Scan 57
A Review Of Ancient And Modern Violin Making, 1899
2 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1There seems to be an inclination with many to accept as true any statement touching the violin, especially if it refers to the Cremona period, and nothing seems too ridiculous to find believers. I could give scores of instances that are most inconsistent, yet are largely accepted as facts. In defending the Cremona oil varnish theory, one writer admits that this varnish can be cut with alcohol at any age, but adds in defense, "It is made with essential oil, which yields to the action of alcohol." This is a little in advance of the usual degree of ignorance dished up for our acceptance, but it serves to show what little reliance can be placed in most of the past violin theories. How one so ignorant of his subject could presume to write for the instruction of others is hard to understand, unless he took the view that where so much was false a little more could not work greater harm. He could not have known that essential oils are all volatile and contain no part of vegetable oil; that it is, in fact, the groundwork of spirit varnish, the solvent of gums of which spirit varnish is made. Even admitting that the old makers used oil varnish, it does not necessarily follow
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