condolence she wrote on the death of two of their children. The Elliott family were subscribers to her next collection, which is dedicated to Mrs Elliott, in thanks for her sympathy and help. Another writer with whom he became friendly when he moved to Sheffield in 1833 was the former shoemaker Paul Rodgers, who for a time became secretary of the Sheffield Mechanics' Institution. He was later to head the campaign to raise subscriptions for a statue in Elliott's memory and wrote a memoir of him after his death. He also relates there how Elliott befriended the lecturer and writer Charles Reece Pemberton (1790–1840) and helped to raise a subscription to support him when his health broke down. The two went on a walk together in 1838, after which Elliott recorded his impressions of "Roch Abbey", praising and characterising his companion. Elliott paid Peterson a further tribute in his poem "Poor Charles" after Pemberton's death two years later. Elliot's "Song" beginning "Here's a health to our friends of reform", mentions several poets among the political agitators for the 1832 Reform Act, the passing of which it celebrates. Among the surnames enumerated is that of Thomas Asline Ward (1781–1871), leader of the Sheffield Political Union and editor of the Sheffield Independent. Also present is Reverend Jacob Brettel, a Unitarian minister in Rotherham who had published the poem "A Country Minister" (1825), and Sketches in verse, from the historical books of the Old Testament (1828). A further reference is to "Holland the fearless and pure". This was not John Holland but George Calvert Holland (1801–1865), to whom Elliott's long early poem "Love" was dedicated. Of labouring class origin, he had educated himself to become a Sheffield surgeon. Elliott's first attempt at a sonnet was also inscribed "To G. C. Holland, M.D."; it was followed by a light-hearted "Epistle to G. C. Holland, Esq., M.D." on women's emancipation. In the case of Thomas Lister (1810–1888) from nearby Barnsley, we are granted insight into an example of poetic dialogue. Elliott wrote two poems entitled "To Thomas Lister". One is a stirring exhortation to take a high theme in his poetry, the other a humorous exercise in hexameters marking the measure as "in English undignified, loose, and worse than the worst prose", in response to verses sent him by Lister. In 1837 Lister addressed a sonnet to Elliott "From the summit of Ben Ledi" while