CHAPTER X._The Violin Some Account of That Leading Instrument and Its Most Eminent Professors, from Its Earliest Date to the Present Time; with Hints to Amateurs, Anecdotes, etc.

MISCELLANEOUS ANECDOTES, COLLECTED SCRAPS, ECCENTRIC VARIETIES,

&C.

Characteristics of the fiddle species—a caricature

repudiated—ambition let down—a new resource in difficulty—a

prejudice overcome—fifty years’ fiddling—another fifty years of

it—glory made out of shame—discrimination—the Cremona fiddle—an

apt quotation—the leading instrument victorious—sending for

time-keepers—musical exaction—a device for a dinner—a ‘practising’

coachman—a footman to match—a royal ‘whereabout’—precocious

performers—fiddlers’ tricks—eccentric varieties of the violin

kind—the fiddle of Ireland—of Tartary—African fiddle—Greek

fiddle—an eight-stringed violin—an intermediate

instrument—something _more_ than a violin—an air violin—automaton

violinist—the street-fiddler—epigrams.—_pp. 364, et seq._

THE VIOLIN,

ETC.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGINAL AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE VIOLIN.

First seat him somewhere, and derive his race.—DRYDEN.

The Fiddle Family, like other tribes that have succeeded in making a

noise in the world, has given exercise to the ingenuity of learned

theorists and time-seekers, who have laboured to discover for it an

origin as remote from our own era, as it is, I fear, from any kind of

truth. It has probably been conceived that the Fiddle, associated as he

has been, from generation to generation, with jigs, country-dances,

fairs, junketings and other rusticities, had descended too low in the

scale of society—that he had rendered himself, as Shakspeare for a while

did his own genius, “stale and cheap to vulgar company”—and that he

required to be reminded of his primitive dignity, and of his very high

ancestral derivation—if he _had any_. This latter point was of course to

be first established; but, as your zealous antiquary is a wholesale

dealer in time, and is never at a loss for a few centuries to link his

conjectures to, the matter was easy enough; indeed, the more doubtful,

the better, since doubt is the very life of theory. Accordingly, we have

been invited to fall back upon “the ancients,” and to recognize the

_Epigonion_ as the dignified and classic prototype of our merry and

somewhat lax little friend, the Fiddle. To certain ancient Greek tablets

relative to music, which have been somewhere brought to light, Professor

Murchard has minutely assigned the date of 709 years before the

Christian era; and the following passage, Englished from his

translation, is stoutly alleged by the antiquarian advocates of the

glories of the violin race:—“But Pherekydes began the contest, and sat

himself down before all the people, and played the _Epigonion_;—for he

had improved the same; and he stretched four strings over a small piece

of wood, and played on them with a smooth stick. But the strings sounded

so, that the people shouted with joy.”

This is plausible enough, but far from conclusive. It is but the outline

of a description, and admits of various modes of filling up. _If_ the

instrument partook _at all_ of the violin character, it might seem, from

the reference which its name bears to the _knees_, to have been the rude

progenitor of either the double-bass or the violoncello, which have

both, as is well known, their official post between the knees: but then,

the prefix of ἐπί would denote that it was played _upon_ the knees of

the artist. “Very well,” says the antiquarian; “it was a fiddle

_reversed_.” “Nay, Dr. Dryasdust, if you yourself _overturn_ what you

are about, I have no need to say more.” _Au reste_, let any body stretch

four strings over a small piece of wood, and play on them with a smooth

stick, and then take account of what it comes to. No, no; whatever the

_Epigonion_ may have been to the Greeks, he is nothing to _us_: he may

have been a respectable individual of the musical genus of _his_ day,

when people blew a shell or a reed, and called it music; but we cannot

for a moment receive him as the patriarch of the Fiddle Family. As soon

should we think of setting up Pherekydes against Paganini.

