"Man's inhumanity to man"
that
"Makes countless thousands mourn,"
are the monster serpents that he seeks to crush beneath his relentless
heel, and to fling forth from the dwellings of men. In delineating the
consequences of crime, Ebenezer Elliott has few equals for masterly
command of language. Byron never recorded the agonies of sin and
passion with more awful vigor, nor the woes of parting spirits with
more absorbing pathos. In the Exile, where two lovers meet in
America--in the days when our settlements there were called the
plantations, and they were penal colonies,--the woman as a convict,
and that through her lover's errors and desertion, nothing can be more
vividly sketched than the mental sufferings of both parties, or finer
than the scene where the unhappy woman dies in her lover's arms on a
night of awful tempest.
"Then with clasped hands, and fervent hearts dismayed,
That she might live for him, both mutely prayed.
But o'er their silence burst the heavy blast;
And, wrapped in darkness, the sky-torrent passed,
And down the giants of the forest dashed;
And pale as day the night with lightning flashed;
And through awed heaven, a peal that might have been
The funeral dirge of suns and systems crashed.
More dread, more near, the bright-blue blaze was seen,
Peal following peal, with direr pause between.
On the wild light she turned her wilder eye,
And grasped his hands in dying agony,
Fast and still faster as the flash rushed by.
'Spare me!' she cried, 'oh, 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!'"
Among the largest and best poems of Ebenezer Elliott, perhaps the
Village Patriarch, the Splendid Village, and the Ranter, will always
be the greatest favorites; not because they possess more passion or
poetry than the vigorous drama, of Bothwell and Kerhonah, but because
they depict England as it has become in our day, and awaken our love
for both country and people, while they make us weep for the
desolation which aristocratic legislation has everywhere diffused. The
Splendid Village, unlike the Deserted Village of Goldsmith, has not
become released of its inhabitants by the change of times, but has
become the scene of heartless wealth, of fine houses, where humble
cottages stood, and of purse-proud cits and lawyers, who leave the
work-house, or the jail, as the only refuges of the once happy poor.
The surly "Constable, publican and warrener," "Broad Jim the poacher,"
and in the Village Patriarch, the poor old Hannah Wray, whose cottage
is unroofed by Mr. Ezra White, the farmer, and who is hanged for
killing the savage with a stone, in the act, though it was really done
by her half-sharp daughter, are sketches too sadly full of that
lamentable life which has, of late years, distorted the fair rural
face of England. They are things which can not be too well pondered on
by every man who desires the return of better days to this country.
But we turn for the present to the more attractive society of blind
Enoch Wray.
In Enoch Wray, blind, and one hundred years old, Elliott has drawn one
of those venerable village patriarchs, that every one can remember
something of in his younger days. Men of hale and well developed
powers, who, in a calm life, not devoid of its cares, yet leaving
leisure for thought, have cherished the love of nature and the spirit
of a pure wisdom in them, worthy of man's highest estate. Such men,
who that has spent his youth in the country, has not known, and has
not loved? Enoch Wray is one of these, old and blind, yet with a heart
full as that of a child of the tenderness for nature, and the spirit
of heaven. The author describes his strolls with him into the hills;
and we will take our last extracts from these, because they are fine
specimens of landscape painting, and show what a fresh charm the poet
confers on his compositions, by the very names of the places he
introduces. In this there is a striking difference between him and
James Montgomery, Sheffield's other eminent poet, whose writings,
beautiful as they are, and full as they are of the love of nature,
might have been written anywhere. They do not localize themselves.
"Come, father of the hamlet! grasp again
Thy stern ash plant, cut when the woods were young;
Come, let us leave the plough-subjected plain,
And rise with freshened hearts and nerves restrung,
Into the azure dome, that proudly hung
O'er thoughtful power, ere suffering had begun.
"Flowers peep, trees bud, boughs tremble, rivers run:
The redwing saith it is a glorious morn.
Blue are thy heavens, thou Highest! And thy sun
Shines without cloud, all fire. How sweetly borne
On wings of morning, o'er the leafless thorn,
The tiny wren's small twitter warbles near!
How swiftly flashes in the stream the trout!
Woodbine! our father's ever watchful ear
Knows by thy rustle that thy leaves are out.
The trailing bramble hath not yet a sprout;
Yet harshly to the wind the wanton prates,
Not with thy smooth lips, woodbine of the fields!
Thou future treasure of the bee that waits
Gladly on thee, spring's harbinger! when yields
All bounteous earth her odorous flowers, and builds
The nightingale in beauty's fairest land."
