BALK. Of uncertain origin, says Ihre. Balck, His owen hond than made ladders three, Chaucer. The Millers Tale, v. 3627. He can wel in min eye seen a stalk, Id. The Reves Prologue, v. 3918. BALK, v. Skinner thinks that balk, a beam, is from the Italian valicare, (from varcare) to pass over, to omit. Varcare, according to Menage, is from the Lat. varicare, to pass over, to climb over. (Varro.) Vid. Vossius in v. varus. To balk, will be, to pass over, to omit, to neglect; and thus to disappoint, to defeat the expectation. For she had taught him by her silent talk To tread the safe, and dang'rous ways to balk ; I know not, wether the spleen, or the gal of Ahab be more affected. Whether more of anger, or griefe, I cannot say; but sick he is, and keeps his bed, and balks his meat, as if he should die of no other death, then the salads that he would have had. Hall. Cont. Ahab and Naboth. Who so could cite a tragedie BALKH, a province of Turkistán, bounded on the Warner. Albion's England, book i. Balke lodgicke with acquaintance that you haue, Shakspeare. Taming of the Shrew, fol. 210. c. ii. And therein thousand payres of lovers walkt, Spenser. Faerie Queene, book v. c. x. Quoth she, I've heard old cunning stagers Butler. Hudibras, part ii. canto i. Dryden. Religio Laici. By the inward over-powering influences of his Spirit, a man's desires shall become cold and dead to those things, which before were so extremely apt to captivate and command them; than which there cannot be a greater baulk to the tempter, nor a more effectual defeat to all his temptations. South. On Temptation. Sermon v. An honest tradesman, who languishes a whole summer in tation of a battel, and perhaps is balked at last, may here meet with half a dozen in a day. Spectator, No. 452. VOL. XVIII., 2 F BALKH. BALL. BALL. Ger. and Dutch, bollen; volvere, vertere, rotare, to roll, turn, round; bol, rotundus, any thing round, or roundly; as a cricket ball, a billiard ball, the eye-ball, the ball of the earth. And with these wordes I brast out to weepe, that euery teare of mine eyen for greatnesse seemed they boren out the bal of my sight, and that all the water hadde ben out ronne. Chaucer. The Test. of Lowe, fol. 289. c. iii. For where as God hath shewed vnto vs certaine tokes of his godhed, in the heauenly balles and circles aboue, and on the yearthe beneth in the sea, and in all tyuing creatures on the yearthe, yet hath he wrought in none of theym more wonderfully, than in manne. Udall. Actes, cap. xvii, Some writers saie that the Dolphyn thinkynge kyng Henry to be geuen still to suche plaies and light folies as he exersised & vsed before the tyme that he was exalted to the croune sente to hym a tunne of tennis balles to plaie with, as who saied that he coulde better skil of tennis then of warre, and was more expert in light games then marciall pollicy. Hall. King Henry V. KIN. We are glad the Dolphin is so pleasant with vs, Here is then nothing throwne downe that was before builded, but you cast snow balles at ye windowes of the building, which may for a tyme darken them, till your snowe be melte away with the sunne. Whitgift. Defence, fol. 198. Since light so necessary is to life, She all in every part; why was the sight Milton. Sam Ag. It was then very pleasant to look into the hearts of the whole company; for the balls of sight are so form'd, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another to read his heart with. Tatler, No. 145. The disk of Phoebus, when he climbs on high, Dryden. Ovid's Metam. book xv. In ambient air this pond'rous ball he hung, Blacklock. An Hymn to the Supreme Being. After the death of Trajan, his ashes were placed, as some authors say, in a golden ball on the top of this noble pillar; but Eutropius affirms they were deposited under it. 1 Melmoth. Pliny, book viii. letter iv. (note.) BALL. It. bailare; Gr. Baliew. To throw or cast about (sc.) the legs and feet; from Báλλw, to throw. In the mean while there was nothing in the court, but banquetting, balling, and dancing, and other such pleasures as were meet to provoke the disordered appetite. Knox. On the Reformation, fol. 403. Have you not been in pain even at a ball, because another has been taken out to dance before you? Tatler, No. 253 As thro' the mazes of the festive ball, Proud of her conquering charms, and beauty's blaze, Warton. The Pleasures of Melancholy. Alas! I make but repetition, Of what is ordinary, and ryalto talk, And balleted, and would be plaid o' th' stage, Webster. Vittoria Corombona, act iii. The villages also must have their visitors to enquire what lectures the bagpipe, and the rebbec reads, even to the ballatry and the gammuth of every municipal fidler, for