The minstrels were once a great and flourishing body in England; but their dignity being interwoven with the illusory splendour of feudal institutions, declined on the advance of moral cultivation: they became in time vulgar mountebanks and jugglers, and in the reign of Elizabeth were suppressed as rogues and vagabonds.

Also he became so skilful with the harp that no minstrel in the world was his equal.

"Another minstrel" was Coleridge.

They are sometimes mere sketches, but oftener the story is told with consummate art, with strict economy of word and phrase, and the dénouement comes with a point and power which show that the Moorish minstrel was an artist of no mean skill and address.

As to the rest, and compared with true and great poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but "a metre ballad-monger."

Minstrels, instead of books, were in early times the principal medium of communication between authors and the public; they wandered up and down the country, chanting, singing, or reciting, according to the taste of their customers, and had certain privileges of entertainment in the halls of the nobility.