Scan 557
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
6 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 461. See the scan on archive.org.
1identical autograph of the immortal maker—Albani, Guarneri, or Amati, as the case may happen—with the date printed in the lean old type, and now scarcely visible through the dust of a couple of centuries, 'Amati Cremonæ fecit 1645,' followed by a manuscript signature in faded ink, which you must take for granted.
3"Borax has but one price; and if you do not choose to pay it, you must do without the article. The old fellow is a true believer, and is accounted the first judge in Europe; Fiddles travel to him from all parts of the continent for his opinion, bringing their fees with them; and for every instrument he sells, it is likely he pronounces judgment upon a hundred. It is rumoured that the greatest masterpieces in being are in his possession.
5"A dealer of a different stamp is Michael Schnapps, well known in the trade, and the profession too, as a ravenous Fiddle-ogre, who buys and sells everything that bears the Fiddle shape, from a Double-Bass to a dancing-master's pocketable Kit. His house is one vast warehouse, with Fiddles on the walls, Fiddles on the staircases, and Fiddles hanging like stalactites from the ceilings. To him the tyros resort when they first begin to scrape; he will set them up for ten shillings, and swop them up afterwards, step by step, to ten or twenty guineas, and to ten times that amount if they are rich enough and green enough to continue the experiment. Schnapps imports Fiddles in the rough, under the
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