The writer of an able article in the _Quarterly Review_, 1867, on “The Poetry of Seven Dials,” remarks that ‘Our next section of ‘Modern Events’ is characterised throughout by such a general sameness of treatment as to need few examples by way of illustration. They are clearly written, for the most part hastily, on the spur of the moment; and though they may command a good sale at first, they do so not by the wit, beauty, or aptness of the verse, but by the absorbing interest of the calamity which it describes. Thus, say, an appalling accident happens in London; the news spreads like wildfire throughout the city, and gives rise to rumours, even more dreadful than the reality. Before night it is embalmed in verse by one out of five or six well-known bards who get their living by writing for Seven Dials, and then chanting their own strains to the people. The inspiration of the poet is swift, the execution of the work rapid,--how rapid may be judged from the following fact. On Thursday, February 21, a woman named Walker was brought before the magistrate and charged with robbing Mr. F. Brown, her master, a publican, to whom she had offered her services as a _man_. She was sent to prison, and there her sex was discovered. The next morning, at 10 a.m., two men and two women were singing her personal history and adventures in the New Cut, to a large but not select audience, under the title of ‘The She Barman of Southwark.’ It was great trash, but sold well--but the pay for such work is small. ‘I gets a shilling a copy for my verses’ (says one), ‘besides what I can make by selling ’em.’ But the verses are ready and go to press at once. A thousand or two copies are struck off instantly, and the ‘Orfle Calamity’ is soon flying all over London from the mouths of a dozen or twenty minstrels, in the New Cut, in Leather Lane, Houndsditch, Bermondsey, Whitechapel, High Street, Tottenham-court-road--or wherever a crowd of listeners can be easily and safely called together. If the subject admits of it, two minstrels chant the same strain ‘In lofty verse ‘Pathetic they alternately rehearse.’ each taking a line in turn, and each vying with the other in doleful tragedy of look and voice. A moment suffices to give out in sepulchral accents, ‘Dreadful Accident this day on the Ice in Regent’s Park,’ &c., &c.