1837.] BARTON. BRUCE AND THE SPIDER. For Scotland's and for freedom's right Been conquer'd and dismay'd: A hut's lone shelter sought. And cheerless was that resting place His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The sun rose brightly, and its gleam And tinged with light each shapeless beam When, looking up with wistful eye, His filmy thread to fling From beam to beam of that rude cot; Six times his gossamery thread In vain the filmy line was sped, Each aim appear'd, and back recoil'd. And yet unconquer'd still; And soon the Bruce, with eager eye, One effort more, his seventh and last! And on the wish'd-for beam hung fast Slight as it was, his spirit caught The more than omen, for his thought The lesson well could trace, Which even "he who runs may read," TO THE SKYLARK. Bird of the free and fearless wing, Songster of sky and cloud! to thee Hath Heaven a joyous lot assign'd; And thou, to hear those notes of glee, Wouldst seem therein thy bliss to find: Thou art the first to leave behind At day's return this lower earth, And, soaring as on wings of wind, To spring where light and life have birth. Bird of the sweet and taintless hour, When dew-drops spangle o'er the lea, Ere yet upon the bending flower Has lit the busy humming-bee Pure as all nature is to thee Thou, with an instinct half divine, Wingest thy fearless flight so free Up toward a yet more glorious shrine. If thou, whose instinct ill may scan To joy and praise-oh! how much more Bird of the happy, heavenward song! His soul, upborne on wings as strong As thought can give, from earth might start, And with a far diviner art Than ever genius can supply, As thou the ear, might glad the heart, And scatter music from the sky. 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. He 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 enthusiastic 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 twentythird 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 pocketmoney, weighing every morning all the unfinished castings as they were made, and afterwards in their unfinished 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 ironmonger, 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 onethird of his savings; but, in his own words, "I got out of the fracas with about £6,000, 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, Behind it there are living things, Whose silent frontlets say They'd rather see me out than in- My heart grows sick when home I come- If 'twere not for my cat and dog, My cat and dog, when I come home, When down my heart sinks, deathly down, My heart grows faint when home I come- If 'twere not for my dog and cat, I'd rather be a happy bird, Than, scorned and loathed, a king; Thou busy bee! how canst thou choose Oh blessed bee! thy glad wings say But I, when I come home-oh God! If 'twere not for my dog and cat, Why come they not? They do not come A heavier darkness on me falls I cannot lift my feet. Oh yes, they come!-they never fail To listen for my sighs; My poor heart brightens when it meets Again they come to meet me-God! Wilt thou the thought forgive? If 'twere not for my dog and cat, I think I could not live. This heart is like a churchyard stone; My home is comfort's grave; My playful cat and honest dog Are all the friends I have; And yet my house is filled with friends- |
