nine children in a cart, my main stay being the Gospel Oak Company's agency, worth perhaps 50/. per annum. And now, after all my trials, and with three out of eight surviving children, unesta- blished in the world, I seriously doubt whether I have 230 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. a clear income of 200?. a-year. True, I still have pro- perty, which ought to be worth much more ; but it is at present unproductive. This, you may say, must be the result of my own mismanagement. Very differently managed your excellent father, and I reverence him for his providence and wisdom. My life has been one long blunder— all blunder — and I have blundered worst at last. Perhaps, as you seem to hint, my greatest blunder is this, of expending not less, I fear, than 1,2501. on ten acres of bad land and a dwelling here. But I was aware, when I came hither, that the country possesses no advan- tages except for him who loves it for its own sake ; and that this situation possesses none over Sheffield, except cheaper and better fuel, sweeter water, purer air, and good roads, without toll-bars. I did not expect to find here a paradise of cherubs praising God, though we have some strapping ones of that species. I knew that if there is vice in towns, there is crime in the country — crime of the blackest ; for in crimes of violence, and in proportion to population, the village of Wombwell, four miles hence, exceeds the criminality of Sheffield one hundred per cent. I knew that if we would fall in with a rogue able to cheat the devil, we have only to buy horses at a country fair; and that if we would know who they are that cheat Railway Companies, by getting into wrong carriages, or not paying at all, we shall find on inquiry that nineteen-twentieths of them are country people. I was prevented by the dearness of fuel from removing to the neighbourhood of London, where my present income would not have maintained me. Perhaps I ought to have gone to Doncaster, one of the best markets in England ; but I should not have been happy there, for it is full of the pride of caste and exclusiveness. Here, however, I am — in this wilderness of foxhunters — a very experienced jackass, grey as a badger, and braying characteristically with a measure in my ears for all longitudes. " Mrs. Elliott joins me in the best wishes for your happiness, and I assure you, if ever you find your way hither, I will show you all our queer-nebbed things." I LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 23 L " 26tk December, 1843. "Dear Sir, — If you knew as much about marriage and its consequences as I do, I believe you would not marry in any circumstances ; and yet, I conceive, I was lucky in my choice of a wife, and am of opinion that, had I not married, I should have been put under the sod some thirty -five years ago. " I continue unwell, without any very obvious cause except the true one ; I therefore begin vehemently to suspect that I really am getting old. " There is an impression on my mind that we shall meet no more on this side the moon ; if we do, I believe we shall • quarrel, perhaps fight. It will certainly be bad economy in you to spend 61. merely to have a talk with an old fool. Could you not plan a visit to your friends in the north, and, calling on me by the way, pass a month with us? Such an exercise of the patient virtues might enable you to bear any infliction of the uproarious fates in future. I am glad, however, to learn that you are tired of leading a life of turmoil and contest. Dully as my days pass here, ' I'm na' for ganging back again,' even to hear Feargus — sublimest incarnation of truths that lie. " As you seem to rejoice in pinning a clout to my tail, I must tell you that there is one that I have earned that I am justly proud of, and to the respectability of which neither the prefix ' Mr.,' nor the termination ' Esq.,' can add anything. Address me, then, as the author of ' Festus ' does, plain Ebenezer Elliott, C. L. R. Our poorest esquires keep half-a-dozen flunkeys, I keep none ; they spend 5,0001 a year each, I can barely muster 4:1. a week. " I wonder that a man of genius should countenance the barbarous practice of putting letters under a cover ; a practice which, besides being troublesome, destroys the value of letters as evidence, by cutting off the postmark. But this comes, I suppose, of being born of folks worth 4o,ooor 232 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. " 27th January, 1844, " Dear Sir. — Your three kind and most welcome letters came duly to hand. I am recovering from a sort of cold which has kept me in a listless state some weeks. With a friend to show me the ' uncos ' I could spend a few days pleasantly in London ; but what I require is, cheerful conversation, rather than change of scene. Here are pleasant places, but I visit them alone ; for my folks are in-door folks and bad talkers : I doubt whether ten words a day are addressed to me, except by my poor servant lass. At Sheffield the case was still worse, for there I had no conversation at all ; nor could I, during the last ten years of my stay there, induce any of my women to visit with me the beautiful scenes in that neighbour- hood, except on one