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Scan 115
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 101. See the scan on archive.org.
1those embryo violins were not the inceptive suggestion of the later and more perfect instrument. Or was our modern one—after all that has been said to the contrary—a well-known and popular instrument of music, so well-known and so popular that diminished copies of it were made for the convenience of dancing masters, or any other class of performers? All literary evidence tends to rebut the latter notion; that is to say, there is, so far as has yet been ascertained, absolutely no mention of the violin until about the middle of the 16th century; but neither is there any mention of kits, and yet these are depicted by Fineguerra, who certainly lived and worked in the middle of the fifteenth century, for the date of the celebrated Pax, which he engraved for the church of St. John in Florence, is fixed by an entry in the Great Book of the Florentine Merchants' Guild for the year 1450, where his name and the sum which he received for the work appear. It will thus be seen that there is not much room for doubt as to the period when these impressions containing the kits were taken. There I propose to leave the matter; and this digression, which, in view of the interest taken by some in these subjects, and especially in consideration of the fresh bone of contention imported into the discussion, will not, I hope, be judged to require an apology.
3Jacob Stainer, the greatest of the German makers, was born on the 14th July, 1621, at Absom, a small village not far from Hall, in the valley of the Inn, in the Austrian Tyrol. This town of Hall, celebrated for its Imperial Salt Manufactory, is the dirtiest, gloomiest, smokiest town, I should imagine, in the whole world. It is scarcely possible to conceive, says one, "a more
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