The poet then enumerates the "five rivers, like the fingers of a
hand," which so remarkably convene at Sheffield, and then gives one of
the most characteristic features of Sheffield scenery, and a graphic
notice of that extraordinary body of men, the Sheffield grinders, who
perish early from the effects of their trade, yet pursue it with the
most hardy indifference.
"Beautiful rivers of the desert! ye
Bring food for labor from the fordless waste.
Pleased stops the wanderer on his way to see
The frequent weir oppose your heedless haste,
Where toils the mill by ancient woods embraced.
Hark, how the cold steel screams in hissing fire!
But Enoch sees the grinder's wheel no more.
Couched beneath rocks and forests, that admire
Their beauty in the waters, ere they roar
Dashed in white foam, the swift circumference o'er,
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 ratanned tools shall tell.
Full many a lawless 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, power for power, outstares monopoly!
Yet Abraham and Elliott, 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!
Man of a hundred years, how unlike thee!"
The Abraham and Elliott mentioned here were inventors of the Grinder's
Preservative, which the grinders will not use! But of these strange
men more anon.
"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,
'Let there be light!' bade light and beauty be.
* * * * * * *
Father! we stand upon the mountain stern,
That can not feel our lightness, and disdains
Reptiles that sting and perish in their turn,
That hiss and die--and lo! no trace remains
Of all their joys, their triumphs, and their pains!
Yet to stand here might well exalt the mind;
These are not common moments nor is this
A common scene. Hark, how the coming wind
Booms like the funeral dirge of woe, and bliss,
And life, and form, and mind, and all that is!
How like the wafture of a world-wide wing
It sounds and sinks, and all is hushed again!
But are our spirits humbled? No; we string
The lyre of death with mystery and pain,
And proudly hear the dreadful notes complain
That man is not the whirlwind, but the leaf,
Torn from the tree, to soar and disappear.
Grand is our weakness, and sublime our grief.
Lo! on this rock I shake off hope and fear,
And stand released from clay!--yet am I here,
And at my side are blindness, age, and woe."
Would any one imagine, after reading the poetry of Ebenezer Elliott,
that that poetry could ever have found difficulty in struggling to the
light of day? With our host of acute and infallible critics, would one
think it possible that this noble poetry should not have been
immediately discovered, and made universal in its acceptation? But
what was the fact? For twenty years the poet went on writing and
publishing, but in vain. Volume after volume, his productions fell
dead from the press, or were treated with a passing sneer, or were
"damned with faint praise." But living consciousness of genius was not
to be extinguished, the undaunted spirit of Elliott was not to be
frozen out by neglect. He wrote, he appealed to sense and justice--it
was in vain. He became furious, and hurled a flaming satire at Lord
Byron in the height of his popularity, in the hope that the noble poet
would give him a returning blow, and thus draw attention upon him. It
was in vain, neither lord nor public would deign him a look, and the
case seemed desperate. But it was not so. Chance did what merit itself
could not do. Chance led Dr. Bowring to Sheffield, and there some one
put into his hands The Corn-Law Rhymes, and The Ranter. At once
Bowring, a poet himself, recognized the singular merit of the
compositions, printed as they were in four pamphlet sheets, on very
ordinary paper. With his usual zeal, he began to talk everywhere of
the wonderful poet of Sheffield, not Montgomery, but a new name. He
talked thus at my house, and I instantly procured them. Wordsworth
happened to be my guest at the time. He was as much struck with the
wonderful power of these compositions as ourselves, and I begged him
to convey them at once to Southey. He did so, and the laureate
immediately gave a notice of them in the Quarterly, in an article on
what he called Uneducated Poets. But, in the mean time, Dr. Bowring
went on to London, and there continued talking of the Corn-Law Rhymer,
till, falling in with Bulwer at a party, he showed those long
neglected poems to him, and the thing was done. Bulwer wrote an
out-speaking article in the New Monthly Magazine, which told like the
match put to the long laid train. Wordsworth, on his way home, had
made the poems known to Miss Jewsbury, at Manchester, and she gave a
nearly simultaneous notice in the Athenæum. At such decided and
generous verdicts in such quarters, the scales fell from the eyes of
the whole critic tribe--all cuckoo-land was loud with one note; and
the poet, who had been thundering at every critical door in the
kingdom in vain, now saw the gates of the land of glory at once
expand, and was led in by a hundred officious hands, as if he were a
new-born bard, and not of twenty years' growth.
