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THE ATHENÆUM
No. 1159, Page 46.
EBENEZER ELLIOTT.
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The following Memoir of the life of the late Ebenezer Elliott, written by
himself, in the middle of the year 1841, has been obligingly furnished to
us for publication. Here and there we have omitted certain passages, to be
found in the manuscript; which omission may perhaps appear occasionally to
disturb the continuity of the narrative. But various reasons have
suggested these several suppressions:—which, after all, sacrifice nothing
that is material or essentially characteristic in the autograph.
__________
SOON after my Corn-law Rhymes had made me somewhat
notorious, I was strongly urged by sundry persons to write a history of my
life; which I then refused to do, because I had nothing remarkable to
relate of myself, and because I knew not that I had done aught that could
reasonably induce any person to ask, six months after my death, "What sort
of man was Ebenezer Elliott?" I placed, however, in the hands of my
friend G. C. Holland, M.D., a series of letters, in which I narrated some
incidents of my early life, that had probably influenced the formation of
my mind and character, and which might form the basis of a posthumous
narrative, if wanted. I embody in the succeeding narrative the
substance of those letters now, following the advice which I rejected
several years ago—reluctantly, for the same reasons; not that this is "a
world to hide virtues in," but that I have none to hide. I have
another reason for my reluctance. The portion of my history which I
am about to publish is not that portion of it which would be most
instructive were it written as I alone could write it; that is, if I were
brave and honest enough so to write it,—which I am not. Even that
portion of it, however, would not be more instructive than the history of
almost any one person out of millions of the Queen's subjects, if truly
written; nor could I write it at all without saying to dead sorrows,
"Arise, and weep afresh,"—and to errors and failings that would fain
sleep forgotten, "Be ye remembered!" Two men alone in our time,
Rousseau and Byron, told the truth of themselves; and how have they been
requited? Yet the time may come when my present unwillingness to
look back on days of trouble will be lessened; for there is might and
majesty in the tale of the honest battle for bread, and of the strength
which the struggle gives to weakness.
Of my birth no public registry exists. My father, being a
Dissenter, baptized me himself, or employed his friend, and brother Berean,
Tommy Wright, the Barnesly tinker, to
baptize me. But I was born at the New Foundry, Masbro', in the parish of
Rotherham, on the 17th day of March, in the year of our—Lord 1781; and
I narrate the fact
thus particularly that about an event of such importance there may be no
contentious ink shed by historians in times to come. Robert Elliott, my
father's father, was a
whitesmith, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne; a man in good circumstances, or he
could not have given to his son Ebenezer, my father, what was then
considered a first-class
commercial education, and put him apprentice to Landell & Chambers, of
that great city, wholesale ironmongers, the received with
him a premium of £50. His wife, who rejoiced
in the pastoral name of "Sheepshanks," was a Scotsman,—and, speaking
metaphorically, wore breeches: a circumstance which does not seem to have
lessened
the love her husband bore her,—for he lamented her with tears long after
she had been laid in the grave, even until the day of his death—
especially when he was drunk.
The ancestors of my grandfather Elliott, I have been told—and have the
honour to believe—were thieves, neither Scotch nor English, who lived on
the cattle they stole from
both. That my grandmother Sheepshanks had ancestors is probable; but of
what they were neither record nor tradition hath reached me, which is the
more pity, because my
great difficulty in writing this narrative is want of materials. Famous
men are fated to have wants; but ask yourselves, ye Famous! who could
write your histories, if all the
children of
want were famous? After my father left Landell &
Chambers, he became one of the clerks of the Walkers of Masbro', where he
lodged with a surgeon called Robinson; under whose roof he first saw my
mother,—one of the
daughters of a yeoman, at Ozzins, near Penistone, where his ancestors had
lived on their fifty or sixty acres of freehold time out of mind ! ! I
think, then, I have made out my
descent, if not from very fine folks, certainly from respectables, as
(getting every day comparatively scarcer) they are called in these days of
"ten dog's to one bone."
