ELIZABETH, QUEEN (1533-1603). —Was one of the scholar-women of her time, being versed in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. Her translation of Boethius shows her exceptional art and skill. In the classics Roger Ascham was her tutor. She wrote various short poems, some of which were called by her contemporaries "sonnets," though not in the true sonnet form. Her original letters and despatches show an idiomatic force of expression beyond that of any other English monarch.
ELLIOT, MISS JEAN (1727-1805). —Poetess, dau. of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, has a small niche in literature as the authoress of the beautiful ballad, The Flowers of the Forest, beginning, "I've heard the lilting at our yowe-milking." Another ballad with the same title beginning, "I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling" was written by Alicia Rutherford, afterwards Mrs. Cockburn.
ELLIOT, EBENEZER (1781-1849). —Poet, b. at Masborough, Yorkshire, in his youth worked in an iron-foundry, and in 1821 took up the same business on his own account with success. He is best known by his poems on behalf of the poor and oppressed, and especially for his denunciations of the Corn Laws, which gained for him the title of the Corn Law Rhymer. Though now little read, he had considerable poetic gift. His principal poems are Corn Law Rhymes (1831), The Ranter, and The Village Patriarch (1829).
ELLIS, GEORGE (1753-1815). —Miscellaneous writer, s. of a West Indian planter, gained some fame by Poetical Tales by Sir Gregory Gander (1778). He also had a hand in the Rolliad, a series of Whig satires which appeared about 1785. Changing sides he afterwards contributed to the Anti-Jacobin. He accompanied Sir J. Harris on his mission to the Netherlands, and there coll. materials for his History of the Dutch Revolution (1789). He ed. Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790), and Specimens of the Early English Romances, both works of scholarship. He was a friend of Scott, who dedicated the fifth canto of Marmion to him.
ELLWOOD, THOMAS (1639-1713). —A young Quaker who was introduced to Milton in 1662, and devoted much of his time to reading to him. It is to a question asked by him that we owe the writing of Paradise Regained. He was a simple, good man, ready to suffer for his religious opinions, and has left an autobiography of singular interest alike for the details of Milton's later life, which it gives, and for the light it casts on the times of the writer. He also wrote Davideis (1712), a sacred poem, and some controversial works.