It is not my province to narrate the history of the professional minstrel. It must suffice here to say, that they who commenced like gods, sank in course of time to a very degraded condition. The minstrels certainly belonged to the class of poor jokers about the time the law began to treat them as vagabonds. I can adduce an instance in the case of Richard Sheale, the author of one of the versions of the ballad of ‘Chevy Chace.’ Sheale was a minstrel by profession, and his home was at Tamworth, on the borders of Staffordshire and Warwickshire. Mr. R. White, in his Appendix to his ‘History of the Battle of Otterburn,’ affords us the following glimpse into the private and public life of this minstrel. “His wife was a ‘sylke woman,’ who sold shirts, head-clothes, laces, etc., at the fairs of Lichfield and other neighbouring towns. Being once in possession of above threescore pounds,--a large amount in those days,--and intending probably to settle various accounts contracted by his wife in her business, he left Tamworth on horseback, having his harp with him, and had the misfortune to be robbed by four villains who had lain in wait for him near Dunsmore Heath. The grief of his wife and himself at his loss--the coldness of worldly friends--the kindness of his patrons--the exertions of his loving neighbours at Tamworth, who induced him to brew a bushel of malt, and sell the ale for his benefit--and his appeal to the public for assistance, that he might clear off encumbrances, are all related in his ‘Chaunt,’ and show him to have been a simple, harmless man. But both this poem and the ‘Farewell’ afford humiliating evidence of the sorry life to which the poor minstrels were subjected in the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.” But leaving the descent of the English jester from the minstrel, or the question of their identity, to be decided upon by my readers, let us turn to the English poets for such information as they can afford us. The incidents there to be found in connection with this question, have doubtless reference to the English “fool” alone, in whatever country the poet may have located him. We meet with him however in England, in the tragedy of King Lear. The relation of fool and master, not a relation of the period of the play, but of a much later age, is very distinctly marked. Lear strikes a gentleman, only for chiding Lear’s fool; but the King keeps a whip for the latter, to be used when the jester’s truths smacked rudely, or were thrust forward unnecessarily. And these truths are occasionally of the very roughest quality, as, for instance, when the fool tells Lear, that he had given away all his titles save “fool,”--the one he was born with.