pence", and equally sceptical of the work of "moon-struck bards", he addressed the poet as one who "by song more hungry Britons fed/ Than all the lyric sons that ever sang." A long prose account of Elliott had appeared two years before his death in Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets by William Howitt (1792–1879). Howitt had visited Elliott in 1846 to interview him for the article, where he praised the depictions of nature in Elliott's earlier poems rather than the rant of his political work. After his death, Elliott's obituary appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine in February 1850. Two biographies also appeared that year, one by John Watkins and another, The Life, Character and Genius of Ebenezer Elliott, by January Searle (George Searle Phillips). Two years later, Searle followed his book up with Memoirs of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. A new edition of Elliott's works by his son Edwin appeared in 1876. Legacy Paul Rodgers gave the opinion that Elliott "has been sorely handled by the painters and engravers.... The published portraits convey scarcely any idea at all of the man." Of those that remain, two have been attributed to John Birch, who painted other Sheffield worthies too. One shows him seated with a scroll in his left hand and spectacles dangling from the right. The other has him seated on a boulder, clasping an open book in his lap, with the narrow valley of Black Brook in the background. This spot above the River Rivelin was a favourite of Elliott's and he is said to have carved his name on a boulder there. A drawing of Elliott by the Scottish artist Margaret Gillies is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. She had accompanied William Howitt in 1847, when he visited the poet for another interview, and her work was reproduced to illustrate it in Howitt's Journal. Another seated portrait, book in lap, "may be a better picture," thought Rodgers, "but is still less like him." Elliott is seated on a rock in Neville Burnard's statue of him, which was also thought a poor likeness. In its issue on 22 July 1854, The Sheffield Independent reported, "Many of the persons in Sheffield who have a vivid remembrance of the features of Ebenezer Elliott will feel disappointed that, in this case, the sculptor had not given a more exact similitude of the man as