The son of Mr. Elliott, whom I found there, showed me the place with great good-nature, and seeing me look into this room, he said, "Walk in, sir; that is the Corn-Law Rhymer's study; that is where my father wrote most of his poetry." We may safely assert that there is no other such poetical study in England, if there be in the world.
The center of the room is occupied by a considerable office-desk, which, to judge from its appearance, has for many a year known no occupation but that of being piled with the most miscellaneous chaos of account-books, invoices, bills, memorandum-books, and the like, all buried in the dust of the iron age through which they have accumulated. To be used as a desk appears to have ceased long ago; it is the supporter of old chaos come again; and a couple of portable desks, set on the counter under the window, though elbowed up by lots of dusty iron, and looked down upon by Achilles and Ajax in wonder, seem to serve the real purposes of desks.
But Achilles and Ajax, says some one, what do they here? All round the room stand piles of bars of iron, and amid these stand, oddly enough, three great plaster casts of Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon. The two Grecian heroes are in the front, on each side of the window, and Napoleon occupies an elevated post in the center of the side of the room, facing the door. Such was at once the study and the warehouse of Ebenezer Elliott!
Surely, never were poetry and pence united together in such a scene before! You may imagine Robert Bloomfield stitching away at ladies' shoes, and tagging rhymes at the same time, in great peace and bodily comfort; being a journeyman for a long time, and when he had got his work from his master, being liable to very little interruption. You may imagine him thumping away on his last in poetic ardor, and in the midst of his enthusiasm hammering out a superior piece of soling leather and triumphant verse at the same instant; but imagine Ebenezer Elliott, in the midst of all this iron wilderness, in the midst of bustling and clanging Sheffield, and the constant demands of little cutlers and the like—for constant they must have been for him to accumulate a fair fortune out of nothing,—imagine him in the midst of all this confusion of dusty materials, and the demands of customers, and the din and jar of iron rods and bars, as they were dragged out of their stations for examination and sale, and were flung into the scales to be weighed; imagine this, and that the man achieved a fortune and a fame at the same time—weighed out iron and ideas—took in gold and glory—cursed corn-laws, and blessed God, and man, and nature; established a large family, two sons as clergymen of the Church of England—three in trade—two of them his successors in steel, though not in stanzas—in iron, though not in irony; and then retired to his own purchased land, built his house on a hill-top, and looked down on the world in philosophical ease, at little more than sixty years of age; and you may look a good while for a similar man in history.
Quitting this singular retreat of the Muses, under the guidance of my worthy friend Mr. John Fowler, an old friend of the poet, I proceeded to visit the Rhymer's haunts in the country round. And first we ascended the hills to the east of the town, above Pittsmoor and Shirecliffe-hall, to the place where Elliott makes his most interesting field-preacher, Miles Gordon, the Ranter, go to his last Sabbath service of the open air. As we went, all the beautiful imagery of that exquisitely pathetic poem came before me. The opening of the poem breathing such a feeling of Sabbath rest to the weary, such a feeling of the actual life of the pious poor in the manufacturing towns.
"Miles Gordon sleeps; his six days' labor done,
He dreams of Sunday, verdant fields, and prayer.
Arise, blest morn, unclouded! Let thy sun
Shine on the artisan, thy purest air
Breathe on the bread-taxed laborer's deep despair!