THE BALLAD-SINGER.

THE public ear has become dainty, fastidious, hypercritical : hence, the Ballad-Singer languishes and dies. Only now and then, his pipings are to be heard. Sometimes, like a solitary hermit frog, he croaks in a gutter; at long intervals he "saws the air" with his foggy, jagged voice; and, on rare occasions, it is to be found at nights in a melancholy, genteel street, warbling like a woodlark to the melting bosoms of congregated housemaids. Yes; your Ballad-Singer is now become a shy bird: the national minstrel the street troubadour-the minnesinger of the alleythe follower of the gay seance in London highways and by-ways, is fast disappearing from the scene; his strains speedily to become, like the falsetto of a Homer, matter of doubtful history. The London Ballad-Singer has fallen a victim to the arts of the Italian he has been killed by breathings from the South, ground to death by barrel-organs from Lucca and Pisa, and Bologna la Grassa. To him, Di tanti palpiti has been a scirocco; Non piu andrai, a most pestilent and withering air. Like the ruffian of a melo-drama, he has "died to music,”—the music of his enemies. Mozart, Rossini-yes, and Weber-signed his death-warrant, and their thousand vassals have duly executed it.

With the fall of Napoleon declined the English Ballad-Singer. During the war, it was his peculiar province to vend halfpenny historical abridgments of his country's glory; recommending the short poetic chronicle by some familiar household air, that fixed it in the memory of the purchaser, who thus easily got hatred of the French by heart, with a new assurance of his own invulnerability. No battle was fought, no vessel taken or sunk, that the triumph was not published, proclaimed in the national gazette of our Ballad-Singer. It was his harsh, cracked, blatant voice that growled, squeaked, shouted forth the glorious truth, and made big the patriotic hearts of his humble and admiring listeners. If he were not the clear silver trump of fame, he was at least her tin horn. It was he who bellowed music into news, which, made

to jingle, was thus, even to the weakest understanding, rendered portable. It was his narrow strips of history that adorned the garrets of the poor; it was he who made them yearn towards their country, albeit to them so rough and niggard a mother. Have we not great authority for praising the influence of the Ballad-Singer? What says the wise, virtuous, gentle Sidney?— "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet, and yet is sung but by some blind crowder, with no mightier voice than rude style."

Napoleon lost Waterloo, and the English Ballad-Singer not only lost his greatest prerogative, but was almost immediately assailed by foreign rivals, who have well-nigh played him dumb. Little thought the Ballad-Singer, when he crowed forth the crowning triumphs of the war, and in his sweetest possible modulations breathed the promised blessing of a golden peace, that he was then swan-like, singing his own knell; that he did but herald the advent of his Provençal destroyers.

Oh, muse! descend and say, did no omen tell the coming of the fall? Did no friendly god give warning to the native son of song? Burned the stars clearly, tranquilly in heaven, or shot they madly across Primrose-hill, the Middlesex Parnassus?

As on an Autumn eve, when all the winds were hushed, the trees are still; when a deep silence is in the sky, and earth lies sleeping in the lap of peace,—suddenly a solemn sound is heard, and earth from her heart's core seems to send a sigh, and all the forest leaves shake and tremble in the twilight air, and yet no wind is felt upon the cheeks of John and Molly, straying in the grove.

So, evening had gathered o'er Saint Giles's ; and Seven Dials, tranquil in the balmy air, confessed a sudden peace. Nor garret, cellar, hostelry obscene, gave utterance to a sound. So tranquil was the season, even publishers were touched. Catnach and Pitts sat silent in their shops; placing their hands in breechespoke, with that serenity which pockets best convey, they looked around their walls-walls more richly decked than if hung with triumphs of Sidonian looms, arrayed with Bayeux stitchings; walls where ten thousand thousand ballads-strips, harmonious, yet silent as Apollo's unbraced strings-hung pendulous, or crisply curling, like John Braham's hair. Catnach and Pitts, the tuneful masters of the gutter-choir, serenely looked, yet with such comprehensive glance, that look did take their stock. Suddenly, more suddenly than e'er the leaves in Hornsey wood were stirred by instant blast, the thousand thousand ballads swung and rustled on the walls; yet wind there was not, not the

lightest breath. Still, like pendants fluttering in a northern breeze, the ballads streamed towards Catnach, and towards Pitts! Amazing truth-yet more; each ballad found a voice! "Old Towler" faintly growled; "Nancy Dawson" sobbed and sighed; and "Bright Chanticleer" crowed weakly, dolorously, as yet in chickenhood, and smitten with the pip.

At the same instant, the fiddle, the antique viol of old Roger Scratch, fell from its garret-peg, and lay shivered, even as glass.

A cloud fell upon Seven Dials; dread and terror chilled her many minstrels: and why-and wherefore ?

At that dread moment a minstrel from the sunny South, with barrel-organ, leapt on Dover beach! Seven Dials felt the shock : her troubadours, poor native birds, were to be out-carolled and out-quavered by Italian strains. The poor were to have the Italian opera retailed by penn'orths to them, from the barrelorgan; and prompt to follow their masters, they let the English Ballad-Singer sing unheard.

The Ballad-Singer, though all but mute in these chromatic days, has done great service. Can we not hear him, far away, making homely, yet most welcome music to the yeomen, prentices, and milk-maids of Elizabeth? Did they not all "love a ballad in print?" Was not the minstrel a public servant of allowed utility? A most humanising wayfarer; now kindling, now melting the common heart? An outcast, ragged wanderer, in the benevolence of his vagabond calling, giving fitful respite to drudgery; making the multitude pause, and listen to a ballad, one of the fine old things that for these two hundred years have sweetened the air of common life, and are now fragrant and fresh as hawthorn buds,—a ballad, that could stir the heart of a Sidney "more than a trumpet?"