Dismissing the Epigonion, we come to the _Semicon_, another pretender of

Greek origin. This also, we are farther told, was a _kind of violin_:

but we deny that he was father to the _violin kind_. The Semicon is said

to have been played on with a bow; and yet a learned German (Koch), in

the fulness of his determination to have _strings_ enough to his bow,

has claimed no less than thirty-five, as the complement of the Semicon.

How could any bow pay its devoirs distinctly to thirty-five strings?

Here, then, the dilemma is this: either to translate the thing in

question into a _bow_ is to _traduce_ the term, or else the _strings_

are an impertinence. _Utrum horum mavis, accipe._

If the word _plectrum_ could, by any ingenuity, be established to mean

_a bow_, quotations enough might be accumulated to prove that

instruments played with bows had their origin in a very remote period.

But the translation of the word into _a bow, or such like thing_, as we

find it in the Dictionaries, arises simply from the want of a known

equivalent—a deficiency which makes it necessary to adopt any term that

offers even the shadow of a synonym.

It has been stated, on the authority of a passage from Euphorion’s book

on the Isthmian Games, that there was an ancient instrument called

_magadis_, which was surrounded by strings; that it was placed upon a

pivot, upon which it turned, whilst the performer touched it with _the

bow_ (or, at least, the _plectrum_); and that this instrument afterwards

received the name of _sambuce_.

The hieroglyphics of Peter Valerian, page 628, chap. 4, present the

figure of a muse, holding, in her right hand, a kind of bass or

contra-violin, the form of which is not _very_ unlike that of our

violins or basses.

Philostratus, moreover, who taught at Athens, during the reign of Nero,

gives a description of the lyre, which has been thus translated:—

“Orpheus,” he says, “supported the lyre against his left leg, whilst he

beat time by striking his foot upon the ground; in his right hand he

held _the bow_, which he drew across the strings, turning his wrist

slightly inwards. He touched the strings with the fingers of his left

hand, keeping the knuckles perfectly straight.”

From this description (if _bow_ it could be called, which bow was none),

it would appear as if the lyre to which Philostratus alludes were,

forsooth, the same instrument which the moderns call the

_contra-violin_, or _viola di gamba_! To settle the matter thus,

however, would be _indeed_ to beg the question.

As before observed, the word _plectrum_ is, in the dictionaries,

translated by _bow_; but, even if this were a warranted rendering of the

word, it remains to be ascertained not only whether the bows of the

ancients were of a form and nature corresponding with ours, but also

whether they were used in the modern _way_. Did the ancients strike

their bow upon the strings of the instrument—or did they draw forth the

sound by means of friction? These questions are still undecided; but

opinions preponderate greatly in favor of the belief that the plectrum

was an implement of _percussion_, and therefore not at all a bow, in our

sense.

A recent French writer, Monsieur C. Desmarais, in an ingenious inquiry

into the Archology of the Violin, takes us back to the ancient

Egyptians, to whom he assigns the primitive violin, under the name of

the _chélys_, and suggests that its _form_ must have resulted from a

studious inspection of one of the heavenly constellations!

M. Baillot, in his Introduction to the _Méthode de Violon du

Conservatoire_, speculating on the origin of the instrument, has a

passage which, in English, runs thus:—

“It is presumed to have been known from the remotest times. On ancient

medals, we behold Apollo represented as playing upon an instrument with

three strings, similar to the violin. Whether it be to the God of

Harmony that we should attribute the invention of this instrument, or

whether it claim some other origin, we cannot deny to it somewhat that

is divine.

“The form of the violin bears a considerable affinity to that of the

lyre, and thus favors the impression of its being no other than a lyre

brought to perfection, so as to unite, with the facilities of

modulation, the important advantage of expressing prolonged sounds—an

advantage which was not possessed by the lyre.”

This is pretty and fanciful, but far too vague to be at all

satisfactory. Apollo might appear to play on an instrument, in which

antiquarian ingenuity might discover some latent resemblance to the

violin; but where was his _bow_? M. Baillot has not ventured to assert

that he had one—and we may safely conclude that he had _not_, if we

except the bow that was his admitted attribute. As for the affinity to

the lyre, it is indeed as faint as the most determined genealogist,

studious of an exercise, could wish.

