Books › Biographical notice of Nicolo Paganini, With and analysis of his compositions and a sketch of the history of the violin, 1876 › scan 66
Scan 66
Biographical notice of Nicolo Paganini, With and analysis of his compositions and a sketch of the history of the violin, 1876
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1repose and meditation, favoured these calumniious reports. The qualities even of his talent were but weapons for his enemies, and it was said that the solitude of a prison, and the impossibility of replacing the strings of his Violin which had broken, led to his his marvellous performance on the fourth, the only one that remained upon his instrument. When Paganini visited Germany, France, and England, envy pursued him, greedy of collecting odious calumny, to oppose his success, as if it were decreed that genius and talent should ever expiate the advantages which nature and study had endowed them with. Paganini was frequently driven to defend himself in the columns of the press; vainly had he appealed to the testimony of the ambassadors of the foreign powers; vainly did he call upon his enemies to cite, with precision, the facts and dates which they had vaguely propagated; but no advantageous results were derived from this. Paris, especially, was hostile to him, although that city contributed principally to his fame. Apart from the real public, who entertain neither hatred nor prejudice, and who yield to the pleasure which talent provides for them, there is, in that city, a hunger-starved population, which exists on the ill it does and the good it prevents. This contemptible world speculated upon the celebrity of the artist, and persuaded itself that he would purchase their silence. Lithographic prints presented him a prisoner; journals attacked his morals, his humanity, his integrity. These reiterated attacks—this pillory to which he saw himself attached, as actor and as spectator—affected him deeply. He confided his sorrows to me, and took counsel from me, satisfying me perfectly of their unjust malice. I requested him to furnish me with some notes to enable me to write a letter, which I published with his signature, and was copied into most of the Paris journals. The facts, related in that letter, possess so much interest for the history of the most extraordinary man of our age, that I deem it important to give it a place here. I conceive it, besides, a duty to omit nothing that may avenge the calumnies which attached to one of the most dazzling glories of the musical art:—
3"Sir,—So many proofs of kindness have been showered
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.