Such a history awakes involuntarily some curious reflections. If
Elliott had chanced to die before Bowring had chanced to visit
Sheffield--what then? Where would now be the fame of the Corn-Law
Rhymer? I know that there is a very favorite doctrine in many mouths,
that true genius is sure, sooner or later, to find its way--that it
can not be destroyed, and is never lost. This may be very consolatory
doctrine for those who have wielded a merciless pen, and are visited
by compunctions of remorse; but it is just as true as that untimely
frosts never cut down buds and flowers, or that swords and cannons
will not kill honest men, or that a really beautiful scene may not be
ravaged and laid waste by bears or swine. If there be one thing that
murders early genius, it is the bludgeon of critical unkindness; if
there be one thing that gives life and spirit, it is encouragement.
Kindness! encouragement! they are the sunshine of the mind, as
necessary as the sunshine of Heaven for the unfolding of earth's
flowers and the ripening of earth's fruits. How many a bright soul has
sunk in the frosty valleys of neglect; how many have shrunk hopelessly
from the vile sneer of scorn; how many that have survived have reached
only a partial development of their strength and beauty; being
crippled in their youth by the blows of private malice, or enfeebled
by the want of the cordial aliment of acknowledged merit. Honor, then,
to the few sturdy souls that contempt has not been able to subdue! To
those who have returned kick for kick to the insolent opposers of
their progress; who have been able to keep alive self-respect in their
souls, through a long, dark career of frowns, and jeers, and cuffs, as
the due award of a spiritual pauperism. Honor to those brave
souls--they are the few victorious survivors in the great battle of
fame, where thousands have fallen by butcher hands. The endurance of
harsh treatment is no proof of genius--it is only a proof of a certain
amount of power of resistance; but it is a lucky thing for the world
that genius and endurance sometimes lodge in the same bosom. Byron
knocked down his deriders on the spot; Elliott, like Wellington at
Waterloo, stood out a whole long day of pitiless contest, and
triumphed at the last.
And it was not a single fight only that he had to maintain. He waged a
double contest against fortune--for life as well as for fame; and in
both, with desperate odds against him, he came off victorious.
Ebenezer Elliott is certainly one of the greatest "Curiosities of
Literature." He has not only proved himself a poet, in spite of twenty
years of most dogged deafness to his claims, but a poet that has set
fortune as well as the critics at defiance, and has at once won fame
and wealth. I believe that on his settling in Sheffield he possessed
nothing but a wife and three or four children, but he has managed to
retire from trade with some eight or ten children, and a good round
sum of thousands of pounds. He has bravely scorned all
"The perils that environ
The man who meddles with cold iron;"
and has set a glorious example to future genius--to rely on its own
intimations, and not on reviews; to assert the rights of mind, and yet
not to neglect business. In him stands a living proof that poetry and
worldly prosperity can go hand in hand.
By his own statement to me, it appears that he was born the 17th of
March, 1781, being one of eight children. His father was a commercial
clerk in the iron-works at Masborough, near Rotherham, with a salary
of £70 a-year, "and consequently," says he, "a rich man in those
days."
There is no complete biography of Mr. Elliott published, nor ever
written. There is one in manuscript, written by himself, but only up
to a certain period. Beyond that he has not been able to proceed, and
has expressed doubts whether he ever shall. It no doubt relates to
some crisis in his life, that from his desperate conflict with
circumstances is recollected only with a horror that disables his pen;
the bottom of that Jordan of affliction through which he passed, that
he might become the interpreter of the sons of suffering. At the very
memory of this stern baptism, that Herculean resolution which bore him
through it falters; it is to be hoped, for the sake of posterity, one
day, however, to collect itself again into a great effort, and to add
another autobiography full of life's great lessons to those of
Franklin and William Hutton. From a notice in a periodical some years
ago, and which I believe, from good authority, to be correct, I
extract the few particulars that are related of his early life.
"Ebenezer Elliott, in childhood, boyhood, and youth, was remarkable
for good-nature, as it is called, and a sensitiveness, exceeded only
by his extreme dullness and inability to learn any thing that required
the least application or intellect. His good-nature made him rather a
favorite in his childhood with servant girls, nurses, and old women.
One of the latter was a particular favorite with him--Nanny Farr, who
kept the York Keelman public-house, near the foundry at Masborough,
where he was born. She was a walking magazine of old English
prejudices and superstitions;--to her he owes his fondness for ghost
stories. When he was about ten years old, he fell in love with a young
girl, now Mrs. Woodcock of Munsber, near Greasborough, to whom he
never to this day spoke one word. She then lived with her father, Mr.
