1598 W. Shakespeare iii. i. 126 I had rather be a kitten and cry mew, Then one of these same miter [1623 Meeter] ballet mongers.
1839 5 574 If the appellation of ‘poets’ were awarded to most of the metre-ballad-mongers, whose twattle has been thus resuscitated, we are right in the asseveration that the bays of poetic renown must, at no very distant period, have been of facile attainment.