Scan 17
A Review Of Ancient And Modern Violin Making, 1899
8 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1until the once supposed impossible is daily accomplished.
3But we are gravely informed that the art of violin making reached its highest state of perfection in childhood; that the period of its birth witnessed its death; that all who followed have been groping in darkness, vainly seeking the "lost art;" and more nonsense of the same sort that I care not to mention.
5Of those who believe this trash I will ask a very pertinent question: Why should violin making be the one isolated exception to this universal rule of advancement? There is no rational reason to be given. If the old makers had reached perfection, their work still survives them from which to gain a knowledge of their principles. It is not claiming too much when I say their methods have been, and are today, as well understood as they themselves knew them, and the results have been the same—a few good and many poor ones.
7But granting that the art died with them, would it not be irrational to assume that this branch of art alone was stationary, rather than that the principle of progress had made the modern makers not only equal but superior to the old school?
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