Scan 407
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
7 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 319. See the scan on archive.org.
1SECTION XIII.
2The Violin and its Votaries.
4STERNE (himself a votary of the Fiddle) has well said, "Have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself, had their hobby-horses—their running-horses, their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their Fiddles, their pallets, their maggots and their butterflies? And so long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the king's highway, and neither compels you nor me to get up behind him,—pray, sir, what have either you or I to do with it?" He further tells us, "There is no disputing against hobby-horses;" and adds, "I seldom do: nor could I, with any sort of grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; happening at certain intervals and changes of the moon, to be both Fiddler and painter."
6The leading instrument is singularly favoured. It may be said to have a double existence. In addition to its manifold capabilities, it has its life of activity on the one hand, and inactivity on the other. At one time it is cherished for its powers of giving pleasure to the ear, at another for the gratification it
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