Scan 48
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
8 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1doubtful than the identity of the "Man in the Iron Mask" or the writer of the "Letters of Junius."
3It is satisfactory to know that the most valuable and interesting part of our subject is comparatively free from that doubt and tradition which necessarily attaches to the portion belonging to the Dark or Middle Ages. When we reflect that Music—as we understand it—is a modern art, and that all instruments of the Viol and Fiddle type, as far as the end of the fifteenth century, were rude if not barbarous, it can scarcely excite surprise that our interest should with difficulty be awakened in subtle questions pertaining to the archaeology of bowed instruments.
5The views taken of the early history of the leading instrument have not been more multiform than remote. The Violin has been made to figure in history sacred and profane, and in lore classic and barbaric. That an instrument which is at once the most perfect and the most difficult, and withal the most beautiful and the most strangely interesting, should have been thus glorified, hardly admits of wonder. Enthusiasm is a noble passion, when tempered with reason. It cannot be said, however, that the necessity of this qualification has been invariably recognised by enthusiastic enquirers into the history of instruments played with a bow. We have a curious instance of its non-recognition in a treatise on the Viol,* written by a distinguished old French
7* Traité de la Viole," Paris, 1687.
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