It has been remarked, by some curious observer, that, among the range

of statues at the head of the canal at Versailles, an Orpheus is seen

(known by the three-headed dog that barks between his legs), to whom the

sculptor has given _a violin_, upon which he appears scraping away with

all the furor of a blind itinerant. But is the statue, or its original,

an antique? We may rest in safe assurance that it is a modern-antique;

as much so, as the ingenious figment of Nero’s _fiddling_ a capriccio to

the roaring accompaniment of the flames of Rome!

As for the _fidicula_ of the Romans (or rather, of the Latin

Dictionary), it is evidently, as far as it has been made to apply to the

fiddle, no legitimate family name. The _violin_ very positively disowns

all relationship with it, and leaves it to settle its claims with the

_guitar_.

As far as the _mere name_ goes, however, it is not impossible that a

connection may exist, and that the word-hunting Skinner may be right in

deriving the Anglo-Saxon word _fithele_ from the older German _vedel_,

and thence from the Latin _fidicula_, which, it is hardly necessary to

state, was any thing but a fiddle, and therefore “had no business” to

lend its appellation in the way here noticed.

On the whole, as regards the pretensions alleged on the side of the

ancients for the honor of having had the violin in existence among them,

it may be safely remarked, that, if nothing like the _bow_, which is

obviously connected most essentially with the expression and character

of the violin, can be traced to their days, the violin itself, _à

fortiori_, cannot be said to have belonged to them; and all those

questionable shapes which have been speculatively put forward as

possible fiddles, must be thrown back again into the field of

antiquarian conjecture, to await some other appropriation. The

following remarks by Dr. Burney may be taken as a fair summary of all

that needs to be observed on this head:

“The ancients seem to have been wholly unacquainted with one of the

principal expedients for producing sound from the strings of modern

instruments: this is the _bow_. It has long been a dispute among the

learned whether the violin, or any instrument of that kind, as now

played with a _bow_, was known to the ancients. The little figure of

Apollo, playing on a kind of violin, with something _like_ a bow, in the

Grand Duke’s _Tribuna_ at Florence, which Mr. Addison and others

supposed to be antique, has been proved to be _modern_ by the Abbé

Winkelmann and Mr. Mings: so that, as this was the only piece of

sculpture reputed ancient, in which any thing like a bow could be found,

nothing more remains to be discussed relative to that point.”—(_Hist. of

Music_, 4to. vol. i, p. 494.)

The Welch, who are notoriously obstinate genealogists, have not failed

to mark the Fiddle for _their_ own, and to assign him an origin, at some

very distant date, among their native mountains. In support of this

pretension, they bring forward a very ugly and clownish-looking fellow,

with the uncouth name of _crwth_. This creature certainly belongs to

them, and is so old as to have sometimes succeeded in being mistaken, in

this country, for the father of the violin tribe—a mistake to which the

old English terms of _crowd_ for fiddle, and _crowder_ for fiddler, seem

to have lent some countenance. A little investigation, however, shows us

that it was merely the name, and not the object itself, that we

borrowed, for a time, from our Welch neighbours; and that, by a

metonymy, more free than complimentary, we fastened the appellation of

_crowd_ upon the _violin_, already current among us by transmission

from the continent. The confusion thence arising has occasioned

considerable misapprehension: nor has the effect of it been limited to

our own island boundaries; for a French writer, M. Fétis, in one of his

Letters on the State of Music in England, reports the error, without any

apparent consciousness of its being such. Let us quote his passage in

English:

“The _cruth_ is a bowed instrument, which is thought to have been the

origin of the viola and violin. Its form is that of an _oblong square_,

the lower part of which forms the body of the instrument. It is mounted

with four strings, and played on like a violin, but is more difficult in

the treatment, because, not being hollowed out at the side, there is no

free play for the action of the bow.”