If famous men are fated to have wants, so are they to have misfortunes,
truly such—and some of mine were born before me; for the whole life of my
mother was a disease,—a
tale of pain, terminated by death—one long sigh. Yet she suckled eleven
children, and reared eight of them to adult age. From her I have derived my
nervous irritability, my
bashful awkwardness, my miserable proneness to anticipate evil, that make
existence all catastrophe. I Well remember her sending me to a dame's
school, kept by Nanny
Sykes, the beautiful and brave wife of a drunken husband,—where I learned
my A B C. I was next sent to the Hollis School; then presided over by
Joseph Ramsbotham, who
taught me to write,—and little more. In those days the science of monitorship was undiscovered; and as he had seldom fewer perhaps than 150
scholars,—of course none but
the naturally clever made much progress. About this time, my poor mother,
who was a firstrate dreamer, and a true believer in dreams, related
to me one of her visions. "I had placed under my, pillow," she said, "a
shank-bone of mutton to dream upon; and I dreamed that I saw a little,
broad-set, dark, ill-favoured
man, with black hair, black eyes, thick stob nose and tup-shins: it was
thy father."
And a special original my father was:—a man of great virtue, not without
faults. One of the latter had its origin probably in some superstitious
reverence
for the cabalistic number "three." I allude to his bad habit of ducking
his children thrice, and keeping them the third time some seconds under
water when he bathed us
in the canal; which produced in me a horror of suffocation that seems to encrease with my years. To avoid this cruel kindness, I was obliged to
show him that I could do
without his assistance, by bathing voluntarily; a consequence of which
was, that on one occasion I narrowly escaped drowning: —"the more the
pity!" I have often said since. I never knew a man who possessed the tythe of my father's satiric and
humorous powers: he would have
made a great comic actor. He also possessed uncommon political sagacity,
which afterwards earned for him the title of "Devil Elliott,"—a title
which is still applied to him,
I am told, by the descendants of persons who then hated the poor and
honoured the king. He left the Messrs. Walker to serve Clay & Co. of the
New Foundry, Masbro', for a
salary of sixty or seventy pounds a year, with house, candle,
and coal! Well do I remember some of those days of affluence and pit-coal
fires,—for glorious fires we
had; no fear of coal bills in those days. There, at the New Foundry, under
the room where I was born, in a little parlour like the cabin of a ship,
yearly painted green, and
blessed with a beautiful thoroughfare of light—for there was no
window-tax in those days—he used to preach every fourth Sunday to
persons who came from distances of
twelve and fourteen miles to hear his tremendous doctrines of
ultra-Calvinism (he called himself a Berean) and
hell hung round with span-long children! On other days, pointing to the
aqua-tint pictures on the walls, he delighted to declaim on the virtues of
slandered Cromwell
and of Washington the rebel; or, shaking his sides with laughter,
explained the glories of "The glorious victory of His Majesty's forces
over the
Rebels at Bunker's Hill!" Here the reader has
a key which will unlock all my future politics. If ever there was a man
who knew not fear, that man was the father of the Corn-Law Rhymer. From
his birth to his last
gasp I doubt whether he knew what it was to be afraid, except of poverty;
about which he had sad forebodings,—ultimately realized, after he had
become nominal proprietor of
the Foundry of, Clay & Co.—the partners having sold him their shares on
credit.
I have left some earlier incidents for after-narration, that I may found
on my father's peculiarities a claim to speak now of my own—or rather of
certain physical or constitutional weaknesses, to which, I fear, all that is poetical
in me or in my doings is traceable.
