'Oh, Light, that cheer'st all worlds, from sky to sky,
As with a hymn to which the stars reply.'
"When he became a poet, he became also more and more ashamed of his
deficiencies. He actually tried to learn French, and could with ease
get his lesson, but could never remember it an hour. Nor could he ever
write correctly till he met with Murray's Grammar, which he learned at
the wrong end, namely, the Key,--and never reached the beginning. To
this day he does not thoroughly know a single rule of grammar; yet, by
thinking, he can detect any grammatical errors. If he errs, it is in
the application of words derived from the Latin or Greek, which,
although he has a strong propensity to use them, he now avoids, unless
they are very melodious, or harmonize with his Saxon, and seldom
without consulting his dictionary, that he may guess at their meaning.
He has more than once shown his fondness for learned words by begging
Latin and Greek quotations, for his prefaces and notes, of the writer
of this article. But his propensity to use fine words will be still
better elucidated by the following anecdote, of the truth of which the
reader may be assured. Having written a sonorous poem in blank verse,
on the American Revolution, he wished for a learned title. He wished
to call it 'Liberty,' so his learned cousin baptized it in Greek
by the name of 'Eleutheria;' but the bard having found out that
Eleutheria also signifies fire, humbled himself to Latin, expunged
the Greek, and wrote in place of it, 'Jus Triumphans.' He then
read Johnson's Dictionary through, and selected several dozen
words--fifty-three, we believe--of six or seven syllables, which he
wrote on slips of paper, and pasted over his verses where they would
occur and read grammatically! In this state the manuscript was sent to
Whitbread, the brewer, who returned it with a flourishing compliment;
and, if it be in existence, certainly it is a curiosity that a
bibliographer would place in his cabinet.
"One of Mr. Elliott's early companions was a youth of cultivated mind,
with whom he read much and conversed more, Joseph Ramsbotham, the son
of his schoolmaster, who was educated for the ministry. This excellent
young man, who died too soon, used to recite Greek to him; and the
poet, without knowing any thing of that language, was so delighted
with the music of Homer, that he committed to memory the introductory
lines of the Iliad, and could repeat them when the writer of this
article first became acquainted with him. In the opening of his poem.
Withered Wild Flowers, Elliott pays a tribute to these two excellent
men, father and son.
"Mr. Elliott's memory is very retentive, and he does not easily forget
what he has once learned. Translations have made him familiar with the
classic poets of Greece and Rome. Among the tragedians, Æschylus is
his favorite; whom he admires as the most original and sublime of the
Athenian dramatic writers. His reading is extensive, and it has not
been confined to poetry. History and political economy seem to have
been his favorite studies; the latter has inspired some of his most
admired productions. He writes prose as well as verse, and the style
of some of his Letters on the Corn-Laws has the condensed fire and
energy of Junius; less polished, indeed, but equally pointed and
severe. In conversation he is rapid and short; his sentences, when he
is animated by the subject on which he is speaking, have all the force
and brevity of Spartan oratory; they are words of flame; and in his
predictions of calamity and woe--as, in his opinion, a necessary
consequence of adhering to the present system of politics--it may be
truly said, in his own language, 'his gloom is fire.' In argument
every muscle of his countenance is eloquent; and when his cold blue
eye is fired with indignation, it resembles a wintry sky flashing with
lightning; his dark, bushy brows writhing above it, like the
thunder-cloud torn by the tempest. You see at once, in his strongly
marked features, how much he has suffered; like Dante, he looks as if
he had gone through his own hell! His voice, when reading his own
verses--and no man can give them so much effect--is the most
melancholy music that ever was heard; and his whole manner,
expression, and appearance irresistibly impress you with the
conviction that he has dwelt with disappointment, and too long
experienced the sickness of the heart which arises from 'hope
deferred.' This is the fact. In his mercantile pursuits he has not
always been fortunate; and his literary career, till lately, was
unattended with one cheering circumstance. He has endured cold neglect
for years, and had to struggle with difficulties of every kind. The
firm and proud spirit which he manifested in contending with these,
hurling back unmerited censure with scorn, and relying fully on his
own powers for final success, is, next to his works, the strongest
proof of his possessing intellectual superiority, however much it may
indicate a want of the milder graces of the Christian character. His
was not the weak spirit that sinks under misfortunes; his strong and
powerful genius rose above them. He boldly grasped and eventually
strangled the serpents that have stung so many others to death. Timid
in his youth, as the modest flower that hides its beauty from all the
world in some rural retirement, he was no sooner trampled upon than he
became bold; and when storms roared around his head, he stood in the
midst of them like the gnarled oak, battling with tempests, and
laughing at their impotent rage. To whomsoever else adversity has been
fatal, to him it was of essential service: it called forth his powers,
it roused him to the contest, it strengthened him for victory. Where
thousands would have despaired, he held up with undaunted resolution;
and he has, at length, surmounted every obstacle that opposed his
rising. His triumph is a glorious proof of what mind can effect, and
we hail and exhibit it as a great moral lesson to the world."