“What!” exclaims the enquiring virtuoso, “is this box of a thing, this

piece of base carpentry, this formal oblong square, to be supposed the

foundation of that neat form and those graceful inflections which make

up the ‘complement externe’ of what men call the violin? Can dulness

engender fancy—and can straight lines and right angles have for their

lineal descendant the ‘line of beauty?’” The soberest person would

answer, this is quite unlikely; the man of taste would deny it to be in

the nature of things. No, no; our Cambrian codger _may_ have been a

tolerable subject in his way—a good fellow for rough work among the

mountains, and instrumental enough in the amusement of capering

rusticity—but he must not be allowed, bad musician though we freely

admit he may have been, to give himself _false airs_, and to assume

honors to which his form and physiognomy give the lie. Let him be

satisfied to be considered “_sui generis_,” unless he would rashly

prefer illustrious illegitimacy, and be styled the _base violin_.[1]

If we were disposed, in England proper, to get up a claim for the first

local habitation afforded to the violin, we might put together a much

better case for the instrument that was familiar to the Anglo-Saxon

gleemen, as early as the 10th century, than can be shown in behalf of

the candidate just dismissed. We could produce an individual that should

display a far better face, and should appear with, at least, no great

disgrace to the Fiddle Family, though bearing about him none of the

refinements of fashion. It may be as well to exhibit him at once:—

[Illustration]

In this representation (borrowed from “Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes of

the People of England”) we discern something which it is possible to

call a fiddle, without much violence to our notions “de rerum natura.”

There is grotesqueness, but not deformity: there is much of the general

character of the true violin, though some of its most particular

beauties are wanting. It is true that the sound-holes look as if no

notes save _circulars_ were to be permitted to issue through them—that

the tail-piece seems forced to do duty for a bridge—that the sides have

no indented middle, or waist, to give the aspect of elegance, and

accommodate the play of the bow over the two extreme strings—that the

finger-board is non-existent—and that the scroll, that crowning charm of

the fiddle’s form, is but poorly made amends for by the excrescent

oddity substituted at the end of the neck. With all this, however, there

_is_ visible warrant for calling it a _sort_ of fiddle. Though even a

forty-antiquary power might fail to prove it the origin of the stock, it

has claims to be regarded as exhibiting no very remote analogy to the

violin; and thus far, therefore, it may defy the competition of the

_Crwth_. Whether it was really born in Saxon England, however, or

introduced from Germany, might be a point for nice speculation, were it

worth while to agitate the enquiry.

Whither, then, are we to turn, after all, for the solution of this

problem in musical genealogy? That the violin is of a respectable age,

though not so old as what is commonly called antiquity, is a fact

apparent to the least laborious of enquirers; and it seems to have been

the practice, with those who have had occasion to touch on this point,

either to announce the said fact simply, and leave the reader to make

the most of it, or to mix up with it, by way of elucidation, some

general remark about the absence of light on the matter. “The origin of

the violin,” observes one of these authorities, “like that of most of

the several musical instruments, is involved in obscurity. As a species

of that genus which comprehends the viola, violoncello, and violone, or

double-bass, _it must be very ancient_.” Similarly indefinite are the

conclusions of others who have approached the subject; so that it

becomes necessary to dispense with such embarrassing aid, and to _help

oneself_ to the truth, if it is, peradventure, to be gathered. To me,

much meditating on this matter (if I may borrow Lord Brougham’s classic

form of speech), there seems reason to fix on Italy as the quarter to

which we must look for the “unde derivatur” required. Say, thou soft

“Ausonia tellus,” mother of inventions and nurse of the arts, say, soft

and sunny Italy, is it not to _thee_ that belongs the too modest merit

of having produced and cherished the infancy, even as thou hast

confessedly supported and developed the after-growth and advancement, of

the interesting musical being whose history, in its more secret

passages, we are here exploring? Is it a world (as Sir Toby feelingly

asks), is it a world to hide virtues in? Well, if we cannot obtain

_direct_ satisfaction, let us pursue the investigation of our point a

little more circuitously.

