STREET MINSTRELSY.

THE harp, fiddle, and cornet which ply
their trade at my window, although they
annoy me while I am writing, are disseminating
among the populace, the politest strains
of the Opera. Whenever they commence, we
know who inspired their open-air music—
whether it be Donizetti, Verdi, Mercandanti,
or Bellini. Nothing is too high for them; and
if, like the jolly guest at the Three Pigeons in
She Stoops to Conquer, they had bears to
dance, they would dance them to the genteelest
of tunes — much more genteel ones than Water
Parted from the Sea or the minuet in
Ariadne. They convey fashionable melodies
to the ears of the cook as she ends her gossip
with the grocer's man at the area steps:
Mario and the glorious Royal Italian Opera
band float the same notes more thrillingly and
exquisitely, it is true, under the bandeaux of
the beauties in the grand tier; but they are the
same. We will not enter into the question of
comparative merit of execution, for perhaps
even that street orchestra is beyond cook's
musical education, and the superiority of
Mario and the Royal Italian Opera band
would be simply lost upon her. There
is a point in every education beyond which
degrees of excellence are blurred and blotted
into one, like distant forms to the short-
sighted.

Although the best composers are known
and popular, the strains of the classical
and fashionable poets never permeate down
among the masses. These have an Anthology
and Parnassus of their own. When you see
a few hundreds of penny ballads stuck
against a hoarding, and a few more
hundreds boiling over the edges of a huge
basket in some half-finished street, you
wonder who the authors are. Do they live
in garrets, after the fashion of the good old
Grub Street days, and spin their brains into
rhymes for the milkwoman's score and the
dinner bill?  Who write the people's ballads?
What manner of men? of what status in
society? and of what, or how much,
sympathy with their audience? We might
almost prove the Grub Street theory from
some of the songs in that osier cauldron;
songs with evident power and education in
them, but slipshod and hurried, as if written
while the dun stood threatening at the door,
or the sheriff's officer was pacing before
it. In the days (which have passed away
for all except the retained of advertising
tailors) when the Puff Poets were in fashion,
and every razor-strop vendor, lottery-office
keeper, and blacking maker kept a lyrist
on his premises, the emoluments of the
profession could not have been very high.
Indeed, only recently a printer  and publisher
of halfpenny ballads complained to a friend
of mine that his principal poet— on whom
he depended for the versification of battles,
murders, and sudden  deaths reported in the
newspapers—" wouldn't put pen to paper
under five shillings."

It is, however, good to know that, at
this day, the songs and ballads which take
firmest hold of the people's heart and voice
are written by the most refined masters of
their art. Barry Cornwall, whose verses
charm the most critical taste and delight the
finest ear, is one of the worshipped of the
million for his song of The Sea. Such men,
having the strongest sympathy for the people,
are enabled to understand their needs and
to elevate their tastes. They are the real
reformers of street songs, and have driven the
coarse ballad into the obscure corner: they
have staked it out into nooks and angles. This
is no small gain, when we consider that
once, almost all street ballads were morally
objectionable, and that now there is a rich
collection of pure and singularly beautiful
songs written for, and enjoyed by, the people.
When we compare even the least unworthy
of the former favourites with the poems of
Barry Cornwall, Charles Mackay, William
Allingham, Gerald Massey, W. C. Bennett,
and others, we cannot fail to be struck
by the difference lying between the two
classes.

On a queer-looking sheet before me, with
dull woodcut headings, and type and paper
so very bad that they are only just within
the pale of legibility, are pasted some two
dozen popular ballads. Most of them are
Irish; some with the Irish grace scattered
here and there, like dewdrops on the grass;
very few with any real Irish fun, and
one or two simply barbarous jangles on
passing stories or events. For instance, we
have a—