Little as is the amount of biography contained in these passages I
have quoted, I presume that it is all that we are to expect during the
poet's life. It will be sufficient to add that, having thus triumphed
over all resistance, both literary and mercantile, Mr. Elliott has now
retired from business, to enjoy the calm evening of his days in the
country. We will anon follow him to his retreat; but first we must pay
a visit to his haunts in and around Sheffield, where the greater
portion of his life has been spent, and where his poetry has left its
stamp on a thousand objects.
They who class Ebenezer Elliott with poets of the working class, or
look upon him as a poor man, are amazingly mistaken. It is true that
he commenced life as a working-man. That he came to Sheffield, under
the circumstances already related, and, as I have heard, some hundred
and fifty pounds worse than nothing; and, after suffering and enduring
much like a man of iron, he struck into the right track; and, such was
the prosperity of the town and trade of Sheffield, that he says he
used to sit in his chair, and make his £20 a-day, without even seeing
the goods that he sold; for they came to the wharf, and were sold
again thence, without ever coming into his warehouse or under his eye.
The Corn-Laws, he says, altered all this, and made him glad to get out
of business with part of what he had got, the great panic and
revulsion of 1837 sweeping away some three or four thousands at once.
The trade in which Ebenezer Elliott made his money at Sheffield, was
that of a bar-iron merchant. He first began this business in
Burgess-street. The house is pointed out at the right-hand corner, at
the top as you go up. Here prosperity first visited him, and the place
becoming too small for his growing concerns, he removed his warehouse
to Gibraltar-street, Shalesmoor; and took or built quite a handsome
villa, in a garden of an acre in extent, inclosed with a high stone
wall. This pleasant retirement was in the pleasant suburb of Upper
Thorpe; whence, by a footpath over the hills at the back of the house,
he could soon mount and see all Sheffield smoking at his feet, and
then dive down at the back of the hills, into his favorite haunt, the
valley of the Rivelin.
Before, however, following the poet into these haunts, we will make a
call at his place of business. Gibraltar-street, Shalesmoor, I found
in the lower part of the town, almost every place thereabout bearing
the old name of moor, although no trace of a moor could there be seen,
but, on the contrary, crowded houses, reeking chimneys, and the
swarming of human beings. Here I soon caught sight of a lowish,
humblish sort of building, with "ELLIOTT AND CO.'S IRON AND STEEL
WAREHOUSE," painted in large letters along the front. This was
the place where the Corn-Law Rhymer had at once pursued trade and
poetry, with equal success. The business is now in the hands of two of
his sons. On entering the front door, which, however, you are
prevented doing, till a little iron gate in the doorway is first
opened for you, you find yourself in a dingy place, full of bars of
steel and iron, of all sorts and sizes, from slenderest rods to good,
massy bars, reared on almost every inch of space, so that there is but
just room to get among them; and, in the midst of all, stands aloft a
large cast of Shakspeare, with the Sir Walter Raleigh ruff round his
neck, and mustaches. Your eye, glancing forward, penetrates a large
warehouse behind, of the like iron gloom and occupation. On the left
hand is a smallish room, into which you directly look, for the door is
open, if door there be, and which is, properly, the counting-house,
but is nearly as crowded with iron bars all round as the rest.
The son of Mr. Elliott, whom I found there, showed me the place with
great good-nature, and seeing me look into this room, he said, "Walk
in, sir; that is the Corn-Law Rhymer's study; that is where my father
wrote most of his poetry." We may safely assert that there is no other
such poetical study in England, if there be in the world.
The center of the room is occupied by a considerable office-desk,
which, to judge from its appearance, has for many a year known no
occupation but that of being piled with the most miscellaneous chaos
of account-books, invoices, bills, memorandum-books, and the like, all
buried in the dust of the iron age through which they have
accumulated. To be used as a desk appears to have ceased long ago; it
is the supporter of old chaos come again; and a couple of portable
desks, set on the counter under the window, though elbowed up by lots
of dusty iron, and looked down upon by Achilles and Ajax in wonder,
seem to serve the real purposes of desks.
But Achilles and Ajax, says some one, what do they here? All round the
room stand piles of bars of iron, and amid these stand, oddly enough,
three great plaster casts of Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon. The two
Grecian heroes are in the front, on each side of the window, and
Napoleon occupies an elevated post in the center of the side of the
room, facing the door. Such was at once the study and the warehouse of
Ebenezer Elliott!
