A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Ellis, George
Ellis, George (1753-1815).—Miscellaneous writer, s. of a West Indian planter, gained some fame by Poetical Tales by Sir Gregory Gander (1778). He also had a hand in the Rolliad, a series of Whig satires which appeared about 1785. Changing sides he afterwards contributed to the Anti-Jacobin. He accompanied Sir J. Harris on his mission to the Netherlands, and there coll. materials for his History of the Dutch Revolution (1789). He ed. Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790), and Specimens of the Early English Romances, both works of scholarship. He was a friend of Scott, who dedicated the fifth canto of Marmion to him.