these are the countryman's Arcadia, and liis Monte Mayors. Milton. Speech for the Liberty of Unlicens'd Printing. CLEO. Nay 'tis most certaine, Iras: sawcie lictors Shakspeare. Antony and Cleopatra, fol. 366. c. ii. The silenc'd tales i' th' metamorphoses Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page; Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age Carew. Elegy upon the Death of Doctor Donne. Poor verbal quips, outworn by serving-men, tapsters, and milkmaids; even laid aside by balladers. Overbury's Character, sign, G. iv. Ballads, and all the spurious excess Or ever swarm'd from a licentious press, Those heads that us'd most indolent to move Addison. Poems on Cato. Thither no more the peasant shall repair, Goldsmith. Deserted Village. LLAD. The origin of the English BALLAD has been, traced by Dr. Percy, among our Anglo Saxon ancestors, to the minstrels, whom he considers the genuine successors of the ancient bards. So early as the first invasion of Britain by the Saxons, Geoffry of Monmouth has recorded an incident which proves that the profession of minstrel was not unknown in our island. Rapin, (i. 36. Tindal's translation) has assigned the chronology of Baldulph, who, according to the above named chronicler, disguised himself as a minstrel in order to obtain admission within the walls of York, in the year 495; and the more assured adventure of King Alfred, who penetrated the Danish camp by a similar stratagem, cannot be placed later than 938. Aulaff, a Danish king, repeated the attempt sixty years afterwards, but not with equal success. In Domesdaybook, the Joculator Regis is expressly mentioned as having lands assigned for his maintenance in Glocestershire: and numerous authorities prove that joculator must be understood a minstrel. (Du Cange, iii. 1543. Fauchet, De l'Origine de la Langue Françoise, 72. Fontenelle, Histoire du Théâtre François.) In the Conqueror's army, Tarblessen, or Taillefer, an esquire, who, as the romance tells us, mout bien chantoit, is said, on more sober authority, to have excelled as much in the arts of minstrelsy as he did in those of war. In the battle of Hastings he obtained permission, as a sort of forlorn hope, to lead the van, and singing the popular Chanson de Roland, he threw himself upon the English spears and perished. (Du Cange, iv. 769. Voltaire, Add. Hist. Univ. 69.) It would lead us too far from our precise object, the English ballad, if we entered upon even a brief sketch of the history of the Troubadours, those songsters of love and war, who gave birth to the poetry of Italy, France, and Spain. It was from Normandy that Provence in all probability borrowed the romantic tales which the Troubadours afterwards more widely disseminated; and it is to the Norman conquest that we must attribute the refinement of the Anglo Saxon ballads. Yet even subsequent to the conquest, we meet with many romances of genuine English growth. Horn child: The Squire of lowe degree: and A lytell geste of Robyn Hoode, have been pointed out as tales unmixed with foreign lore; and they are none of them such as we need be ashamed to claim as national productions. Cœur de Lion, the hero of chivalry, was no less the patron of song; and his well known deliverance from captivity, by Blondell, was the reward which the Muses had in store in return for his protection. Whatever was the rigour exercised by the first Edward against the mountain bards of Wales, in his own court it is clear that he favoured minstrels; and, in his crusade, he was indebted for his life to the courage of one of these attendants, who beat out the brains of a Saracen assassin, who had aimed at the king with a poisoned knife. (Veteres Historia Anglica Scriptores, ii. 591.) Minstrels were incorporated by charter in the 9th Edward IV. and the fraternity was protected by a corporation under the government of a marshal and two wardens. This charter was renewed by Henry VIII. It was not till the reign of his daughter that the profession was destined to the last disgrace, and that minstrels by statute (39 Eliz.) were included among "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars," and ren- BALLET. dered punishable as such. The oldest English ballads are in the northern dialect. Those of after date have adopted that of the south. In the reign of James I. when the genuine minstrelsy became extinct, large collections of the latter kind of ballads, much inferior in spirit to their predecessors, were collected under the name of garlands. The carmen triviale of later days, and that which still retains the name of ballad, scarcely falls within the purpose of this article. Those who wish to know more of the history of the elder poems, may