Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 39
Scan 39
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
23 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1He makes contemptuous allusion, also, to certain persons
2 That keep their consciences in cases,
3 As fiddlers do their crowds and bases.
5Crowdero, the fiddle-noted agent in the story, is made to cut, on the whole, a very sorry figure. Thus, as to his instrument, and his manner of calling it into exercise:
7 A squeaking engine he applied
8 Unto his neck, on north-east side,
9 Just where the hangman does dispose,
10 To special friends, the knot of noose.
12When the knight, in the outset of his career, meets the aforesaid rabble, with the aggravating accompaniment of the bear and fiddler, and counsels them to peace and dispersion, he says
14 But, to that purpose, first surrender
15 The fiddler, as the prime offender!
17It is true that the mettle put forth by Crowdero, in the ensuing general fight, raises him a little out of the mire of meanness: but then, the weapon with which he batters the cranium of the prostrate Hudibras—to wit, his own wooden leg—has the effect of disturbing the small dignity which his gleam of valour might have shed over him; and, besides, he is speedily exhibited in reverse, being vanquished in turn by Ralpho the Squire, and forced into the ignominious confinement of the stocks; while Ralpho exultingly says to Hudibras, the fiddle is your trophy,
19 And, by your doom, must be allow'd
20 To be, or be no more, a crowd.
22In France, certain ancient and respectable monu-
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