Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti
Ebenezer Elliott (17811849)Critical Introduction by Edward Dowden
[Born 17th of March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masbro’, near Rotherham, Yorkshire; wrote in his seventeenth year The Vernal Walk; worked in his father’s foundry until 1804; made trials of business in Sheffield, of which the first failed; published his first volume of verse, 1823; Village Patriarch, 1829; Corn Law Rhymer, 1831; retired from business, 1841; died 1st of December, 1849.]
Elliott’s imagination was ambitious, and imperfectly trained: he accordingly dealt with large and passionate themes, entering into them with complete abandon; and he was hurried on to passages of genuine inspiration; real heights and depths were within his range; heavenly lights alternate with nether darkness. Few of his longer poems, however, possess imaginative ordonnance; from the sublime he could pass to the turgid; from the pathetic to the pseudo-romantic; and therefore few of these longer poems can be read with satisfaction in each as a whole. Nothing of worth that Elliott wrote was caught out of the air; each poem had its roots in fact; but the colouring in his earlier pieces is sometimes extravagant: as he matured, his imagination gravitated from the romantic to the real. There are not many figures in English poetry drawn from real life worthier of regard than the Ranter, Elliott’s pale preacher of reform on Shirecliffe height, and his Village Patriarch, the blind lone father, with wind-blown venerable hair, still unbowed after his hundred years; though seeming coeval with the cliffs around, still a living and heroic pattern of English manhood.
The wild flowers and the free wild streams of Yorkshire never found a more eager and faithful lover than Ebenezer Elliott; but mere sunlight and pure air delight him. The silence or living sounds of the fields or the moor bring healing and refreshment to an ear harassed by the din of machinery; the wide peaceful brightness is a benediction to an eye smarting from blear haze of the myriad-chimneyed city. Animal refreshment rises, by degrees, to gratitude, exaltation, worship.
But from the wilderness his heart full of passionate tenderness drew him back to the troubled walks of men. His poetry could not be like