After a lapse of nearly sixteen years since this little work first appeared in print, I have been called upon to prepare it anew for the press, incorporating with it the additional matter necessary for the extension of the subject to the present time. My new readers may like to know, at the outset, what is the intended scope of the following pages. This is soon explained. My object has been to present to the cultivators of the Violin, whether students or proficients, such a sketch (however sligh

First seat him somewhere, and derive his race.— Dryden. The Fiddle Family, like other tribes that have succeeded in making a noise in the world, has given exercise to the ingenuity of learned theorists and time-seekers, who have laboured to discover for it an origin as remote from our own era, as it is, I fear, from any kind of truth. It has probably been conceived that the Fiddle, associated as he has been, from generation to generation, with jigs, country-dances, fairs, junketings and other ru

“Oh! known the earliest, and esteemed the most” Byron. Having shown, on such evidence as I have been able to adduce, that the Italians are, most probably, the rightful claimants of the distinction which attaches to the invention of the modern or true violin, it is now to be considered by what bright array of names, by what successive efforts of skill and genius, they have likewise become entitled to the greater distinction of having been the first to develop the wonderful powers of the instrumen

“Natura il fece, e poi ruppe la stampa.”— Ariosto. “The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”— Pope. Who has not heard of Paganini—and who, that boasts of an ear, has not heard Paganini himself? Fame, catching up the echoes of his glory, has caused them to reverberate through her trump, and to far furore even to the uttermost parts of the civilized world; and the hero himself, following in her rear, has gone forth to fulfil her proclamations, to reap his laurels, to achieve the general conquest

... furnished out with arts .— Dryden. Next in importance to the Italian School of Violinists, that of France now offers its claims to our notice. If the palm, indeed, were to be awarded according to the comparative merits of the living (or recently living) Masters of each School, it must be given in favour of France; for, though we might admit the Italian Paganini to have been “facile princeps,” the greatest of all performers—and though we might overlook the consideration of his belonging, in f

“Plain, without pomp—and rich, without a show.”— Dryden. Germany and Italy may each be regarded as an abiding realm of sweet sounds, a special nursery and home of music. They are the two countries from which, since the days of modern civilization, the great supplies of musical thought and feeling have been diffused abroad, for the delight of nations;—the feeling , for the most part, proceeding from Italy, and the thought from Germany, comformably to the characteristics of the two people respecti

... a crescent ; and my auguring hope Says it will come to the full.— Shakspeare. Climate, and the national habits of life, have in England presented no light obstacles to the progress and well-being of the musical art, as collectively regarded. The fogs and lazy vapours that so oft obscure, in our dear country, the genial face of the sun, must needs check and chill our animal spirits, and beat back into the heart the feelings that else would seek fellowship with the ear, by uttering the languag

“Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb?”— Beattie. It is as plain to the understanding, as it is palpable to the ear, that Amateurs, or dilettante performers, on an instrument like the violin, so rich in its capabilities, but so exacting in its demands, are in a very trying situation. The amount of mere mechanical labour—the simple manipulation—which it is essential to employ, before the very finest mental disposition can express itself even passably on the violin, is a thing to startle the c

It is a very natural curiosity which engages us to look minutely into the structural peculiarities of that which is a medium for awakening pleasurable sensations within us. The balloon that has borne us aloft into aerial altitudes—and the violin that, under the management of a Vieuxtemps or a Sivori, has transported us, through varying acoustic currents, into the sublimer regions of harmony—are, each, the object of a close and willingly conceded attention. Quitting the balloon, however, and conf

“Quæ quibus ante-feram?” Characteristics of the Fiddle Species. —In the variety of expression, as well as in its quality , the violin has often been signalized for its approximation to the human voice. The finesse of perception of a clever woman has discovered in that remarkable instrument, and its ligneous family, a yet closer approach to human character. The ingenious parallels which this lady has drawn are described by Monsieur Beyle, in a passage which I here translate from his curious and a

[ This section of the Work, which should have formed Chapter VIII, having been accidentally omitted in the printing, there remained no other course than, either to insert it here (as is actually done), or, by a dismissal utterly at variance with the laws of gallantry and of justice, to exclude it altogether, and so to debar the fairer portion of the community from all participation in the honours connected with the “King of Instruments”—an idea not to be for a moment entertained. If, in this vol