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Scan 321
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 307. See the scan on archive.org.
1changing, with no other object than that of realising a profit of from £10 to £100 now and again. There are many of this class who are a positive scourge even to the honest professional dealer, who is sometimes constrained—I am willing to think, reluctantly—to adopt a system of giving receipts which are supposed to cover a large margin of discount or a prospective profit. The majority of these private dealers, for they are nothing else, have no particular preference for fiddles, as opposed to any other instrument—no more regard for a first-class violin than a furniture broker has for an old cabinet. Their taste and knowledge are about on a par with those of a young woman I read of lately in a Spanish novel, who, on hearing a talented itinerant violinist and singer accompany himself on a fine fiddle, said, "A mí no me gusta el violin—si se acompañase con el clarinete sería mucho mejor." But there is the genuine collector, who prizes the possession of his instruments, treats them with the greatest care, and looks upon them with the greatest reverence, hesitating to sell them almost under any circumstances, as he would hesitate to sell the family plate. Collectors of this stamp—and I say it with all respect—have been the main force which has, in a sense, involuntarily driven up the prices of good instruments, and, by natural consequence, those of indifferent ones, to their present extraordinarily useless level.
3The mania for collecting, besides thus unconsciously affording a powerful impetus to fraud, gradually withdraws these instruments from their proper function, actually excluding them from the sphere of the mission for which they were fashioned; for surely a private music party now and then is not in these days, when
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