Scan 547
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
16 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 469. See the scan on archive.org.
1and, indeed, can only decrease by shipwreck, accident, and the tooth of time.—I am, your obedient servant,
3"CHARLES READE.
5"19, ALBERT GATE, May 9, 1878."
7LEIGH HUNT ON PAGANINI.
9"'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:—
11"So played of late to every passing thought,
12With finest change (might I but half as well
13So write!) the pale magician of the bow," &c.
15I 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 farmyard (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
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