Surely, never were poetry and pence united together in such a scene
before! You may imagine Robert Bloomfield stitching away at ladies'
shoes, and tagging rhymes at the same time, in great peace and bodily
comfort; being a journeyman for a long time, and when he had got his
work from his master, being liable to very little interruption. You
may imagine him thumping away on his last in poetic ardor, and in the
midst of his enthusiasm hammering out a superior piece of soling
leather and triumphant verse at the same instant; but imagine Ebenezer
Elliott, in the midst of all this iron wilderness, in the midst of
bustling and clanging Sheffield, and the constant demands of little
cutlers and the like--for constant they must have been for him to
accumulate a fair fortune out of nothing,--imagine him in the midst of
all this confusion of dusty materials, and the demands of customers,
and the din and jar of iron rods and bars, as they were dragged out of
their stations for examination and sale, and were flung into the
scales to be weighed; imagine this, and that the man achieved a
fortune and a fame at the same time--weighed out iron and ideas--took
in gold and glory--cursed corn-laws, and blessed God, and man, and
nature; established a large family, two sons as clergymen of the
Church of England--three in trade--two of them his successors in
steel, though not in stanzas--in iron, though not in irony; and then
retired to his own purchased land, built his house on a hill-top, and
looked down on the world in philosophical ease, at little more than
sixty years of age; and you may look a good while for a similar man in
history.
Quitting this singular retreat of the Muses, under the guidance of my
worthy friend Mr. John Fowler, an old friend of the poet, I proceeded
to visit the Rhymer's haunts in the country round. And first we
ascended the hills to the east of the town, above Pittsmoor and
Shirecliffe-hall, to the place where Elliott makes his most
interesting field-preacher, Miles Gordon, the Ranter, go to his last
Sabbath service of the open air. As we went, all the beautiful imagery
of that exquisitely pathetic poem came before me. The opening of the
poem breathing such a feeling of Sabbath rest to the weary, such a
feeling of the actual life of the pious poor in the manufacturing
towns.
"Miles Gordon sleeps; his six days' labor done,
He dreams of Sunday, verdant fields, and prayer.
Arise, blest morn, unclouded! Let thy sun
Shine on the artisan, thy purest air
Breathe on the bread-taxed laborer's deep despair!
Poor sons of toil! I grudge them not the breeze
That plays with Sabbath flowers, the clouds that play
With Sabbath winds, the hum of Sabbath bees,
The Sabbath walk, the skylark's Sabbath lay,
The silent sunshine of the Sabbath day.
"The stars wax pale, the morn is cold and dim;
Miles Gordon wakes, and gray dawn tints the skies:
The many-childed widow, who to him
Is as a mother, hears her lodger rise.
And listens to his prayer with swimming eyes.
For her and for her orphan poor he prays.
For all who earn the bread they daily eat;--
Bless them, O God, with useful, happy days,
With hearts that scorn all meanness and deceit:
And round their lowly hearths let freemen meet!
This morn betimes she hastes to leave her bed.
For he must preach beneath the autumnal tree:
She lights her fire, and soon the board is spread
With Sabbath coffee, toast, and cups for three.
Pale he descends; again she starts to see
His hollow cheek, and feels they soon must part--
But they shall meet again--that hope is sure;
And oh! she venerates his mind and heart,
For he is pure, if mortal ere was pure!
His words, his silence, teach her to endure.
And then he helps to feed her orphans five!
O God! thy judgments cruel seem to be!
While bad men linger long, and cursing thrive.
The good, like wintry sunbeams, fade and flee--
That we may follow them, and come to thee."
That lovely passage, where the widow wakes her eldest son, who wishes
to accompany the preacher, one of the most beautiful things in poetry,
recurred with fresh vividness:--
"Like sculpture, or like death, serene he lies;
But no, that tear is not a marble tear!
He names in sleep his father's injuries;
And now in silence wears a smile severe.
How like his sire he looks, when drawing near
His journey's close, and that fair form bent o'er
His darkening cheek, still faintly tinged with red,
And fondly gazed,--too soon to gaze no more!--
While the long tresses o'er the seeming dead
Streamed in their black profusion from the head
Of matron loveliness--more touchingly.
More sadly beautiful, and pale, and still--
A shape of half-divine humanity,
Worthy of Chantry's steel, or Milton's quill.
Or heaven-taught Raphael's soul-expressing skill!
And must she wake that poor o'erlabored youth?
Oh yes, or Edmund will his mother chide;
For he this morn would hear the words of truth
From lips inspired on Shirecliffe's lofty side.
Gazing o'er tree and tower on Hallam wide."