consult the essay prefixed to the Bishop of Dromore's elegant Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which we have principally followed as our guide in the above short notice. The sources from which the bishop chiefly drew his interesting collection, are five volumes in folio, begun by Selden, but containing many pieces much older than in his time, in the Pepysian library at Magdalen College Cambridge. These volumes present nearly 2000 ballads. The Ashmolean and the Bodleian libraries afford many others; the first about 200, collected by the labour of the indefatigable Anthony Wood. The Antiquarian Society possesses several from the time of Henry VIII. but chiefly on political subjects; and the British Museum, besides a folio volume of printed ballads, contains a copious store in MS. J. Warton's History of English Poetry, and Dr. Bur ney's History of Music may be consulted with advantage by those who seek profounder researches in the history of Ballads. BALLET, a dramatic fable represented by action and dancing only. There is no reason to suppose that the ancients at any time admitted of dramatic representations of which dialogue did not form a part; although the size and construction of their theatres rendered them peculiarly adapted to such a display. The origin of the ballet must be rather sought in those gorgeous spectacles of the Italian courts, to which, as society advanced in civilisation, the more dangerous amusements of the tournament were compelled to give place. An approach to these magnificent diversions may be traced in some of the recreations which are recorded as having distinguished the interview of the two monarchs in the field of the cloth of gold; but it is to the next century that we must refer for those splendid pomps which formed the delight and exhausted the resources of the courts of Tuscany and Lorraine. The actors were all of princely rank, and the memory of these pageants, both at Florence and at Nancy, has been faithfully preserved to us by the etchings of Della Bella and Callot. England was in some measure a sharer in the same taste, and was fortunately possessed at that moment of a genius whose commanding talent in scenic decoration, would soon have enabled her to vie with her continental rivals, though as Ben Jonson was employed to compose the dialogue for the masks at Whitehall, this circumstance must exclude them from being classed with the regular ballet. Whatever partook of display and pomp, was certain to find a zealous patron in Louis XIV.; and probably the most magnificent ballet ever performed, was that which this prince commanded and bore a part in, in the year 1664. It is indeed in honour of this memorable fête, that the name of the Carousel has been perpetuated in the spot of its celebration. There BALLAST BALLAD. is yet preserved in the library at Versailles, a volume in which all the dresses and trappings employed at this ceremonial are faithfully pourtrayed; and to add to its value, it contains the portraits of all the chief nobility of the court of France, who were actors as well as their sovereign in this mimic splendour. Since that period, the ballet has rarely been enabled to boast of names so illustrious among its performers; though it is believed that on the private stage of the Opera of Versailles, Marie Antoinette did not disdain to assume the part of the Beauty in the interesting fable of Semire and Azor. The theatres however, both of France, Italy, and England, have always taken care that the taste for the ballet shall not become obsolete. All our classical recollections, and all the wonders of Arabian enchantment have been ransacked to furnish groundworks for the ingenuity of the ballet master. The actor who on one night as the conqueror of India has shared his divinity with Ariadne, has on the next fretted in his iron cage as the captive Bajazet; and the same gloomy cavern through which Orpheus has pursued his difficult path in search of his Eurydice, has served also for the return of the more successful Aladdin in possession of his magical treasure. The wildest fancies and the soberest incidents of real life, have been equally the subjects of representation; and the audience that has witnessed unmoved Faustus hurried away as the victim of his tempter, has been compelled to real sympathy with the Deserter of Naples. BALLAST, v.) A. S. hlæstan, be-hlæstan, to lade, Dutch and Ger. ballast. It is applied to that lading or loading which is used to steady a vessel in the water, or to steady any thing in its motion or action. Byg of statur stude he like to fecht, Boistand the streme with ballast of huge wecht, G. Douglas. Eneados, book x. fol. 321. Drayton. The Owl. Bp. Hopkins. Sermon xxv. But his [T. Coryate's] knowledge and high attainments in several languages, made him not a little ignorant of himself, he being so covetous and ambitious of praise, that he would heare and endure more of it than he could in any measure deserve; being like a ship that hath too much sail, and too little ballast. IMO. 