THE POETICAL WORKS OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT.* INDIGNATVDT was in large

measure the source of Elliott's poetical power. The wrongs of mankind, or rather of a special class, in- spired his verse ; he seldom writes what deserves to rank above mediocrity, unless moved by a strong passion and a righteous anger. He was without question a genuine poet, but he pos- sessed neither breadth of intellect nor of imagination, and in attempting to write on topics which aroused no personal feeling he is frequently verbose and common-place. Crabbe, the poet of

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27.e Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott. Edited by his Son, Edwin Elliott,Rector of St. John's, Antigua. A New and Revised Edition. 2 vols. London; Henry S. Ibis sad Co. 1876. the wretched, seems to have been as much admired by the " Corn- Law Rhymer " as for different reasons he was admired by Walter Scott. Elliott's longest and most pretentious poems are due to this master. There is in them a monotony of woe, much Dutch painting of the sombre type, and much of the homely diction in which Crabbe delighted. But Crabbe was a humourist and an admirable story-teller, who knew how to arrange common-place materials with consummate art, and these gifts were denied to Elliott. With him, as with so many poets, his shortest efforts are his best. Some of his lyrics, indeed, impress one with a sense of power and of poetical charm for which we look in vain in such poems as "The Letter" or " The Splendid Village," which, although far from conventional in tone, and displaying genuine feeling, remind us upon every page of a greater poet. Elliott loved nature and he loved men, or- rather he loved all men who suffered under a social or political grievance. It was as the Corn-Law Rhymer that he won his laurels, and these two thick volumes of his collected works con- tain nothing so characteristic of his genius as the " Corn-Law Lyrics." The following " song," for instance, the utterance of a deeply-touched and sensitive nature, is the expression in tersely- pointed rhyme of the sympathetic spirit that possessed him :— "Child, is thy father dead ? Father is gone

Why did they tax his bread?

God's will be done ! Mother has sold her bed ; Better to die than wed Where shall she lay her head ?

Home we have none !

Father clemm'd thrice a week,—

God's will be done Long for work did he seek, Work he found none.

Tears on his hollow cheek Told what no tongue could speak : Why did his master break ?

God's will be done I Doctor said air was best,— Food we had none ; Father, with panting breast, Groaned to be gone. Now he is with the blest,— Mother says death is best ! We have no place of rest,— Yes, ye have one !"

Even when strongly moved, Elliott frequently writes in a diction which can only by courtesy be termed poetical, and some of the " Rhymes " exhibit the vices of coarse invective and false meta- phor ; nor is he always careful to be accurate in sense or metre. A writer of Elliott's class does not gain in reputation by the pub- lication of all his poems. We like to trace the progress of a great poet from his earliest efforts to the mature and perfect work on which he rests his fame. Literature is the gainer by such a study, just as art is a gainer from the lessons taught by the timid and uncertain efforts of a youthful painter, who afterwards ex- hibits supreme power. Of the works left by Shelley, Keats, or Turner, it is hard to say that anything is insignificant to the student of poetry or of painting ; but no one can learn much from the study of Elliott's immature or imitative work. A few of his lyrics—such, for instance, as that addressed " To the Bramble- Flower "—may live many years in selections ; but there is a crudeness, an incompleteness, a lack of lovely words or pregnant thought, in the larger portion of his verse, which, in spite of some fine qualities, will prevent it from taking a permanent place in literature.

Elliott's prejudices and narrowness of view no doubt influenced his poetry, as they affected his life. He looked at human misery, or rather at English misery with a keen eye and a feeling heart ; and so great was his sympathy with the bread-taxed poor, that his sense of joy, in verse at all events, seems to have been ex- tinguished. In " The Village Patriarch " he writes :—

" I feed on Nature's bane, and mess with scorn ; I would not, could not, if I would, be glad, But like shade-loving plants am happiest sad; My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarrd With gloating on the ills I cannot cure."

His judgments, whether moral or literary, are often weak in the extreme. Clergymen, he observes, should receive no pay, since preaching ought to be its own reward; and he prophesies that reli- gion will never gain a complete triumph " while one paid pilgrim upon earth is found." In a Coronation ode, after address- ing Victoria as the Queen of new-made graves, he has some absurd imagery about Doom preparing his match, and " each dark smiler" hugging his dagger :—

"Still shall the car of Juggernaut roll on. O'er broken hearts and children born in vain, !Banner'd with fire! while thousand men as one Sink down beneath its coward wheels of pain That crash our souls, through crunching blood and brain !"

Elliott never fails so completely as when he makes a strong effort to be powerful. His best work is his simplest, and much of. genuine feeling is aroused in him by the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the joyful movements and sounds of nature. He has at all times a poet's susceptibility to the changes of the seasons, and his descriptive passages are often -faithful and effective. To the end he retained a healthy love of rural objects, and his last lines, dictated on his death-bed, have a simplicity and tenderness of feeling which awaken sympathy with the writer

"Thy notes, sweet Robin, soft as dew, Heard soon or late, are dear to me ; To music I could bid adieu, But not to thee When from my heart Earth's lifeftil throng Shall pass away, no more to be, Oh ! Autumn's primrose, Robin's song, Return to me !"

Ms-wrath, on the other hand, frequently displays weakness rather than strength, and the sympathy Elliott wishes to awaken in the reader is destroyed by the turbid and bombastic language in which his anger finds utterance. One of Elliott's biographers finds fault with his longer poems for being too literary. No charge can be more absurd, and it may be safely said that some of his worst faults as a poet are due to the lack of literary instincts. Literature implies method, a sense of proportion, a taste which will reject incongruities, a perception of what is meretricious, and that sanity and finely-tempered moderation which are the marks of a well-balanced intellect. Qualities such as these are not to be found in the poetry of Elliott; and we do not think that the publica- tion in handsome form of all his poetical productions will be of this service to his fame. We regret that Mr. Elliott has given no memoir of his father, and that he has not taken the trouble to explain allusions which will not be readily understood by the reader.