ELLIOT, EBENEZER, the CORN-LAW RHYMER, was b. at Masborough, in Yorkshire, Mar. 7, 1781. His father was a man of strong character and narrow opinions, and, as appears from Ebenezer's autobiography (published in the Atheneum in 1850), exercised no little influence on his son's modes of thinking and sympathies. When a boy at school, E. was not a quick pupil; and even after his father had sent him to work in the iron-foundry, where he himself held the situation of a clerk, the youth exhibited no fondness for reading. Before long, however, he entirely changed, and commenced to study Milton, Shakespeare, Ossian, Junius, and other authors. His first published poem was composed in his 17th year; it is entitled The Vernal Walk. This was:succeeded by _Night; ivharneltfe; etc. In 1821, E. began business as an iron-founder on his own account at Sheffield. He was very successful; and in 1841 retired to an estate which he had purchased at Great Houghton, near Barnesley, where he died 1st Dec., 1849. E.'s principal productions are Love, accompanied with a letter to lord Byron; his famous Corn-law Rhymes; The Ranter; and The Village Patriarch, a work full of noble and earnest poetry, all of which appeared between 1823-30. In 1834, he issued a collected
edition of his works, in 3 vols.; and in 1840, an edition in one volume. E. followed Crabbe, but with more depth and tire of feeling, in depicting the condition of the poor as miserable and oppressed, tracing most of the evils he deplores to the social and politi cal institutions of the country. The laws relating to the importation of corn were denounced by E. as specially oppressive, and he inveighed against them with a fervor of manner and a harshness of phraseology which ordinary minds feel as repulsive, even while acknowledged as flowing from the offended benevolence of the poet. But the glow of earnestness kindles his verse, and hides a multitude of faults. More enduring, however, than his rhyming philippics, are his descriptions of English, and especially of Yorkshire scenery, and his delineations of humble virtue and affection. These are instinct with the purest spirit of poetry.