Scan 482
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
4 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 328. See the scan on archive.org.
1deceive common observers, are naked and self-confessed in his hands. Dust, dirt, varnish, and bees-wax are thrown away upon him; he knows the work of every man, of note or of no note, whether English, French, Dutch, German, Spaniard, or Italian, who ever sent a Fiddle into the market, for the last 200 years; and he will tell you who is the fabricator of your treasure, and the rank he holds in the Fiddle-making world, with the utmost readiness and urbanity—on payment of his fee of one guinea.
3"Borax is the pink of politeness, though a bit of a martinet after an ancient and punctilious model. If you go to select a Fiddle from his stock, you may escape a lecture of a quarter of an hour by calling it a Fiddle, and not a Violin, which is a word he detests, and is apt to excite his wrath. He is never in a hurry to sell, and will by no means allow you to conclude a bargain until he has put you in complete possession of the virtues, and failings, if it have any, of the instrument for which you are to pay a round sum. As his Fiddles lie packed in sarcophagi, like mummies in an Egyptian catacomb, your choice is not perplexed by any embarras de richesses; you see but one master-piece at a time, and Borax will take care that you do see that, and know all about it, before he shows you another. First unlocking the case, he draws the instrument tenderly from its bed, grasps it in the true critical style with the fingers and thumbs of both hands a little above the bridge, turning the scroll towards you. Now and then he
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