Scan 461
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
18 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 309. See the scan on archive.org.
1LEIGH HUNT ON PAGANINI.
3"'I projected,' says Leigh Hunt, 'a poem to be called 'A day with the reader.' I proposed to invite the reader to breakfast, dine and sup with me, partly at home and partly at a country inn, to vary the circumstances. It was to be written both gravely and gaily; in an exalted, or in a lowly strain, according to the topics of which it treated. The fragment on Paganini, was a part of the exordium:
5'So played of late to every passing thought,
6With finest change (might I but half as well
7So write!) the pale magician of the bow,' etc.
9'I wished' to write in the same manner, because Paganini with his Violin could move both the tears and the laughter of his audience, and (as I have described him doing in the verses) would now give you the notes of birds in trees, and even hens feeding in a farm-yard (which was a corner into which I meant to take my companion), and now melt you into grief and pity, or mystify you with witchcraft, or put you into a state of lofty triumph like a conqueror. That phrase of smiting the chord—
11'He smote;—and clinging to the serious chords
12With godlike ravishment,' etc.
14was no classical commonplace; nor, in respect to impression on the mind, was it exaggeration to say, that from a single chord he would fetch out—
16'The voice of quires, and weight
17Of the built organ.'
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