*
This young woman sojourns in the neighbourhood of the ancient scene of the “Pretty Bessee” and her old father, the “Blind Beggar of Bethnal-green”—
“His marks and his tokens were known full well,
He always was led with a dog and a bell.”
Her name is Hannah Brentford. She is an inhabitant of Bunhill-row, twenty-four years old, and has been blind from the time she had the small-pox, two and twenty years ago. She sings hymns, and accompanies herself on the violin. Her manner is to “give out” two lines of words, and chant them to “a quiet tune;” and then she gives out another two lines; and so she proceeds till the composition is finished. Her voice, and the imitative strains of her instrument, are one chord of ’plaining sound, beautifully touching. She supports herself, and an aged mother, on the alms of passengers in the streets of Finsbury, who “please to bestow their charity on the blind”—“the poor blind.” They who are not pierced by her “sightless eye-balls” have no sight: they who are unmoved by her virginal melody have “ears, and they hear not.” Her eyes are of agate—she is one of the “poor stone blind”—
“most musical, most melancholy.”
Garrick Plays.
No. V.
[From “Arden of Feversham his true and lamentable Tragedy,” Author unknown. 1592.]
Alice Arden with Mosbie her Paramour conspire the murder of her Husband.