"Oh blessed are the
beautiful!" says Haynes Billy,
uttering for ever a sentiment to which I can feelingly and mournfully
respond; far in my sixth year I had the small-pox, which left me
frightfully
disfigured, and six weeks blind. From the consequences I never recovered. To them quite as much
as to my poor mother's infirm constitution, I impute
my
nerve-shaken weakness. How great was that weakness I will endeavour to
show the reader. When I was very young—I might be twelve years old,—I
fell in love with a young
woman called Ridgeway,—now Mrs. Woodcock, of Munster, near Greasbro',—to whom I never spoke a word in my life, and the sound of whose voice, to
this day, I have never
heard; yet if I thought she saw me as I passed her father's house, I felt
as if weights were fastened to
my feet. Is genius diseased?—I cannot remember the time when I was not fond of ruralities. Was I born, then, with a
taste for the beautiful? When quite a child,—I might be seven or eight
years old, —I remember filling
a waster frying-pan with water, placing it in the centre of a little grove
of mugwart and wormwood that grew on a stone-heap in the foundry yard, and delighting to see the reflectlon of the sun, and clouds, and the plants themselves,
as from the
surface of a natural fountain; for I so placed the pan that the water only was visible and I seldom failed
to visit it at noon, when the sun was was over it. But I had also a taste for the horrible—a
passion—a rage, for seeing the faces of the hanged or the drowned. Why I
know not; for they
made my life a burden,—following me wherever I went, sleeping with me, and
haunting me in my
dreams. Was this hideous taste a result of constitutional infirmity? Had it any connexion with my
taste for writing of horrors and crimes? I was cured of it by a memorable spectacle. A poor friendless
man, who, having no
home, slept in colliery hovels and similar places, having been sent, one
dark night, from the glasshouse for a pitcher of ale, fell into the canal, and was
drowned. In about six weeks his body body rose to the the surface of the
water,—and
I, of course, ran to see it. The spectacle which by that time it presented was daily and nightly, whether I was alone or
in the street,
in bed or by the fireside,
for months
my constant companion. Had this morbid propensity any relation to my solitary
tendencies? Healthy man is social; but in my childhood I had no
associates. Although the
neighbourhood swarmed with children, I was always alone; and this is perhaps one reason why I was deemed rather wanting
in intellect, and
why I might really have had fewer ideas than other children of my age, for
I cut myself off from
communication with theirs. But though I was alone, I have no recollection
that my solitude was painful. On the contrary, I employed my time
delightfully in swimming my
little fleets of ships, and repairing my fortresses on the banks of the
canal between the Greasbro' and Rawmarsh bridges. My early fondness for
carpentering is no proof that if I had been bred an engineer I should have made any improvements in
machinery,—for all children are more more or less fond of knicknackery;
but I certainly excelled in
handicrafts. I was the best kitemaker and the best ship-builder. Most
captains of sloops and other vessels possess a model of a ship of some
sort. By
borrowing such models, I completed, when I was about thirteen years old,
a model of an eighteen-gun ship. I gave it many years afterwards, to a
boat-builder of Greasbro', called Woffendin, who begged it of me, that it
might obtain for him the office
of boat-builder to Earl Fitzwilliam. He gave, or sold it to Lord Milton,
the present Earl Fitzwilliam, then a youth; and it was, I believe, a few
years ago still at Wentworth House. But my imitative talents won me no respect; nor is
this very surprizing. Placed beside my wondrous brother, Giles, who
was beautiful as an an
an angel, I was ugliness itself; and in the presence of his splendid
abilities, I might well
look like like a fool, and believe myself to be one. As I grew up, my
fondness for solitude increased; for I could could not but observe the
homage that was paid to him, and feel the contempt with which I was regarded. But I am not aware
that I ever envied or at all disliked him.
When I look back on the days of rabid toryism through which I have passed,
and consider the then
almost universal tendency to worship the powers that were, and their worst
mistakes,—I feel astonished that a nerve-shaken man, whose affrighted
imagination in boyhood
and youth slept with dead men's faces,—a man, whose first sensation on
standing up to address a public meeting is that of his knees giving way
under him,—-should have
been able to retain his political integrity, without abjuring one article
of his fearless father's creed. But even in those days, I find, I was a
free-trader—though I knew it not.
