When his uncle John was lost at sea in 1782, George took control of his slave plantations in Jamaica, but did not pursue his original objective to lease Caymanas.
[4] Taking advantage of his experience of diplomacy, he produced two prose works: Memoir of a Map of the Countries Comprehended between the Black Sea and the Caspian, published anonymously in 1788, but almost certainly by Ellis;[11] and The History of the Dutch Revolution (1789), which had the unusual distinction of being translated into French by the future king Louis XVIII.
[1] In 1793, Malmesbury turned Tory and entered Pitt's government, and Ellis followed him, becoming a close friend of the rising young politician George Canning.
[4] On his return to England, he joined Canning and William Gifford in founding the Tory newspaper The Anti-Jacobin, and was a frequent contributor of satirical pieces to it.
The Poets proved to be a popular work, going through six editions between 1790 and 1851, and on the strength of it Ellis was hailed in 1804 in the Critical Review as "the hope of poetic archaeology".
Ellis's contribution was later praised in The Gentleman's Magazine as including "some of the purest and most classical passages of Addisonian composition which this age has produced".
Ellis included versions of eighteen Middle English romances, including the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, Guy of Warwick, Beves of Hamtoun, Sir Isumbras, Sir Eglamour of Artois and Amis and Amiloun, as well as eight of the Anglo-Norman Lais of Marie de France and the Latin Historia Regum Britanniae and Vita Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
He arranged his romances by the cycle to which they belonged, and non-cyclical works by what he conceived to be the national origin of their subject-matter, thus anticipating the practice of many more recent literary historians.
Scott was preparing his own edition of the Middle English Sir Tristrem, and the two antiquaries exchanged a stream of enthusiastic letters, helping each other through the difficulties of their researches.
[19] Ellis explained to Scott his preference for readability over scholarly rigour thus:A library is like a butcher's shop: it contains plenty of meat, but it is all raw; no person living ... can find a meal in it, till some good cook (suppose yourself) comes in and says, "Sir, I see by your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste – be patient for a moment, and you shall be satisfied that you have an excellent appetite.
[21] James Orchard Halliwell later wrote that It is, indeed, difficult to estimate too highly the services which Ellis rendered to literature by the publication of this work.
The bibliographer Samuel Egerton Brydges' memories of him were of "an elegant versifier and writer, but not deep; he was a man of the world,– of very polished manners,– but a coxcomb and a petit maître".
[1][29][30] Ellis's epitaph, written by George Canning, includes these lines: His Knowledge was various profound and accurate; and he imparted it without effort or ostentation.