May such a quiet thankful close be mine! And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee, As one who claims their fond allegiance still.' TO THE FRIENDS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE IN "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Soul-stirring text! Proclaim it far and wide, The fame of freedom, by its influence fann'd, But oh! what heavier or more hopeless doom Or fling upon their fame a fouler blot, Withering their spirits by its chilling gloom, EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 1781-1849. EBENEZER ELLIOTT, the celebrated "Corn-Law Rhymer," was born on the 17th of March, 1781, at Masborough, near Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where his father was a commercial clerk in the iron-works, with a salary of £70 a year. He is said to have been very dull in his early years, and he was so oppressed with a sense of his own deficiencies compared with his bright brother, Giles, that he often wept bitterly. Yet who now knows Giles, except as being the brother of Ebenezer?-a lesson to parents, who may have a child that seems dull when young, not to despair of him. When he came dirty from the foundry, and saw Giles at the counting-house duties, or showing his drawings, or reading aloud to an admiring circle, Ebenezer's only resource was solitude. Labor, however, and the honor paid to his brother, at length led him to make one effort more. Не chanced to see in the hand of a cousin "Sowerby's English Botany," and was delighted with its beautiful colored plates, which, his aunt showed him, might be copied by holding them before a pane of glass. Dunce though he seemed, he found he could draw, and that with great ease; and he soon became quite an en 1 "A good sonnet. Dizi"-C. LAMB. thusiastic botanist. "The spark smouldering in his mental constitution had been kindled. 'Thomson's Seasons,' which he heard his wondrous brother Giles read, 'who was beautiful as an angel, while he was ugliness itself,' gave him the first hint of the eternal alliance between poetry and nature; and, in fine, the smitten rock opened, and the Rhymer rhymed!" His next favorite author was Milton, who slowly gave way to Shakspeare. But, as he became a poet, he grew more and more ashamed of his deficiencies, and applied himself with great assiduity, every leisure moment he had, to remedy them. But how much leisure he had, and under what great disadvantages he labored, may be gathered from the following account which he gives of himself: "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 castings as they were made, and afterward in their finished state, besides opening and closing the shop in Rotherham, when my brother happened to be ill or absent." Elliott entered into business at Rotherham, but was unsuccessful, and, in 1821, he removed to Sheffield, and made a second start in life as an iron-monger, on a capital of £100, which he borrowed. He applied the whole strength of his mind to his business, and was eminently successful, and, after years of hard labor, he had acquired quite a competency, and built himself a good house in the suburbs of Sheffield. When the great commercial revulsions took place in 1837 and 1838, he lost, as he says, full one-third of his savings; but, in his own words, "I got out of the fracas with about £6000, which I will try to keep." His first publication was "The Vernal Walk," in his seventeenth year. This was followed by "Night," which was severely criticised by the "Monthly Review" and the "Monthly Magazine." But this had no effect to damp his spirits; on the contrary, it nerved his pen for higher flights, and soon another volume appeared, with a preface of defiance to the critics. It had no success, though Southey prophetically consoled the poet by writing: "There is power in the least of these tales, but the higher you pitch your tune the better you succeed. Thirty years ago they would have made your reputation; thirty years hence the world will wonder they did not do so." But it was the commercial distresses of 1837 and 1838 that called out the strong native talent of our poet. The cry for "cheap bread" rung from one end to the other of the land. Elliott took his decided stand for the repeal of the corn-laws, and poured forth his "Corn-Law Rhymes," that did more than any other one thing to stir the heart and rouse the energies of the people against monopoly, and he had the satisfaction, in a few years, to see the great object of the "Corn-Law League" fully attained, and free trade in bread-stuffs completely established. In 1841, he retired from business and from active interference in politics, to spend his last years at Great Houghton, near Barnsley, where he built a house upon a small estate of his own. After this he wrote and published very little. He had been troubled for many years with a disease of an asthmatic character, which so increased upon him as to be considered dangerous, and he finally died on the 1st of December, 1849. The venerable poet, James Montgomery, bears strong testimony to Elliott's poetic talent: "I am," says he, "quite willing to hazard my critical credit, by avowing my persuasion, that in originality, power, and even beauty, when he chose to be beautiful, he might have measured heads beside Byron in tremendous energy, Crabbe in graphic description, and Coleridge in effusions of domestic tenderness, while in intense sympathy with the poor, in whatever he deemed their wrongs or their sufferings, he exceeded them all-and perhaps everybody else among contemporaries-in prose or verse. He was, in a transcendental sense, the poet of the poor, whom, if not always wisely, I, at least, dare not say he loved too well. His personal character, his fortunes, and his genius would require, as they deserve, a full investigation, as furnishing an extraordinary study of human nature." In the following singular piece, we have a key to many of the Rhymer's rhymes. It is the complaint of a heart breaking for want of human sympathy, and taking hold, in the yearnings of its tender nature, upon household pets where there are no home companions: POOR ANDREW. The loving poor!-So envy calls But oh! I choke, my heart grows faint, When I approach my door! Behind it there are living things, Whose silent frontlets say They'd rather see me out than in Feet foremost borne away! My heart grows sick when home I come- If 'twere not for my dog and cat, I think I could not live. My dog and cat, when I come home, She mewing, with her tail on end, They listen for my homeward steps, My smother'd sob they hear, When down my heart sinks, deathly down, My heart grows faint when home I come- If 'twere not for my dog and cat, I think I could not live. I'd rather be a happy bird, Than, scorn'd and loathed, a king; Thou busy bee! how canst thou choose Oh, blessed bee! thy glad wings say But I, when I come home-O God! Why come they not? They do not come A heavier darkness on me falls- Oh, yes, they come !-they never fail My poor heart brightens when it meets Again they come to meet me-God! If 'twere not for my dog and cat, This heart is like a churchyard stone; My playful cat and honest dog And yet my house is fill'd with friends- What makes them hostile? IGNORANCE; But oh! I sigh when home I come- In the following piece, we see the hostility of ignorance overcome. The cat and dog are replaced by human beings, and the home of taste is the home of happiness : THE HOME OF TASTE. You seek the home of taste, and find The proud mechanic there, Rich as a king, and less a slave, Throned in his elbow-chair! Or on his sofa reading Locke, Beside his open door! Why start?-why envy worth like his The carpet on his floor? You seek the home of sluttery "Is John at home?" you say. "No, sir; he's at the 'Sportsman's Arms;' Oh, lift the workman's heart and mind Above low sensual sin! Give him a home! the home of taste! Oh, give him taste! it is the link That leads him to her mother's chair, SATURDAY. To-morrow will be Sunday, Ann- The fine folks use the plate he makes, Then let us shake the carpet well, And polish thou the grate, my love; The autumn winds blow damp and chill; And bring the new white curtain out, And brush the little table, child, And fill the music-glasses up With water fresh and clear; To-morrow, when he sings and plays, The street will stop to hear. And throw the dead flowers from the vase, And rub it till it glows; For in the leafless garden yet He'll find a winter rose. And lichen from the wood he'll bring, And mosses from the dell; And from the shelter'd stubble-field The scarlet pimpernell. |