So barbarous were some of the deeds done in that time in the name of law,
and so painful was the impression which they made on me when I was about
sixteen years old,
that I should certainly have emigrated to the United States had I
possessed sufficient funds for that purpose; nor should I, I fear, have
been very scrupulous as to the means
of obtaining them,—so fully had the idea of emigration obtained
possession of me, so passionately had my mind embraced it, and so
poetically had I associated with it
Crusoe notions of self-dependence and isolation. It is not improper to
blush for uncommitted offences. Even now, after forty-five years have been
added to my previous
existence, I shudder if I chance to meet an expedience-monger who tells me
"that the end justifies the means:"—a false doctrine and fatal faith,
which have wrought the fall of
many an all-shunned brother, and of ill-starred sisters numberless, once
unstained as the angels. Oh, think of this, ye tempted and ye tempters,
even if ye be
magistrates! but let no man believe that good effected by evil can be
aught but evil done, and an apology for more!—I must return from these
digressions.
My ninth year was an era in my life. My father had cast a great pan,
weighing some tons, for my uncle, at Thurlestone, and I determined to go
thither in it, without
acquainting my parents with my intention. A truck, with assistants,
having been sent for it, I got into it, about sunset, unperceived, hiding
myself beneath some hay,
which it contained,—and we proceeded on our journey. I have not forgotten
how much I was excited by the solemnity of the night and its shooting
stars, until I arrived at
Thurlestone, about four in the morning. It is remarkable that I never in
after life succeeded in any plan which
I did not execute in a similar way. If I ask advice, either the plan is
never executed or it is unsuccessful. I had not been many days at Thurlestone before I wished myself
at home again, for my heart was with my mother. If I could have found my
way back I should certainly have returned; and my inability to do so
(though my having
come in the night may in some degree account for it) shows, I think, that
I really must have been a dull child. My uncle sent me to Penistone
school, where I made some
little progress. At this school, one of the boys, who had a bad breath,
took a lilting to me. He would always sit close to me, and almost
poisoned me; yet if at any time he
happened to be absent I felt as if I could not live:—so necessary has it
ever been to me to have some kind bosom to lean upon. When I got home from
school I spent my
evenings in looking from the back of my uncle's house to Hoyland Swaine,
for I had discovered that Masbro' lay beyond that village; and ever, when
the sun went down, I felt
as if some great wrong had been done me. At length, in about a year and a
half, my father came for me:—and so ended my first irruption into the
great world. Is it not
strange, that a man who from his childhood has dreamed of visiting foreign
countries, and yet, at the age of sixty, believes that he shall see the
Falls of Niagara, has never
been twenty miles out of England, and has yet to see, for the first time,
the beautiful scenery of Cumberland, Wales, and Scotland?
On my return from the land of the great pan I was again sent to Hollis
school; where, as was my wont in all cases, I took the shortest ways to
my objects;—and the easiest
way to get my sums done was, to let John Ross do them for me. This
practice, in its consequences, added not a little to my reputation for duncery at home. Yet I have an
impression that I was looked up to by my schoolfellows—I cannot tell why; for I never fought, and I think they must have suspected me to be rather
wanting in certain learned
accomplishments. I say, I never fought,—and yet my brother Giles, when in
danger, always took me out to defend him. How all this
happened I am at a loss to conceive, far I took no pains to bring it
about.—But. having got into the rule of three, without having first
learned numeration, addition,
subtraction, and division, I was sent by my despairing parents to Dalton
school, two miles from Masbro'; and I see at this moment, as vividly as if
nearly fifty years had not
since passed over me, the kingfisher shooting along the Don as I passed schoolward through the Aldwark meadows, eating my dinner four hours before
dinner-time. But, oh!
the misery of reading without having learned to spell. The name of the
master was Brunskill,—a broken-hearted Cumberland-man,—one of the best
of living creatures,—a sort of
sad-looking, half-starved angel without wings; and I have stood for hours
beside his desk, with the tears running down my face, utterly unable to
set down one correct figure.
