etence as an iron-merchant; here is a monomaniac on the Corn-laws,
who loved nature as intensely as ever did Burns or Wordsworth. Here is a
John Bright uttering himself in fiery and melodious verse,--Apollo with
iron dust on his face, wandering among the Sheffield knife-grinders! If
you wish to form some idea of the fierce discontent which thirty years
ago existed amongst the working men of England, you should read the
Corn-law Rhymes. The Corn-laws are to him the twelve plagues of Egypt
rolled together. On account of them he denounces his country as the
Hebrew prophets were wont to denounce Tyre and Sidon. His rage breaks
out into curses, which are _not_ forgiveness. He is maddened by the
memory of Peterloo. Never, perhaps, was a sane human being so tyrannised
over by a single idea. A skeleton was found on one of the Derbyshire
hills. Had the man been crossed in love? had he crept up there to die in
the presence of the stars? "Not at all," cries Elliott; "he was a victim
of the Corn-laws, who preferred dying on the mountain-top to receiving
parish pay." In his wild poem all the evil kings in Hades descend from
their thrones when King George enters. They only let slip the dogs of
war; he taxed the people's bread. "Sleep on, proud Britoness!" he
exclaims over a woman at rest in the grave she had purchased. In one of
his articles in _Tait's Magazine_, he seriously proposed that tragedies
should be written showing the evils of the Corn-laws, and that on a given
night they should be performed in every theatre of the kingdom, so that
the nation might, by the speediest possible process, be converted to the
gospel of Free-trade. In his eyes the Corn-laws had gathered into their
black bosoms every human wrong: repeal them, and lo! the new heavens and
the new earth! A poor and shallow theory of the universe, you will say;
but it is astonishing what poetry he contrives to extract out of it. It
is hardly possible, without quotation, to give an idea of the rage and
fury which pervade these poems. He curses his political opponents with
his whole heart and soul. He pillories them, and pelts them with dead
cats and rotten eggs. The earnestness of his mood has a certain terror
in it for meek and quiet people. His poems are of the angriest, but
their anger is not altogether undivine. His scorn blisters and scalds,
his sarcasm flays; but then outside nature is constantly touching him
with a summer breeze or a branch of