Note 131 — 537.
Reading edition
George Ellis (1753-1815) is best known for his Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790) and his Specimens of Early English Romances in Metre (1805). He was, wrote Sir Walter Scott, "the first converser I ever saw. His patience and good breeding made me often ashamed of myself, going off at score upon some favourite topic." To him Scott addresses the lines in the fifth canto of Marmion, beginning—
"Thou who canst give to lightest lay An unpedantic moral gay," etc.
He had been employed in diplomatic work by Lord Malmesbury at the Hague in 1784, and accompanied him for the same purpose to the Lille Conference in 1797. He was at this time travelling on the Continent with Lord and Lady Malmesbury. The lines on Pitt in Number ii. of the Rolliad are attributed to him—
"Pert without fire, without experience sage, Young, with more art than Shelburne glean'd from age, Too proud from pilfer'd greatness to descend, Too humble not to call Dundas his friend, In solemn dignity and sullen state, This new Octavius rises to debate!" etc., etc.