I doubt whether he ever suspected that I had not been taught the
preliminary rules. I actually did not know that they were necessary, and
looked on a boy who
could do a sum in vulgar fractions as a sort of magician. Dreading
school, I absented myself from it during the summer months of the second
year—"playing truant" about
Dalton, Deign, and Silverwood, or Thrybergh Park, where I stole duck eggs,
mistaking them for the eggs of wild birds, and was brought before Madam
Finch. She,
seeing what a simpleton I was, released me, with a reprimand.
Let it not be supposed that these were happy days. I was utterly
miserable. I trembled when I drew near home, for I knew not how to answer
the questions which I feared my
father would put to me. Sometimes I avoided them by slinking to bed
without supper,—which to a lad who took care to eat his dinner soon after
breakfasting could not be
convenient. It was impossible, however, to prevent my father from
discovering that I was learning nothing but vagabondism,—or from
suspecting that my slow progress was
owing more to idleness than to want of ability to learn. He set me to work
in the foundry, as a punishment. But working in the foundry, so far from
being a punishment to me,
relieved me from the sense of inferiority which had so long depressed me;
for I was not found to be less clever there than other beginners. For this
there was a
sufficient reason; I had been familiar from my infancy with the processes
of the manufactory, and possibly a keen though silent observer of them. The result of his
experiment vexed the experimenter,—and he had good cause for vexation;
for it soon appeared that I could play my part at the York-Keelman with
the best of its customers.
Yet I never thoroughly relished the rude company and coarse enjoyments of
the alehouse. My thoughts constantly wandered to the canal banks and my
little ships; and—I
know not why, but—I always built my fortresses, aye, and my castles in
the air, too, where the flowers were the finest. The "yellow ladies'
bed-straw" (I did not then
know its name,) was a particular favourite of mine; and the banks of the
canal were golden with it. At this time I had strong religious
impressions; and (when there
was service) I seldom missed attending the chapel of parson Allard—a
character who might have sate for Scott's picture of Dominie Sampson. But
I sometimes went to
the Masbro' chapel, (Walker's, it was then called,) to hear Mr. Groves,
one of the most eloquent and dignified of men, but hated by my father (who
was a capital hater) for
some nothing or other of discipline or of doctrine. I was on my way, I
believe, to hear him, when I called, one Sunday, on my aunt Robinson,—a
widow, left with three children
and about £30 a year, on which (God knows how!) she contrived to live
respectably, and to give her two sons an education which ultimately made
them both gentlemen.
I thought she received me coldly. She did not, I think, know that I had
been tipsy a night or two before; but I was conscience-stricken. After a
minute's silence, she rose, and laid before me a number of 'Sowerby's English Botany,' which her son
Benjamin, then apprenticed to Dr. Stainforth, of
Sheffield, was purchasing monthly. Never shall I forget the impression
made on me by the beautiful
plates. I actually touched the figure of the primrose, half-convinced that
the mealiness on the leaves
was real. I felt hurt when she removed the book from me,—but she removed
it only to show me how to draw the figures, by holding them to the light,
with a thin piece of paper
before them. On finding that I could so draw them correctly, I was lifted
at once
above the inmates of the alehouse at least a foot in mental stature. My
first effort was a copy from the primrose; under which (always fond of
fine words) I wrote its Latin name, Primula veris vulgaris. So, thenceforward, when
I happened to have a spare hour I went to my aunt's to draw. But she had
not
yet shown me all the wealth of her Benjamin. The next revealed marvel was
his book of dried plants. Columbus when be discovered the New World was
not a greater man
than I at that moment; for no misgiving crossed my mind that the discovery
was not my own, and no Americo Vespucius disputed the
honour of it with me. But (alas, for the strength of my religious
impressions!) thenceforth often did parson Allard inquire why Eb. was not
at chapel?—for I passed my