occasion, when I took my youngest daughter a walk of eight miles and lamed her for a week or more. My best solace is conversing, albeit imper- fectly and in writing, with the young minds of our country : with a letter in my hand from such a man as the author of ' Festus,' * I live my young years o'er again.' " If in my passage through life it has been my hard fate not to be understood by persons whose approbation would have been to me ' more precious than rubies,' I ought to be consoled when I find that by you I am both understood and appreciated ; and if you like my writings you cannot fail to like me, for they are the best of me : thank God, I have at least written honestly. I agree with you that ' The Letter ' and the two last books of ' They Met Again,' are among my best compositions ; but ' The Exile ' has been most praised ; and one of my friends prefers my little epic, ' Withered Wild Flowers,' to all my other metrical sins. ' Spirits and Men ' was lauded on its first appearance, and I liked it then, but not now ; it is well that I stopped at the end of the first book ; the perusal of nine more like it would have killed Job. I am not surprised that ' Kerhonah ' has pleased nobody, for it is made up of disjointed scenes from a five-act play, one of five rejected dramas. Five rejected dramas! LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 233 Who can say that I want perseverance ? One of these rejected dramas, printed in the three-vol. edition of my poems, and called ' Taurassdes,' is a comical joke for a tragedy, or there never was one. " I was delighted with your description of Wimbledon and your intended cottage. But why have a house- keeper at all ? Do without one, and you wall live rent- and-tax free. So, at one time of their lives, have lived some of the greatest men of the Continent — Schiller, Richter, Rousseau, Beranger. And why not? 'The world can always spare the man whose most important business it is to ring the bell.' So, I believe, says Thomas Carlyle. Independent with your 801. a year, be self-dependant too. You would soon take an interest in your own cooking, and relish your food better. Clean- ing, purveying provend, reading, writing, and seeing friends in and about town, would leave you not one heavy hour. Of course, you would have your washing done out of the house, and employ a charwoman twice or thrice a year to snug you up ; when, throwing the window wide open for protection, you might venture to cuddle a bit, by way of a change. " The word I like best in your letters is the word ' lec- ture ;' but Feargus is unworthy of your notice, and if you had the powers of a Paul you could not deprive him of the requisites for which his employers chose him, ' the loud voice, the brazen face, and the broad — ' for which I praised him in Palace-yard, when I slily quoted Homer to the cockneys. Your own Feargus, too, whose eloquence reminds me of Homer's description of Ulysses : — " ' For when the deep and mellow bass breaks forth From his broad breast, the breath of all is hushed — All listen, all are still.' (' Hear, hear, hear.')" " 19* A February, 1844. "Dear Sir, — If Paine had written nothing but his ' Common Sense,' he would already have been one of the most popular authors in the world : and if he had not 234 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. written it, America would now have been about as well governed as British India. "lam not aware that Peel has put Dan into a fright ; but if his trying to do so is an artful dodge, let him exercise his art. " What you say of young folks and old folks is strictly true ; but my folks made no use of the social advantages of Sheffield when they had them. Your descriptions of the neighbourhood of London disturb me. We miss your facilities, and the market of the town. At Shef- field, with an eightpenny haddock and a tenpenny rabbit, we had an elegant dinner, if a stranger happened to drop in. Here, perhaps, we have no compensating advan- tages. But I could be happy in a wood, ten miles from the nearest neighbour ; and yet I believe few men are more social than I am. Let me not forget, however, that in my youth I was scarcely ever seen with a com- panion of my own sex, and with the lasses I had no luck. " ' Festus,' as printed, is a metaphysical poem. A new edition, greatly enlarged, is about to appear. The author, I fear, will turn parson of some sort. He is a son of a rich wine merchant at Nottingham, and lives at Wands- worth. " I suspect I am as old as Methuselah, and shall never be young again. Ill-health, or possibly what you call ' the mopes,' has prevented me from sooner answering your favour of the 30th uit." " \5th April, 1844. " Dear John, — Nations .reap what the 'Peep of Day Boys' sow for them ; but men generally reap as they sow : complain not, then, of ' Fate.' "You do wrong to tell your faults. Rousseau and Byron did so, and men not only believe the evil which they confessed, but suspect them of much more. The truth is, they were neither better nor worse than other people ; indeed, they could not be so sensual as most, because they had not sufficient physical strength ; it can't be true that Genius is a rake. LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 