Part 41

"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."

I seemed then to hear the trumpet-voice of the poet exclaiming:--

"Up, sluggards, up! the mountains, one by one, Ascend in light, and slow the mists retire From vale and plain. The cloud on Stannington Beholds a rocket--no! 'tis Morthen spire! The sun is risen! cries Stanedge, tipped with fire: On Norwood's flowers the dew-drops shine and shake; Up, sluggards, up! and drink the morning breeze. The buds on cloud-left Osgathorpe awake; And Wincobank is waving all his trees O'er subject towns, and farms, and villages. And gleaming streams, and woods, and water-falls. Up! climb the oak-crowned summit! Hoober Stand And Keppel's Pillar gaze on Wentworth's halls, And misty lakes, that brighten and expand. And distant hills that watch the western strand. Up! trace God's footprints where they paint the mold With heavenly green, and hues that blush and glow Like angel's wings; while skies of blue and gold Stoop to Miles Gordon on the mountain's brow. Behold the Great Unpaid! the prophet lo! Sublime he stands beneath the Gospel-tree, And Edmund stands on Shirecliffe at his side."

This striking scene is on the ridge of the hill, about the highest point, and the Gospel-tree is an ash-tree standing there. From this point, the view all round the country is most extensive. The poet has finely described it:--

"Behind him sinks, and swells, and spreads a sea Of hills, and vales, and groves: before him glide Don, Rivelin, Loxley, wandering in their pride, From heights that mix their azure with the cloud; Beneath his spire and grove are glittering; And round him press his flock, a woe-worn crowd. To other words, while forest echoes ring-- 'Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon,' they sing; And far below, the drover, with a start Awakening, listens to the well-known strain Which brings Shihallian's shadow to his heart, And Scotia's loneliest vales; then sleeps again, And dreams on Lockley's banks of Dunsinane. The hymn they sing is to their preacher dear: It breathes of hopes and glories grand and vast: While on his face they look with grief and fear; Full well they know his sands are ebbing fast: But hark! he speaks, and feels he speaks his last!"

Such was the view to the eye of the poet; to that of the stranger, there are features in it that give it a peculiar picturesqueness. Below you, the town of Sheffield on one hand, partly stretching along the valley of the Don, partly stretching upward toward the Mount; its various churches, and its multitude of tall engine-chimneys, rearing themselves above the mass of houses, as poplars ascend above the rest of the wood; and from these chimneys, and from innumerable shops and forges, volumes of smoke and steam poured forth in clouds over the whole wilderness of brick, and with the distant sound of forge hammers, and roar of the forge-bellows and fires, give you a lively feeling of the stir of industry. In the other direction, you look into far-off plains, over many a distant ridge, and upon fine and broad masses of wood dotting the bold hills. Wincobank and Keppel's column in the more remote woods of Wentworth, and church spires at vast distances, attest the truth of the poet's lines; and in a third direction, you look down into the converging valleys of the Don, the Loxley, and the Rivelin, running between high, wide-lying, and round hills, on which the whole country is mapped out as in many parts of Lancashire or the Peak. With their very green fields, scattered, thinly scattered with clumps of copse, or a long range of black fir wood here and there; their gray, flag-roofed houses, and good portion of stone walls, the similarity is striking. From the valleys, full of woods, shine out winding waters, and peep forth tall chimneys, and roll up volumes of smoke, betraying the busy life of industry where all looks, from the distance, wooded silence; while some manufacturer's great stone house stands amid its flourishing woods, and fronting open lawns, in stately solemnity of cutler-aristocracy.

On the topmost center of this unique scene, has Elliott fixed his Ranter on the Sunday morning; and on the piece of table-land fenced in with woods, over whose heads you still for the most part look, has congregated his flock, gathered from the cottages of the neighboring hamlets, and the smoky wilderness of the great city of knives and hammers below. The tree stands now in the line of a stone wall, and upon a little precipice of sandstone, four or five feet high, so that it would really be as it no doubt has been, for Elliott, as he tells us, draws from the life a capital position for a preacher. Into the tree Elliott has driven a nail, about four feet from the ground, so that any of his friends who visit the spot can at once identify it. He advises you to climb to the top of the tree, on account of the splendid, uninterrupted view, an exploit not likely to be very often performed, and which yet _has_ been done more than once, and was done by poor Charles Pemberton, the Miles Gordon of social improvement.

Close by, on the hill, two or three men were working in a stone _quarrel_, as they called it, where huge blocks of freestone seemed to have been dug for many and many a year. I asked them why people visited this tree. They said they could not conceive, except "it was for th' view." I asked them if they never heard that _Thomas à Becket_ preached under it in _Henry VIII.'s time_; at which they set up a perfect shriek of delight at the joke. A Sheffield _quarrel_ man is not to be mystified like a Jerry Chopstick.