ELLIOTT, Ebenezer (1781—1849), thecorn-law rhymer, was born at Masborough, Yorkshire, on the 17th of March 1781. His father Ebenezer, a man of vigorous intellect but bigoted in his theological tendencies, exercised a powerful sway over the mind of the future poet. At school Ebenezer was considered a dull pupil; and his childhood was solitary. A touching autobiographic fragment, which appeared after his death in the Athenaeum for 1850, and is republished in Watkins’s life of the poet, gives a deeply interesting account of his early years. His imagination had an unhealthy craving for the horrible, and gloated over the faces of those who had died a violent death, till he was cured by the sight of a body floating in a canal, in an advanced state of decomposition. A more pleasing part of the autobiography tells of hi3 passion for making models of ships, kites, &c. In a very important sense the child was father of the man in Elliott’s case, for “even in those days,” he says, “I was a free trader, though I knew it not.” His father, exasperated at Ebenezer’s persistent indolence at school, put him into the foundry with which he was himself connected, where the manufacturing processes interested him. The sight of some fine botanical plates in Sowerby’s English Botany led him to love flowers, and to gather them as copies for drawing, although not to a taste for botany, “the classifications of which seemed tobe like preparations for sending flowers to prison” (Autobiography). In his Sunday rambles he encountered a snake, which fascinated him so much that he visited it weekly, and called it “my first snake-love.” This is probably the new form his love for what is generally considered loathsome assumed. These walks, by bringing him in contact with the ...