235 " I have latterly had a new visitor — flatulence. I am very, very weak; the game, I believe, is nearly up with me." " 25 th April, 1844. " Dear Sir, — While our anti -profit laws continue, it is perhaps sinful to marry in this country, if children are to be the consequence. Supposing it justifiable to marry at all in food-taxed Britain, it would not be justifiable in your case, unless you could marry an elderly person, or one whose fortune would add a hundred a-year to your income. Marry fortune or forty-five. The marriages of young men with middle-aged women are almost always as happy as those of young women and old men are the reverse. If you could meet with such a partner, you would love each other more and more every day. " Is it not better to be good and happy than to be thought so ? The stars are impartial, and notoriety is not fame. My ' Corn-law Rhymes' made me notorious, and my honest object in writing them may one day make me famous. On looking back on my past life, I find two incidents which please me. I had the honour to originate the first Anti-Corn-law Association. It was called the ' Sheffield Mechanics' Anti -Bread-tax Society.' The 'Corn-law Rhymes' were written to spread the opinions of its members ; and I still think our Declara- tion a master-piece of its kind. If you feel any curiosity on the subject, I will send you a copy of it, with fac- similes of the signatures, as exact as I can make them. They remind me of Wordsworth's poem, ' We are Seven,' and of the old proverb, ' Rome was not built in a day.' I had also the honour to instruct and send forth on his mission the first Anti-Corn-law lecturer, Mr. Paulton, now, I believe, sub-editor of the League. I began with A, food limited — B, population increasing — C, profit and wages diminishing ; he listened carelessly, but left . me either with a letter to Colonel Thompson, or an assurance from me that I would write one, which I did ; and I soon heard of him preaching to the plundered the truth 236 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. which is life. From that hour the good cause has been making progress. " I need no cramp in the stomach to tire me of life. Positively, if I knew any way of dying without pain, I would not live an hour, suffering as I do. I feel con- temptible to myself. Formerly my stomach, I verily believe, could digest ganister stone ; and now, if I happen to eat a few inches of raw cabbage-stalk, I am ill in consequence." " 1st June, 1844. " Dear Sir, — I know not that I am worse, but a change has taken place in my complaint, the dyspeptic symptoms alternating with others of a painful kind, pre- paratory, I suppose, to the great change — truly so called, if greatness is universal. " I am much pleased with your account of the speakers at Exeter Hall. Bright I have not heard, though, I believe, I have seen him. Colonel Thompson is the only orator I ever heard, and yet I have heard O'Connell. He cannot, like O'Connor, bawl opposition down — he laughs it down. I will give you an instance of this, if I can paint a scene as it was represented to me by a famous Tory barber, who shaves behind a huge inn at Manchester, and having heard that I was the Corn-law Rhymer, flourished his razor over my beard, while he held me by the nose, giving me a pro-Corn-law lecture. What a subject for a Hogarth ! Never did I hear argu- ments so powerful, not even from Chartists, when their arguments were brickbats. " [Scene. — An immense hall. Audience three thou- sand persons, some of them ladies. Opposition packed in a corner, some twenty persons, among them a woman. On the platform Mr. O'Connell and other speakers.] " O'Connell (rises amid tremendous applause). — I would scorn to ask for Ireland a privilege that I would not grant to all the world. (Shouts from Paddy outside.) "Woman. — Get ye gone — you're paid. Go home — us does not want ye. (Tumult.) LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 237 " O'Connell. — Pray, ma'am, are you married ? " Woman. — Yes. " O'Connell. — No bairns ? " Woman. — Yes, seven. " O'Connell. — What ! married, and seven bairns, and do you like dear bread? God bless you, and send you six twins in three years. (Laughter and waving of handkerchiefs.) Oh, it delights me to see a meeting like this attended by the flower of the crehation. Surely the fairest of the witches ye are, or who could see them and not go into hydrostatics? There is but one other conthrey in the world that could show a sight like this. (Laughter, and shouts from Patrick outside.) " Of course you have heard the good news from Lan- cashire. The defeat of the League there was necessary to show all who would live without having their hands in other people's pockets the deadly nature of the struggle. If palaced rascality is fighting for its all, well may it fight like a wolf, faced for the first time. The grand consolation is this : that there is nothing so cowardly as wolfishness after it has been faced, as the event will show, too late, perhaps, to save the wolf ; but he can be spared." "June IStk, 1844. " Dear Sir, — I duly received your favour of the 6th instant, and would have answered it sooner had I not mislaid the address of the author of ' Festus ;' his name is P. J. Bailey, Cedar Cottage, W 7 andsworth. Since I received your letter I have been assailed by an army of aches, all new comers, ear-ache, face-ache, neck-ache, back-ache, shoulder-ache, thigh-ache, ankle-ache, sore throat -ache, and inflamed breast-ache ; they attacked all at once and downed me ; but ' Corn-law Rhymes ' ' got up again, and sore amazed them all.' If they will give me leave to day, I shall write a long letter to John Taylor, Chartist, Pentonville, who has sent me a book of which he is the author, and which I greatly like ; it is called ' The Influence of Respect for Outward Things.' 