THE CORN-LAW RHYMER.
Ebenezer Elliott not only possessed poetical spirit, or the apparent faculty of producing poetry, but he produced poems beautiful in description, touching in incident and feeling, and kindly in sentiment, when he was kept away from that bugbear of his imagination a landed gentleman. A man of acres, or any upholder of the corn-laws, was to him what brimstone and blue flames are to a certain species of devotee, or the giant oppressor of enchanted innocence to a mad knight-errant. In a squire or a farmer he could see no humanity; the agriculturist was an incarnate devil, bent upon raising the price of bread, reducing wages, checking trade, keeping the poor wretched and dirty, and rejoicing when fever followed famine, to sweep them off by thousands to an untimely grave. According to his creed, there was no folly, no fault, no idleness, no improvidence in the poor. Their very crimes were brought upon them by the gentry class. The squires, assisted a little by kings, ministers, and farmers, were the true origin of evil in this world of England, whatever might be the cause of it elsewhere.
This rabid feeling was opposed to high poetical excellence. Temper and personal passion are fatal to art: "in the very torrent, tempest, and (I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you should acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." It is also fatal to more than art: where a person looks with the vulgar eyes that Ebenezer Elliott used on many occasions, there can be neither truth nor justice. Even the satirist must observe a partial truth and a measure in expressing it, or he sinks down to the virulent lampooner.
Part of this violence must be placed to the natural disposition of the man, but part of it was owing to his narrow education; by which we mean, not so much book-learning or reading, of which he had probably enough, but provincial and possibly low associates. Something, perhaps, should be ascribed to a self-sufficiency rather morbid than proud; for we think Elliott had a liking to be "head of the company," and that he resented any want of public notice as an affront, even when the parties could not know that he was entitled to notice.
These defects of character operated very mischievously upon his works. The temper marred his political poems; though the people, their condition, vices, and virtues, is a theme that, properly sung, might stir the Anglo-Saxon race throughout the world and give immortality to a poet. The provincial mind affected the mass of Elliott's poems even where the subject was removed from his prejudices; for he had no habitual elevation or refinement of taste: it required a favorable theme or a happy moment to triumph over the deficiencies of nature and education. His self-sufficiency coupled with his provincialism seems to have prevented him from closely criticising his productions; so that he often published things that were prosaic as well as faulty in other respects.
The posthumous volumes before us naturally abound in the author's peculiarities; for the feelings of survivors are prone to err on the side of fullness, and the friends of the lately dead too often print indiscriminately. The consequence is, that the publication has an air of gatherings, and contains a variety of things that a critical stranger would wish away. It was proper, perhaps, to have given prose as a specimen of the author; and the review of his works by Southey, said to have been rejected by the Quarterly, is curious for its total disregard of the reviewer's own canons, since very little description is given of the poems, and not much of the characteristics of the poet. Much of the poetry in these volumes would have been better unpublished. Here and there we find a touching little piece, or a bit of power; but the greater part is not only unpoetical but trivial, or merely personal in the expression of feeling. There is, moreover, a savageness of tone toward the agricultural interest, even after the corn-laws were abolished, that looks as like malignity as honest anger.—London Spectator.
Madame Grandin, the widow of M. Victor Grandin, representative of the Seine Inférieure, who died about seven or eight months since, met with a melancholy end on the 6th, at her residence at Elbœuf. She was confined to her bed from illness, and the woman, who had been watching by her during the night, had left her but a short time, when the most piercing shrieks were heard to proceed from her room. Her brother ran in alarm to her assistance, but, unfortunately, he was too late, the poor lady had expired, having been burned in her bed. It is supposed that in reaching to take something from the table, her night-dress came in contact with the lamp, and thus communicated to the bed.
