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party , but as the Tyrtaeus of humanity ; he vrcmld have told prince , peer , or potentate , as readily as he has told the masses and the millions , and with as little of insolence as of sycophancy , that * a man ' s a man for a' that . ' The author of the volumes before us is said to be a working man of the name of Elliot , somewhere in the north . On this
point , posterity will be better infdrmed than we are at this present moment . We will answer for it that his name will be known long enough and wide enough . His poems have been slowly making their way into notice , but the attention which they gain they are sure to keep . His three volumes are devoted , in succession , to what we have indicated as the three great topics of the poetry of Burns . Politics predominate in the Corn Law Rhymes ; his
perception of the beauties of nature is most exhibited in the Village Patriarch ; and his last publication is , as its title declares , on Love . His education , self-attained we may presume , is also precisely of the description which we have pointed out , as adapted to enrich the poetry without destroying or transforming the peculiar feelings and mental habits of the poor man .
We had seen the Corn Law Rhymes , now in the third edition , occasionally advertised and noticed , Jjut hastily concluded , from the title , that it was merely a collection of political squibs in middling verse , and were quite unprepared for the grand poetical prospect which burst upon us when we opened the volume . It is not merely that the distress which is described in many of these poems must of itself , if told without affectation , produce a powerful effect upon the feelings ; or that there is something sublime in the stern wrath of those who feel themselves to be wronged by
power , insulted by pride , and half-starved by monopoly ; it is not merely that we meet with many passages which have all the caustic humour of the epigrams of 13 urns , and the crushing satire of Byron ' s < Age of Bronze ; ' but there is intermipgled with all , and pervading and elevating all , the imagination of a genuine poet , —an imagination that , while it gilds the stormy clouds of passion , is yet ever aspiring towards the pure air and sunny light of heaven as its native elements and its final rest .
* O that mry poesy were like the child That gathers daisies from the lap of May , ' With prattle sweeter than the bloomy wild f It then might teach poor Wisdom to be gay , As flowers , and birds , and rivers , all at p lay , And winds , that rpake the voiceless clouds of morn Harmonious . But distempered , if not mad , I feed on' nature's bane , and mess with scorn .
I would not , could iiot if I would , be glad , But , like , sHade-iovlng plants , am Happiest sad . M y heart , once sof t afe woman ' s tear , is gn&rl'd With gloating on the ilk I cannot cure / Viltage Patriarchy p , & 8 f
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( the Poor &rid their Poetry . 195
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 195, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/51/
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