'Mongst friends? Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 424. If brothers would it had bin so, that they Shakspeare. Cymbeline, fol. 387. I do not deny, but that a little melancholy may be sometimes as The genius of the first [Diderot] supplies the gale of favour, and BALLAS the latter [Desmaretz] adds the useful ballast of stupidity. Goldsmith. Present state of Polite Learning, chap. viii. BALLAST, is a term used in Navigation, to denote any heavy material employed for sinking a vessel to a proper depth in the water, and to give it a just weight and counterpoise against the action of the wind on the sails. We have already in our treatise on HYDROSTATICS, entered at considerable length upon the theoretical principles of the laws of floating bodies, and have defined and illustrated some terms of frequent application in that part of the science which is chiefly of importance in the due distribution of the matter, whether of ballast or load, which forms the interior charge of a hollow body of any symmetrical figure floating on a fluid: but it is very obvious that these deductions stand in need of great modifications as soon as we apply sails to our floating vessel; and particularly when we have to accommodate its action to the various circumstances attending the motion of the waters of the ocean. If a vessel could always be ensured fine breezes and smooth water, or waves of small and regular oscillation, we should dispose the ballast in a very different manner from that which is now the common practice; if on the contrary, we had only to provide against squalls and heavy gales, the ballast would again differ very considerably both in quantity and position from that adapted to the former circumstances. But the fact is, that ships in general experience all the shades of variation between the two extremes supposed above, and we are therefore obliged to look to that proportion and disposition of the ballast which shall render the vessel safe in a heavy sea, without injuring her speed and due action in more moderate weather. And this we will not scruple to say, is to be learned better from practice than from the most refined theory, if indeed the latter be of any advantage whatever, (which we much doubt) unless assisted by the former. We have known instances in which vessels belonging to the Royal navy have come home with very bad characters as sailors, and in the very next voyage they have been reckoned the best of the squadron, merely from a different disposition and addition or subtraction of ballast; and yet not only equal skill and talent have been employed in both cases, but the same person has had the direction in both instances. There are, unquestionably, peculiarities in the form of vessels which require particular dispositions of the ballast, and which no general rules can reach, and no length of practice is fully competent to meet, till trial has been made of the identical vessel in question for which reason all ships in the Royal navy are allowed a certain proportion of what is called shifting ballast. In making this concession however, we must beg not to be understood as meaning to disregard all rules; there are undoubtedly many which cannot be dispensed with, and the facts to which we have alluded above, are rather meant to apply to particular modifications, than to the rules themselves. The art of ballasting a vessel consists in giving her what the sailors term as little stiffness as possible, provided she be not rendered too crank. If she be too stiff, although she may be able to carry much canvass, her rate of sailing will not be proportionally increased, while her masts are endangered by her sudden jerks and excessive labouring; and if she be too crank, she will bear but little sail without the danger of being LLAST upset. The former effect is produced by too much ballast, or by its being stowed too low; and the latter, by having too little ballast, or by raising it too high in the first case, the centre of gravity is too much depressed, and in the second, too much elevated. Another circumstance of great importance in the practice of ballasting is, to moderate the pitching of a vessel, a motion which, more than any other, tries the strength of her fabric, and endangers the masts and rigging. She must also be prevented rolling too much; the general rule for which is, to