The next, Song, Tune, pathetic :

"Robin Adair," is very

"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 !

THE FOUR DEARS.

"Dear Sugar, dear Tea, and dear Corn
Conspired with dear Representation,
To laugh worth and honour to scorn,

And beggar the whole British nation."

The poem entitled "The Black Hole of Calcutta" has some noble lines. After asking the "Hopeless Trader," the "Bread-tax'd Weaver," the "Building lawyer's nominee," "The Man of Consols," the "Palaced Pauper," the "Peer," &c.—what hath bread tax done for them ?-he appeals to the Church :

"Church bedew'd with martyrs' blood
Mother of the wise and good!

Temple of our smiles and tears,
Hoary with the frost of years!
Holy church, eternal, true!
What for thee will bread-tax do?
It will strip thee bare as she
Whom a despot stripp'd for thee;
Of thy surplice make thy pall,
Low'r thy pride, and take thy all-
Save thy truth, establish'd well,
Which-when spire and pinnacle,
Gorgeous arch, and fi'gured stone,
Cease to tell of glories gone-
Still shall speak of thee and Him
Whom adore the seraphim."

The Song, Tune, "Scots wha hae," &c., is very stir

ring :

"Others march in freedom's van;

Canst not thou what others can ?

Thou a Briton! thou a man!

What are worms, if human thou?"

The poem, entitled "The Press," "written for the printers of Sheffield on the passing of the Reform Bill," is a fine production, containing the verses :

One more selection may be taken from these earlier "Corn Law Rhymes," for the sake of the personal allusions :

SONG.

"Here's health to our friends of Reform !

And, hey, for the town of the cloud,

That gather'd her brows, like the frown of the storm,
And scatter'd the base and the proud.

Then, to Palfreyman, Parker, and Ward;

And Bailey, a star at mid-day:

And Badger the lawyer, and Brettell the bard;

And Phillips in battle grown grey.

And Bramhall, by bigots unhung;

And Holland, the fearless and pure;

And Bramley, and Barker, the wise and the young;
And Bently the Rotherham brewer.

Here's a health to our friends of Reform,

The champions of freedom and man,

Our pilots who weather'd and scatter'd the storm,
Our heroes, who fought in the van."

Elliott published a great number of poems, which scarcely at first passed beyond local recognition. He owed

his public fame to an accidental visit paid by Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Bowring to Thomas Asline Ward, Esq., of Sheffield. This gentleman placed a copy of the "Corn Law Ryhmes," &c., in the hands of his visitor, who, a superior poet himself, was immediately struck with the great merit of the poet, and was subsequently introduced to him by Mr. Ward. Returning to London, on the way, Dr. Bowring visited William Howitt at Nottingham, where he met Wordsworth, and made them acquainted with, as he said, "The wonderful poet of Sheffield-not Montgomery, but a new name." In London the Doctor showed Elliott's poems to Bulwer, who introduced them to the public in an anonymous letter, in the "New Monthly Magazine." From this time his fame spread over the land. William Howitt, in that charming book"Homes and Haunts of the British Poets," makes the following choice selections, as specially illustrative, the one of Elliott's delineative and picturesque description, and the other of his sweet musical versification :

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"Still, Nature, still he loves thy uplands brown-
The rock that o'er his father's freehold towers!
And strangers hurrying through the dingy town
May know his workshop by its sweet wild flowers.
Cropped on the Sabbath from the hedge-row bowers,
The hawthorn blossom in his window droops;
Far from the headlong stream and lucid air,
The pallid alpine rose to meet him stoops,
As if to soothe a brother in despair,
Exiled from Nature, and her pictures fair.
Even winter sends a posy to his jail,
Wreathed of the sunny celandine; the brief,
Courageous wind-flower, loveliest of the frail;
The hazel's crimson star, the woodbine's leaf,
The daisy with its half-closed eye of grief;
Prophets of fragrance, beauty, joy, and song."
"When daisies blush, and wind-flowers wet with dew;
When shady lanes with hyacinths are blue;
When the elm blossoms o'er the brooding bird,
And wild and wide the plover's wail is heard ;
When melt the mists on mountains far away,
Till morn is kindled into brightest day,
No more the shouting youngsters shall convene
To play at leap-frog on the village green,” &c.

Ebenezer Elliott on removing to Sheffield usually attended the Upper Chapel (Unitarian) Chapel. That his religious

views partook essentially of the Unitarian gospel is manifestly evident in all his religious allusions. His chief friends were prominent representatives of the Unitarian community, Bowring, Brettell, Ward, Bramley, Palfreyman, and others. His poetic references to Christ are of the Unitarian description, "Him, who died on Calvary, the great Reformer Christ." The following allusions confirm his conception of God, as the Eternal One," and "Father God."

was:

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Thy goodness is unbounded, God of Love-
Father and God! thy sons shall worship Thee."

His own beautifully conceived epitaph embodies all he

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'Almighty Father, let thy lowly child,

Strong in his love of Truth be wisely bold—

A patriot bard, by sycophants revil'd

Let him live useilly, and not die old!

Let poor men's children, pleas'd to read his lays,
Love, for his sake, the scenes where he hath been;
And, when he ends his pilgrimage of days,
Let him be buried where the grass is green;
Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late
To hear the bee his busy note prolong :-
There let him slumber, and in peace await

The dawning morn, far from the sensual throng,

Who scorn the wind flowers blush, the red breast's lonely song,"

For the solace of his last years the poet retired to a small estate he purchased near Darfield, and was buried in the churchyard of that Parish, where the grass is green, and the daisies bloom earliest and linger late.'