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Scan 213
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 199. See the scan on archive.org.
1to have been dictated by mere fashion. A similar current of preference, and counterpart of this enthusiasm has been noticed later in France, viz., when Vuillaume started on his career; and the opinion that old instruments were, in all respects, superior to new ones, simply because of their age, was entertained and fostered even in the time of Mace, who says: "Yet we chiefly value old instruments before new, for, by experience, they are found to be far the best. The reasons for which I can no further dive into than to say, I apprehend that by extreme age the wood and those other adjuncts—Glew, parchment, paper, lining of cloath (as some use), but above all the vernish, these are all so very much by time dried, lenified, made gentle, rarefied, or, to say better even, agefied, so that the stiffness, stubbornness, or clingingness which is natural to such bodies, are so debilitated and made plyable, that the pores of the wood have a more and free liberty to move, stir or secretely vibrate, by which means the air, which is the life of all things both animate and inanimate, has a more free and easy recourse to pass and repass, &c. Whether I have hit upon the right cause I know not, but sure I am that age adds goodness to instruments, therefore they have the advantage of all our workmen." There are many people who could not, in the present day, give better reasons for such an opinion.
3In the period at which we have now arrived—about the end of the seventeenth century—we find the art of violin making modestly lifting its head in this country, not with the shy air of a bashful inventor, but rather with the diffident look of an honest imitator, somewhat hopelessly striving after the quality of instruments
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