pink and white apple-blossom, and his
mood becomes tenderness itself. He is far from being lachrymose; and
when he is pathetic, he affects one as when a strong man sobs. His anger
is not nearly so frightful as his tears. I cannot understand why Elliott
is so little read. Other names not particularly remarkable I meet in the
current reviews--his never. His book stands on my shelf, but on no other
have I seen it. This I think strange, because, apart from the intrinsic
value of his verse as verse, it has an historical value. Evil times and
embittered feelings, now happily passed away, are preserved in his books,
like Pompeii and Herculaneum in Vesuvian lava. He was a poet of the
poor, but in a quite peculiar sense. Burns, Crabbe, Wordsworth, were
poets of the poor, but mainly of the peasant poor. Elliott is the poet
of the English artisans,--men who read newspapers and books, who are
members of mechanics' institutes, who attend debating societies, who
discuss political measures and political men, who are tormented by
ideas,--a very different kind of persons altogether. It is easier to
find poetry beneath the blowing hawthorn than beneath the plumes of
factory or furnace smoke. In such uninviting atmospheres Ebenezer
Elliott found his; and I am amazed that the world does not hold it in
greater regard, if for nothing else than for its singularity.

There is many another book on my shelf on which I might dilate, but this
gossiping must be drawn to a close. When I began, the wind was bending
the trees, and the rain came against the window in quick, petulant
dashes. For hours now, wind and rain have ceased, the trees are
motionless, the garden walk is dry. The early light of wintry sunset is
falling across my paper, and, as I look up, the white Dante opposite is
dipped in tender rose. Less stern he looks, but not less sad, than he
did in the morning. The sky is clear, and an arm of bleak pink vapour
stretches up into its depths. The air is cold with frost, and the rain
which those dark clouds in the east hold will fall during the night in
silent, feathery flakes. When I wake to-morrow, the world will be
changed, frosty forests will cover my bedroom panes, the tree branches
will be furred with snows; and to the crumbs which it is my daily custom
to sprinkle on the shrubbery walk will come the lineal descendant of the
charitable redbreast that covered up with leaves the sleeping children in
the wood.