238 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. Fox, Paternoster-row. I cannot agree with you that the Chartists are Free-traders. They have been and are the best aids the monopolists ever had, the anti-slavery people alone excepted. The latter cannot plead the poor Chartists' excuse for ignorance ; they are utterly loath- some. By advocating the equalisation of the sugar- duties, they would have freed both the black and the white slaves, and emancipated commerce ; but the sole object of their doings was, and is, to prevent the people from seeing the Corn-laws. I, though Chartist to the back-bone, am by no means sure that the Charter, if obtained to-morrow, would emancipate our commerce in time to prevent national ruin. Monopoly has caused tw r o revolutions in France, and is preparing a third, although the first started with Universal Suffrage, and elected, I do believe, the very best and wisest men then living in Europe. Oh for ten years, not of an uncontrolled Napoleon the Little ! certainly not of Arthur Timber- smile, greatest of that breed ! — but, oh for ten years of an uncontrolled Peter the Great ! " Christian Chartist Church ! Well, why should there be more than one Church — that which every good man carries within his heart of hearts ? I am opposed to all paid preaching. The Methodists could, and I believe would, alone and unassisted, have put down the Corn-laws, if they had had no paid preachers. Perhaps the meanest, the most selfish, the most corrupt body of men now in the world, is the Methodist Conference. " The Corn-law Rhymers advocate Free-trade in all things ; and, therefore, cannot be seeking a measure beneficial to themselves alone." " 28th August, 1844. " Dear Sir, — The lecture-power is power No. 2, or second greatest — perhaps it is No. 1 ; and I am glad that you are using it on Sunday evenings for the good of the right ones. Did you ever hear Fox, or see him ? He is a portmanteau set on end, full of goodness, elo- quence, and genius. LIFE OF EBENEZEll ELLIOTT. 239 " I have written by this post to the author of ' Festus.' I ought to write often to you both. I know not that I am worse ; but I get feebler, feebler every day, and I lose weight, though not much. I am reduced to ten stone. A strange unwillingness to do anything, the least thing in the world, has come upon me. What makes the thing worse is, that I cannot go out without meeting some palaced pauper, or his policeman, alias gamekeeper. Cain, Cain, why didst thou not die child- less ?" " 9th December, 1844. " John Watkins, — How delightful it is here to receive a letter from a good and wise friend ! This is one great advantage of solitude, perhaps the greatest. Why, then, do I not oftener seek to profit by it ? Truly if I do not always answer my correspondents in course, it is because I fear to trouble them with say -nothings. My mind, ever dull and slow, is becoming quite sterile. Though I never could originate a thought, I could once fructify other men's thoughts ; but even that beautiful power (it is a power) has left me. " ' So passeth in the passing of an hour Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.' I have a most interesting letter, unanswered, from Ebenezer Hingston — a rare lad ! Do you know him ? " Your criticism is, as usual, just. My last verses in the League are not poetry at all. But though your forte is certainly criticism, I shall look for your new play with some expectation that it will show progress. The sad fault of your drama is, that your last plays are no better than your first. Shakspeare went on improving to his last drop of ink. First, he mastered English rhyme, writing it, even in narrative, with an exactitude and clearness to which Pope himself can make no pre- tension. But by what process did he give to his ' steel pen' ductility, and to his later style its inimitable grace and freedom ? It is quite possible that he might have 240 LIFE OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT. been self-satisfied with his ' Two Gentlemen of Verona.' So of the author of ' Festus.' Doubtless he is more extra- ordinary than his work, and will, if he lives, do still greater things. But nudge him gently. Tell him the reader cares nothing for his grand character Faust the Second. We want something to love, to weep for, or with. Who reads the ' Paradise Lost' because he cannot help it ? Goethe's ' Margaret' is ever with us ! Bailey's assertion, that poetry is inspiration, is true as to the power ; but it is not artistically true. Can you get me the title, publisher, &c, of his copy of ' F