Possible Clues:

• Like early films
• Listen (anag.)
• Dumb as the majority are reported to be?
• What at last I made a loan of it is quite unsound
• Mum is retreating fast
• At last I did not give away nothing, by the sound of it
• That's quite unsound
• How one might listen and hear nothing
• What the bell that's not been rung is
• Dismissed about one fifty with nothing, by the sound of it