ELLIOTT, ENEZER, the Corn-Law Rhymer, was
Ellipsis born March 17, 1781, at Masborough, in the parish of Rotherham, where his father was employed in an iron-foundry. At school his education was thwarted by a constitutional nervousness, which prevented him from doing little more than merely learning to write, and which kept him aloof from his boyish companions. From his sixteenth to his twenty-third year he wrought with his father, who had become nominal proprietor of the foundry. He afterwards engaged in business in Sheffield on his own account, and after a failure in his first attempt he succeeded in realizing a competence. The last years of his life were spent at Argilt Hill, near Barnsley, where he died December 1, 1849. His principal works are, Corn-Law Rhymes; Love, a Poem; The Village Patriarch; Poetical Works; and More Prose and Verse by the Corn-Law Rhymers, 2 vols. His political poems are generally characterized by an athletic energy, and an almost morbid sense of wrong; but his domestic verses will always hold a distinguished place in the popular poetry of England.