Sundays in gathering flowers, that I might make pictures of them. I had
then, as now, no taste for the science of Botany; the classifications of
which seemed to me to be
like preparations for sending flowers to prison. I began, however, to feel
mannish. There was mystery about me. People stopped me with my plants, and
asked what
diseases I was going to cure? But I was not in the least aware that I was
learning the art of poetry, which I then hated—especially Pope's, which
gave me the head-ache if I
heard it read aloud. My wanderings, however, soon made me acquainted with
the nightingales in Basingthorpe Spring,—where, I am told, they still
sing sweetly; and with a
beautiful green snake, about a yard long, which on the fine Sabbath
mornings, about ten o'clock, seemed to expect me at
the top of primrose Lane. It became so familiar, that it ceased to uncurl
at my approach. I have sate on the style beside it till it seemed
unconscious of my presence;
and when I rose to go, it would only lift the scales behind its head or
the skin beneath them—and they shone in the sun like fire. I know not how
often this beautiful
and harmless child of God may have "sate for his picture" in my
writings—a dozen, at least; but wherever I might happen to meet with any
of its brethren or sisters—at
Thistlebed Ford, where they are all vipers, black or brown—or in the Aldwark meadows, on the banks of the Don, with the kingfisher above and
the dragonfly below them—or on
Boston Castle ridge—or in the Clough dell, where they swarm—or in Canklow Quarry—or by the Rother, near Hail-Mary Wood,—whatever the scene
might be, the portrait, if
drawn, was sure to be that of my first snake-love.
I had now become a person of some note; and if I let my wondering adorers
suppose that I copied my figures of plants, not at secondhand, but from
the plants which they
saw I was in the habit of collecting—pardon me, outraged spirit of
Truth! for I had been so long a stranger to the voice of praise, and it
sounded so sweetly to my
unaccustomed ears, that I could not refuse to welcome it when it came. But
my dried plants were undeniably my own; and so obvious was their merit,
that even my all
praised and all able brother sometimes condescended to look at and admire
my "Hortus Siccus"—as I pompously named my book of specimens. It was
about this time that I
first heard him read the first book of Thomson's Seasons; and he was a
capital reader,—well aware, too, of that fact. When he came to the
description of the polyanthus and
auricula, I waited impatiently till he laid down the book; I then took it
into the garden, where I compared the description with the living flowers. Here was another new
idea—Botany in verse!—a prophecy that the days of scribbling were at
hand. But my earliest taste in poetry was like that of Bottom the weaver,
who of all things liked best "a
scene to tear a cat in." Accordingly, my first poetical attempt was an
imitation in rhyme of Thomson's blank-verse thunderstorm. I knew perfectly
well that sheep could
not take to flight after having been killed, but the "rhyme" seemed to be
of opinion that they should be so described; and as it doggedly abided by
this perversity, there was
nothing for it but to describe my flock "scudding away" after the
lightning had slain them. I read the marvel to my cousin Benjamin; from
whom I received infliction the
first of merciless criticism. God forgive him!—I never could. Neither
could I help perceiving the superiority which his learning gave him over
me; and never was I so happy as
when listening to his recitations of Homer's Greek, of which I did not
understand a word,—and yet,
after the illapse of nearly half a century its music has not departed from
my soul.
Willingly, too, would I have shared the praises showered on my brother
Giles:—but, alas, how was that to he accomplished? Hitherto, I had been
fat and round as a ball,—I
now became pale and lean. My health visibly suffered: but I had inly
resolved to undertake the great task of self-instruction. I purchased a
grammar; but proved unable to
remember a single rule, however laboriously committed to memory. About a
year afterwards, I added the "Key" to my grammar, and read it through and
through a hundred
times. I found, at last, that by reflection, and by supplying elisions,
&c., I could detect and correct grammatical errors. The pronouns bothered
me most,—as they still do.