The perfect instrument which we now delight to honor by the name of the

violin—the instrument complete in form and qualities—“totum in se teres

atque rotundum”—appears to have been the result of a highly interesting

series of improvements in the art of producing musical sounds from

strings. How long a duration of time was occupied by the elaboration of

these improvements respectively, is not readily to be ascertained, nor,

perhaps, would the enquiry repay the trouble—but the general order of

progression in the improvements themselves, is as clear as it is

agreeable to contemplate. The first great advancement consisted in the

_sounding-board_, by means of which invention a tone was produced,

through the vibration of the wood, that was incomparably better and

fuller than what was previously procured, through the mere vibration of

the strings. As the human voice is evolved from the mouth under a

concave roof, which serves it as a sounding-board, and gives additional

grace and vigour to its inflections, so does the upper shell of the

violin add a power of its own to the language of the strings. The next

improvement in the instrument, thus extended in capability, was the

_neck_ or _finger-board_, which increased the range and variety of the

sounds, by giving to each string the power of producing a series of

notes. The _bow_ was the next great step of advancement; and this, like

other important inventions, has provoked much learned dispute as to the

time and place of its origin, which however we shall not here more

particularly revert to, for indeed, “non nostrum tantas componere

lites.” With all these additions and appliances, we come not yet to the

instrument _par excellence_, the true violin; for an intermediate and

inferior state remains to be gone through. The consideration of that

state brings us to the regular construction of the several instruments

known by the general name of _viol_ (for we pass by the _rebec_, as

being only a spurious or illegitimate kind of fiddle), that were in the

most common use during the 16th, and till about the middle of the 17th,

century. These were similar to each other in form, but in size were

distinguished into the treble-viol, tenor-viol, and bass-viol. They had

six strings, and a finger-board marked with frets, like that of the lute

or guitar[2]. Finally, as the crowning change, the glorious

consummation, came the conversion of the _viol_ into the _violin_,

effected by a diminution of size, a reduction of strings, from six to

four, and the abolition of those impediments to smoothness, and helps to

irritation, the _frets_. The same reformation attended the other

instruments of the viol tribe, which now became, _mutato nomine_, the

viola and the violoncello.

In former days, we had the _viol_ in,

’Ere the _true_ instrument had come about:

But now we say, since _this_ all ears doth win,

The _violin_ hath put the _viol out_.

Thus, through a considerable tract of indefinite time, and a succession

of definite changes, we reach the matured and accomplished instrument,

the _Violin proper_; and then, if we recur to the question, to _whom_

does it belong? the answer becomes less difficult. It is to this

instrument, this perfected production, that the Italians may, I think,

exultingly point as their own; and, in doing so, they may well afford to

be indifferent to all disputes about the title to those earlier

apparitions, those crude and half-made-up resemblances to the fiddle,

that were but as the abortions which, in human experience, sometimes

precede a perfect birth. It is of sufficient notoriety that the earliest

instruments _of excellence_, bearing the name of Violin, as well as the

earliest players of eminence, were Italian. The Cremona fiddles of

Hieronymus Amati (to go no farther back) were sent into this breathing

world about two centuries and a half ago; and Baltazarini, the earliest

great player of the genuine Violin on record, is known to have been

imported as a curiosity from Italy, by Catherine de Medicis, in 1577. It

is tolerably clear, too, that, as a _court_ favourite, the Violin began

its career in Italy—its progress, in that capacity, having been, as

Burney observes, from Italy to France, and from France to England.

But the tie of Italian connection may be drawn more closely than this.

Galilei, in his Dialogues (p. 147), states that both the Violin and the

Violoncello were _invented_ by the Italians; and he suggests more

precisely the Neapolitans, as the rightful claimants of this honor. Dr.