Ridgeway, a butcher and publican, close to the bridge on the
Masborough side of the river Don. Such was his sensitiveness, that if
he happened to see her as she passed, and especially if she happened
to look at him--which he now believes she never did,--he was suddenly
deprived almost of the power of moving.
"His unconquerable dullness was improved into absolute stupidity by
the help he received from an uncommonly clever boy, called John Ross,
who did him his sums. He got into the rule-of-three without having
learned numeration, addition, subtraction, and division. Old Joseph
Ramsbotham seemed quite convinced, gave him up in despair, and at
rule-of-three the bard jumped all at once to decimals, where he stuck.
At this time he was examined by his father, who discovered that the
boy scarcely knew that two and one are three. He was then put to work
in the foundry on trial, whether hard labor would not induce him to
learn his 'counting,' as arithmetic is called in Yorkshire. Now it
happened that nature, in her vagaries, had given him a brother called
Giles, of whom it will be said by any person who knew him, that never
was there a young person of quicker or brighter talents; there was
nothing that he could not learn, but the praise he received ruined him
in the end. His superiority produced no envy in Ebenezer, who almost
worshiped him. The only effect it produced on him was, a sad sense of
humiliation, and confirmed conviction that himself was an incurable
dunce. The sense of his deficiencies oppressed him, and in private he
wept bitterly. When he saw Giles seated in the counting-house, writing
invoices, or posting the ledger; or when he came dirty out of the
foundry, and saw him showing his drawings, or reading aloud to the
circle, whose plaudits seemed to have no end, his resource was
solitude, of which from his infancy he was fond. He would go and fly
his kite, always alone, and he was the best kite-maker of the place;
or he would saunter along the canal bank, swimming his ships, or
anchoring them before his fortresses--and he was a good ship-builder.
"His sadness increased;--he could not post books--he could not write
invoices--he could not learn to do what almost every body could learn,
namely, to do a single sum in single division; yet by this time he had
discovered that he could do 'men's work,' for he could make a
frying-pan. It ought to be observed here, that the assistance he
received from John Ross accompanied him, like his double, to every
school to which his parents, in their despair, had sent him; and they
sent him to two, beside Mr. Ramsbotham's. When it was found that he
could not do decimals, he was put back to the rule-of-three, and then
pronounced incurable. Labor, however, and the honor paid to his
brother, at length made him try one effort more. He had an aunt at
Masborough, one of whose sons was studying botany. He was buying, in
monthly numbers, a book called Sowerby's English Botany, with
beautifully colored plates. They filled him with delight; and she
showed him that by holding the plates before a pane of glass, he might
take exact sketches of them. Dunce though he was, he found he could
draw, and with such ease, that he almost thought he was a magician. He
became a botanist, or rather a hunter of flowers; but, like his cousin
Ben, though not Greek-learned like him, he too had his Hortus Siccus.
He does not remember having ever read, or liked, or thought of poetry
until he heard his brother recite that passage in Thomson's Spring,
which describes the polyanthus and auricula. His first attempt at
poetry was an imitation in rhyme of Thomson's Thunder Storm, in which
he described a certain flock of sheep running away after they were
killed by lightning. Now this came to pass because the rhyme would
have it so. His critic, cousin Ben the learned, though the bard most
imploringly told him how the miracle happened, nevertheless exercised
the critic's privilege, and ridiculed him without mercy. Never will he
forget that infliction. His second favorite author was Shenstone,
whose translations of passages from the classics, prefixed to his
elegies, produced an effect on his mind and heart which death only can
obliterate. His next favorite was Milton, who slowly gave way to
Shakspeare. He can trace all his literary propensities to physical
causes. His mind, he says, is altogether the mind of his own eyes. A
primrose is to him a primrose, and nothing more; for Solomon in his
glory was not more delicately arrayed. There is not a good passage in
his writings, which he can not trace to some real occurrence, or to
some object actually before his eyes, or to some passage in some other
author. He has the power, he says, of making the thoughts of other men
breed; and he is fond of pointing out four or five passages in his
poems, all stolen from one passage in Cowper's Homer. We will give the
original, and one of the imitations. He made the thought his own, he
says, by substituting the word 'hymn' for the word 'trumpet;' and the
imitation will show his power of making other men's thoughts breed;
they describe poetically and philosophically the reflection of light
from the heavenly bodies:
'The earth beneath them trembled, and the heavens
Sung them together with a trumpet's voice.'
_Cowper's Iliad._