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Updated: June 6, 2025
"Why are you lying there, my good girl?" asked Sir Oswald, gently. Something in the slender figure told him that the ballad-singer was young, though he could not see her face. She lifted her head slowly, with a languid action, and looked up at the speaker. "Where else should I go?" she asked, in bitter tones. "Have you no home?" "Home!" echoed the girl.
Besides these amusements, which were all for the lower orders as well as for the rich, they had their mug-houses, whither the men resorted to drink beer, spruce, and purl; and for music there was the street ballad-singer, to say nothing of the bear-warden's fiddle and the band of marrow-bones and cleavers. Lastly, for those of more elevated tastes, there was the ringing of the church bells.
Unwearied search had been made for the old man who had played the part of grandfather to the beautiful ballad-singer; but it had been wholly ineffectual. All that could be ascertained concerning him was, that he had died in a hospital, in a country town on the great northern road, and that the girl had wandered away from there, and never more been heard of.
Looking at her by that silvery light, Sir Oswald saw that she was very beautiful. "Have you been long leading this miserable life?" Sir Oswald asked her presently. "My life has been one long misery," answered the ballad-singer. "How long have you been singing in the streets?"
"What! sir," exclaimed Johnson, "a fellow who claps a hump upon his back and a lump on his leg and cries, 'I am Richard III.? Nay, sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things: he repeats and he sings; there is both recitation and music in his performance the player only recites."
"I'm no fine gentleman," said the captain, enraptured at the idea of seeing the ballad-singer; "if your daughter will give us a crust of bread and cheese, I shall be satisfied. We'll take two or three bottles of wine down with us, and we'll be as jolly as princes. Get your trap ready, Wayman, and let's be off at once." The captain was all impatience to start.
He was a tall, lean man, with a minatory countenance set off by terrible eyes in deep black circles, under enormous eyebrows; and his eloquence, very unlike his love-making, could be incisive. Monsieur Gravier was a little, round man, who in the days of the Empire had been a charming ballad-singer; it was this accomplishment that had won him the high position of Paymaster-General of the forces.
Why I mention him is, that your "Power of Music" reminded me of his poem of "The Ballad-singer in the Seven Dials," Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which, after all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's "Principia"? I was lately fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by Lord Thurlow, excellent words; and if the heart could live by words alone, it could desire no better regales.
It was a female clad in a rustic dress, with her face concealed by her mantilla. She stepped silently into the room, looked cautiously round, and then, uncovering her face, revealed the well-known features of the ballad-singer. Inez uttered an exclamation of surprise, almost of joy. The unknown started back, pressed her finger on her lips enjoining silence, and beckoned her to follow.
As they were standing about, a young ballad-singer came along from the Dargle, and one of the policemen, who seemed to know him, asked him why a fine, stout lad the like of him wasn't earning his bread, instead of straying on the roads. Immediately the young man drew up on the spot where he was, and began shouting a loud ballad at the top of his voice.
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