Scan 222
The Violin: Its Famous Makers and their Imitators, 1875
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 164. See the scan on archive.org.
1high. The English Violin makers were thus enabled to bestow artistic care on the making of their instruments. When, however, they were suddenly called upon to compete on equal terms with a legion of foreign manufacturers, the result was not so much that their ardour was damped, as that they themselves were extinguished, and served as another instance of the truth of the adage that the good of the many is the bane of the few.
3In matters of magnitude, whether artistic or otherwise, competition is undoubtedly healthy, there being always a small body of patrons who are willing to check the tendency to deteriorate, common to all productions, by encouraging the worker with extra remuneration, in order that a high degree of excellence may be maintained; but in matters confined to a small circle, as in the case of Violin making, the number of those willing to encourage artistic workmanship is so minute as to fail even to support one maker of excellence, and thus, when deprived suddenly of its legitimate protection, the art, with other similar handicrafts, must drift into decadence. If we look around the Violin world, all is much the same. In Italy there are no Stradiuariuses in embryo, in France no coming Lupot, in Germany no Jacobus Stainer, and in England no future Banks or Forster. Why so? The answer is twofold. Partly there is fault in the demand, arising from the marked preference of this age for cheapness at the expense of goodness; partly, too, there is fault in the supply,
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