At this moment I do not know a single rule of grammar; and yet I can now,
I flatter myself, write English as correctly as Samuel Johnson could, and
detect errors in a greater
author, Samuel Bailey. Flushed with success, my enthusiasm knew no bounds. To the great joy of my father, I resolved
to learn French. But though I could with ease get and say my lessons, I
could not remember a word of them; I, therefore, at the end of a few
weeks gave
up the attempt. For once, however, I was lucky in calamity; for my French
teacher not understanding the language himself, I was allowed to throw the
blame on
him,—which I did gloriously.
It would seem that my poetical propensities are traceable to certain
accidents; but that about the end of my fourteenth year my mind began to
make efforts for itself. Those
efforts, however, were favoured by an accident of importance in the
history of my education. A clergyman, called Firth, who held a poor curacy
at a desolate place called
Middlesmoor, bequeathed to my father his library, containing, besides
scores of Greek and Latin books, Barrow's 'Sermons,' Ray's 'Wisdom of
God,' Derham's 'Physico-Theology,' Young's 'Night Thoughts,' Hervey's 'Meditations,'
Henepin's 'Travels,' and three volumes of the 'Royal Magazine,'
embellished with views of Bombay,
Madras, the Falls of Niagara, Pope's Villa at Twickenham, and fine
coloured
representations of foreign birds. My writings owe something to all these
books; particularly to Henepin, who carried me with him from Niagara to
the
Mississippi. I was never weary of Barrow; he and Young taught me to
condense. Ray also was a
favourite. The picture of Pope's Villa induced me to buy his 'Essay on
Man,'—but could not enable
me to like it. In the 'Royal Magazine' I found the narrative of a
shipwreck on a South-Sea island; on which I made a romance in blank verse,
twenty years before Scott
printed his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' My next treasure was Shenstone; I could repeat all the mottos,
translated from the Greek and
Latin, which he has prefixed to his poems. I think
he is now undervalued. Then followed Milton,— who held me captive long. I
have said, I always took the shortest road to an object: this tendency
led me into
some errors, but is the principal cause of my ultimate success as an
author. I never could read a feeble book through: it follows that I read
masterpieces only, the best
thoughts of the highest minds,—after Milton, Shakspeare—then Ossian—then Junius, with my father's Jacobinism for a commentary,—Paine's
'Common-sense,'—Swift's Tale of a Tub,'—'Joan of Arc,'- Schiller's
'Robbers,'—Bürger's 'Leonora,'—Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,'—and, long afterwards, Tasso,
Dante, De Staël,
Schlegel, Hazlitt, and the Westminster Review. But I have a strange
memory. Sometimes it fails me altogether,—yet when I was twelve years
old, I almost knew the Bible by
heart; and in my sixteenth year I could repeat, without missing a word,
the first, second, and sixth books of 'Paradise Lost!' If, then, I possess that power which is called genius, how
great must be my moral demerits,—for what have I written that will bear
any comparison with the
least of my glorious models? But I possess not that glorious power. Time
has developed in me, not genius, but powers which exist
in all men and lie dormant in most. I cannot, like Byron and Montgomery,
pour poetry from my heart as from an unfailing fountain; and of my
inability to identify myself,
like Shakspeare and Scott, with the characters of other men, my abortive 'Kerhoneh,'
'Taurepdes,' and similar rejected failures, are melancholy instances. My thoughts are all exterior,—my "mind is the mind of my own eyes. A primrose is to me a primrose, and
nothing more:—I love it because
it is nothing more. There is not in my writings one good idea that has not
been suggested to me by some real occurrence, or by some object
actually before my eyes, or by some remembered object or occurrence, or by the thoughts of other
men, heard or
read. If I possess any power at all allied to genius, it is that of
making other men's thoughts suggest thoughts to me which, whether
original or not, are to me new.
Some years ago my late excellent neighbour, John Heppenstel, after showing
me the plates of Audubon's 'Birds of America,' requested
me to address a few verses to the author. With this request I was
anxious to comply; but I was unable to write a line, until a sentence
in Rousseau suggested a
whole poem, and coloured all its language. Now, in this case, I was not like a clergyman
man seeking a text that he may write a sermon; for the text was not
sought, but found—or it would have been to me a lying and a barren
spirit.