Two hundred years ago, and the street Ballad-Singer was not only the poet and musician for the poor, but he was their newsmonger, their journalist. As then, the morning papers were not : the saints of Sunday showed not the spite of devils at Sabbath prints conned over by the poor; historians, encyclopædists, and philosophers were not purchaseable piecemeal by pennies; and though the Globe Theatre had its gallery for two-pence, the works of a certain actor, playing there, were not printed at the price. Hence, the Ballad-Singer supplied music and reading to the poor: he brought enjoyment to their very doors. He sung to them the news, the court gossip of the day, veiled perhaps in cunning allegory-(for the virgin Queen would snip off the ears of a bookseller, as readily as her waiting-woman would snip a lace)-throwing on a dark point the light of a significant look,

and giving to the general obscurity of the text explanatory gestures, nods and winks, for the assistance of homespun understandings.

It is upon record that the Ballad-Singer must have acted no contemptible part in the civil-wars. Have we not evidence of his stirring, animating importance? Has the reader ever met with the "Songs of the Rump?" If so, can he not figure to himself the English Ballad-Singer, bawling, yelling the ditty in a groaning, rejoicing crowd, as party rose and fell? The very songs, at first written for a few, and sung in watchful secrecy in holes and corners, were, as the Commonwealth waned and died, roared, bellowed to the multitude. Hark, reader! what lungs of brass -now, what a roar of voices! Look, the music issues from the metal throat of yonder dirty-faced Phoebus in rags; and the shouts and laughter from the mob, frantic with joy at the burden of his lay-the downfall of old Noll, and the coming of the king, that silken, sorry rascal, Charles the Second. Now the balladsinging rogue screams his joyful tidings! and how the simple, giddy-headed crowd, hungering for shows and holidays, toss up their arms and jump like satyrs! And there, darting, slinking by, passes the winching puritan, his face ash-coloured with smothered anger at the profane tune. And now, a comely gentleman makes through the crowd, and with a patronising smile, and bestowing something more than the cost price—for he is marvellously tickled with the theme,- -secures a copy of the song. The reader may not at the instant recognise the buyer; he is, we can swear to him, one Mr. Samuel Pepys, afterwards secretary to the Admiralty: but what is more to his fame, the greatest ballad-collector of the day; let his treasures left to Cambridge, bear honourable witness for him. See, he walks down Charing-cross, carrying away the burden of the song, and with a light and loyal heart, humming, " And the king shall have his own again! " Who shall say that our Ballad-Singer has not shouted to crowds like these; has not vended his small ware to men, aye, as illustrious as the immortal writer of that best of history-history in undress-The Diary.

How many times has the Ballad-Singer, with voice no softer than the voice of Cyclops, set the nation's heart dancing? Though these days own him not-though this age reject his songs-let us not forget him as a national character: as one who has contributed to the enjoyments of wayfaring life; nay, as one who, in his humble vocation, may sometimes have vindicated life's best and highest purposes. He has been the poor man's minstrel, satirist, historian; nay, at certain seasons, he has been invested with almost sacerdotal gravity to prosperous men.

The snow is on the ground, the earth is like flint; the wind howls like a wild beast at the windows. How deliciously the fire burns! how the coals crackle, and the flame glows, as if in mockery of the blast and darkness without! A woman sings in the street between December gusts you hear a sharp, tremulous human voice-wailing! No; it is the Christmas-carol; the homely burden sung two centuries ago: the self-same words, too, that Shakspere in his childhood may have lain and listened to -that in his later years may have rapt his spirit, bearing it away to Bethlehem! The present, with all its monotonous commonplace, for a time is gone from us, and we live in the past. The wild melancholy strain-strengthened by old association—charms away almost two thousand years; and we seem for a space as of those who had an instant interest in the tidings told. The music, the words are a part of our earliest childhood-of childhood, that in its very innocency familiarises solemnities with itself; and we again go back, again seem almost contemporary with the wondrous Advent. And this sweet, though brief emotion, we may owe to the Ballad-Singer. The peevishness, the selfishness of earth is hushed, forgotten in the rich melodious thoughts born of his antique lay, begotten by the Christmas carol.

The Ballad-Singer has lost his occupation: yet should he not pass away unthanked, unrecompensed. We have seen him a useful minister in rude society: we have heard him a loudmouthed advocate of party zeal; and we have seen him almost ground into silence by the southern troubadour. Yet was he the first music-seller in the land. Ye well-stocked, flourishing vendors of fashionable scores, deign to cast a look through plateglass at your poor, yet great original, bare-footed and in rags, singing, unabashed, amidst London waggon-wheels: behold the true descendant of the primitive music-seller; of him, who, even two centuries ago, sold his lays without the help of other commendation than his own cracked yet honest voice; of him, who fed not journalists to advertise and trumpet forth his ditties, but, to the public ear, uttered the words and pitched the note himself; of him, who, innocent of the superfluous theory of do re mi, warbled in his own wild naturalness, and found an echo in the public heart. And oh! ye sellers of modern crotchets, tear, hide, burn your pictured scores, where ladies, with the best lumpsugar faces, engraved or lithographed, seduce the simple soul to purchase, fobbing him of two-and-sixpence; hide, ye deceivers, and, for the credit of the trade in general, try and contribute one blush among ye, at the simple, unsophisticated beauty heading our penny ballads; an honest face, hewed in honest