stow the ballast, when of iron, to the floor heads; but this, if carried to too great a length, will necessarily bring the centre of gravity too high, and thus cause some of those defects which we have shewn ought always to be avoided and thus, throughout the whole practice, as we are finding a remedy for one fault, we are in danger of running into another; and on this account it is, that so much of the final distribution of the ballast depends upon knowing well the peculiarities of the vessel; which are seldom fully appreciated till she has had to contend with all weathers. It may be stated as a general principle, that the ballast should be placed round and near the centre of gravity of the ship, because it will prevent the pitching being so violent as it would be if it were carried much fore or aft of that point. For while a vessel is passing over a wave, she will be at one time supported below the centre of gravity; and immediately after, her head will incline downwards, or she will, as it is termed, pitch; and it is evident, that the nearer the weight is to the point over which the vessel is sup ported, the less violent this motion will be. But even this rule, which is one of the most obvious, will frequently stand in need of modifications: for which perhaps, as much as for any other reason, so large a quantity of shifting ballast is allowed in the Royal navy. Formerly, the ballast of our men of war was partly iron, and partly shingle, in the proportions stated in the following table: and then the general practice was, first, to stow the iron ballast fore and aft, from bulkhead to bulkhead, in the main hold; next to fir cants, nailed on the limber strakes, on each side of the kelson, five or more inches clear of the limber boards, and winged up three or four pigs above the floor heads in the midships, or bearing part of the ship, with two tiers of pigs in the wake of the main hatchway, &c. The shingle ballast was next spread and levelled over the iron ballast, on which was stowed the lower tier of water casks, with the bungs up, and the bilge clear of the sides. The midship tiers were first laid, and the casks sunk about one quarter of their diameter into the shingle; the sides being filled in with small casks, as half hogsheads, &c. But since the general introduction of iron tanks, the shingle ballast is altogether laid aside, and iron ballast only employed, the proportion of which, according to the present practice in the navy, is as stated in the second table. However, notwithstanding the official regulations here referred to, considerable deviations from it are necessary; in many cases we have known demands made for additional ballast, to the amount of onethird, and even one-half of the quantity first issued; and this not in the smaller class of vessels only, but in 74's and upwards: so that although the table in question exhibits truly the official allowance of ballast, it must not be understood as definitive. Table of the proportion of iron ballast, at present allowed To 22-gun ships and sloops 4th ditto. The smaller vessels are not submitted to the like rules; but are left to the judgment of the officers to be ballasted as circumstances may require. In ships of the line, 16 ton of the above ballast,' called shifting ballast, is moveable as circumstances may require, and half that quantity to frigates. head-way, is an object of importance, the ballast is Frequently in yachts where room, and particularly frequently of lead, and is worked between the timbers. BALLIAGE, a duty payable to the city of London, for the goods and merchandize of aliens, according to the charter, 16th Car. II. BALLIUM, in Archæologia, the court within a fortified castle. There were generally two; the outer ballium immediately within the gates, separated by a wall from the inner ballium, which contained the apartments for the garrison and the keeper. St. Peter, in the Bailey at Oxford, stands in the outer ballium of the castle. The Old Bailey and New Bailey in London occupy similar positions in regard to the walls of that city. BALLO ON, Fr. balon, a little ball, or pack; also a foot-ball. Dutch, balloen; Ger. balluyn; Sp. balon; It. ballone. A name given to a certain game, played with a ball, filled with wind. Many other sports and recreations there be, much in use, as foot-ball, balowne, quintan, &c. and many such, which are the common recreations of the country folks. Burton. Anat. of Mel, p. 2. sec. ii. Count Epernoum, a Welch knight: we had a match at baloon too SIR PET.-Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one with my lord Wachum, for four crowns. * O, sweet lady, 'tis a strong game with the arm. Eastward Hoe. act i. sc. i. |