From my sixteenth to my twenty-third 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 pocket-money; weighing in every morning all the unfinished
castings as they were made, and afterwards in their finished state,
besides opening and closing the
shop in Rotherham when my brother happened to be ill or absent. Why,
then, may not I call myself a working-man? But I am not aware that I
ever did so
call myself; certainly never as an excuse for my poetry if bad, or if good
as a claim for wonder. There are only two lines in my writings which could
enable the reader to
guess at my condition in life. I wrote them to show that, whatever else I
might be, I was not of the genus "Dunghill Spurner,"—for in this land of
castes the dunghill-sprung with good coats on their backs are not yet
generally anxious to claim relationship with hard-handed usefulness.
But as a literary man I claim to be self-taught; not
because none of my teachers ever read to me or required me to read a page
of English grammar; but because I have of my own will read some of the
best books in our
language, original and translated, and the best only—laboriously
forming my mind on
the highest models. If unlettered women and even children write good
poetry, I, who have studied and practised the art during more than forty
years, ought to
understand it, or I must be a dunce indeed.
I have laid before the reader a history of my boyhood and youth. What
excuse can I plead for troubling him with these common-place incidents in
the history of a
common-place person? That I write not for the strong but for the weak;
who may learn from this narrative that as by the mere force of will
such persons can write poetry,
no honest man of good sense need despair of accomplishing, much greater
because more useful matters. The history of my manhood and its
misfortunes (your famous
people have a knack of being unfortunate, and of calling their faults
misfortunes) remains to be written. It would not, I have said, even if
honestly written, be more instructive
than an honest history of almost any other man; but when I said so, I
forgot that it would be, in part, a history of the terrific changes of
fortune, the alternations of prosperity and suffering, caused by over-issues, or by' the sudden withdrawal,
of inconvertible paper-money, in those days "when none but knaves
throve and none but madmen
laughed—when servants took their masters by the nose, and beggared
masters slunk aside to die—when men fought with shadows, and were
slain—while, in dreadful calm,
the viewless storm increased, most fatal when least dreaded, and nearest
when least expected." I am not yet prepared—not yet sufficiently
petrified in heart and brain, by
time and trouble—to tell a tale, in telling
which I must necessarily live over again months and years of living death.
When I made the astounding assertion many years ago (in
Tait's
Magazine) that the
food-taxes were costing, or destroying, or preventing the earning of more
than a hundred millions sterling a-year,—I knew well that in a short time
the truth of that assertion
would be confirmed by the wisest and best informed of my countrymen.
It
has been objected
to my political poems that I sometimes repeat in
them the same thoughts and words. Why should
I not repeat the same thoughts and words, if they are wanted and I cannot find better? My countryman were robbed of
knowledge as well as food; and it is not my fault that, born dull and
slow, I find thoughts and and words with difficulty. I husband my materials because
I am intellectually poor. No man can, "by taking thought" add an inch to
his stature; but
any man may do the best he can with the means in his power—and he
who would usefully live in his deeds "must fight for eternity with
the weapons of time." Newspaper-taught as I am, and having no ideas of my
own, I can only seize those of others as they occur, earnestly applying
them to
current occasions. If I have been mistaken in my
objects I am sorry for it; but I have never advocated any cause without
first trying to know the principles an which it was based. On looking back
on my public
conduct—thanks to that science which poor Cobbett, ever floundering, yet
great and brave, called in scorn "Poleetical Economy"— I find I have had
little to unlearn. And when I shall go to my account, and the Great
Questioner whose judgments err not shalt say to me, "What didst thou with
the lent talent?" I can truly answer, "Lord, it is here; and with it
all that I could add to it—doing my best to make little much."
EBENEZER
ELLIOTT.
Sheffield, 21st
June, 1841.
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