Burney, who does not attempt to settle the point, quotes the passage, to

the above effect, from Galilei, and admits his own inability to confute

it. Montaigne, whose travels brought him to Verona in 1580, has recorded,

that there were _Violins_ as well as organs there, to accompany the mass

in the great Church. Corelli’s Violin, an instrument specially Italian,

which afterwards passed into the possession of Giardini, was made in

1578, and its case was decorated by the master-hand of Annibale Caracci,

probably several years _after_ the instrument was finished; as Caracci

at that date had numbered but eight of his own years.

Towards the end of the 16th century, the Violin is found indicated in

some Italian scores, thus:—_piccoli Violini alla Francese_; which

circumstance has been sometimes alleged as rendering it probable, that

the reduction of the old viol or viola to the present dimensions of the

Violin took place in _France_, rather than in Italy: but the fact does

not seem to offer a sufficient basis for the conjecture, when it is

considered that no instruments of French construction, corresponding

with the Violin in its present form, and of as early a date as those

which can be produced of Italian make, are known to exist. It is

reasonable to suppose, therefore, that these _piccoli Violini_, or

little Violins, were not identical with the Violin proper;—although Mr.

Hogarth[3] (from whose respectable authority I am rather loth to differ)

quotes the phrase as one tending to the support of the French claim. The

term in question, which occurs, particularly, in Monteverde’s Opera of

_Orfeo_, printed at Venice in 1615, seems to me to imply merely some

French modification of the already invented Italian model—a modification

applying to the size, and possibly also to some minor details in the

form.

The French writer, Mersennus, who designates all instruments of the

violin and viol class under the term _barbiton_, describes one of them,

the least of the tribe, as the _lesser barbiton_. This latter was a

small violin invented for the use of the dancing-masters of France, and

of such form and dimensions as to be capable of being carried in a case

or sheath in the pocket. It is the origin of the instrument which in

England is called a _Kit_, and which is now made in the form of a

violin.—Is it too great a stretch of conjecture, to hint, that this may,

possibly, have been the kind of thing intended by the term above quoted?

That curious enquirer, Mr. Gardiner, in his “Music of Nature,” assigns

to Italy the local origin of the Violin, but without placing the date as

near to exactness as it might have been. He makes it to have been “about

the year 1600.” He might safely have gone thirty or forty years farther

back, at least, notwithstanding that the shape of the instrument,

towards the end of the 16th century, has been supposed, by Hawkins, to

have been rather vague and undetermined[4]. The transition from the old

shapes to the new _had_ occurred, though it was as yet far from

universal. It is sufficient that the change had commenced.

Admitting the genuine and perfect violin to be rightfully assignable to

the Italians, it may be of some interest, now, to present a few more

records relating, principally, to the instrument in its _imperfect_

character, when it bore only that sort of analogy to the true

instrument, that the ‘satyr’ is said to have borne to ‘Hyperion.’

The “Musurgia, seu Praxis Musicæ,” of the Benedictine Monk Luscinius,

published in 1542, represents (coarsely cut in wood) as the bowed

instruments then in use, the _rebec_, or three-stringed violin, and the

_viol di gamba_. The instruments of the viol tribe, however, which are

supposed to have been those that led more immediately to the

construction of the true violin, considerably precede the above period

in their date of origin. _Violars_, or performers on the viol, whose

business it was to accompany the Troubadours in their singing of the

Provençal poetry[5], were common in the 12th century; and, in a treatise

on music, written by Jerome of Westphalia in the 13th century, there is

particular mention made of the instrument known by the name of viol.

Under various modifications of the term _fiddle_, there are to be found

many very early allusions to an instrument, such as it was, bearing some

resemblance to the violin. _Fidle_ is a Saxon word of considerable

antiquity; and from the old Gothic are traced the derivations of

1. Middle High German. _Videl_ (noun), _Videlœre_ (noun

personal), _Videln_ (verb, to fiddle), _Videl-boge_

(fiddle bow).

2. Icelandic. _Fidla._

3. Danish. _Fedel._

Then we have _Vedel_, _Veel_, _Viool_ (Dutch); _Vedel_, _Vedele_

(Flemish), _Fiedel_, _Fidel_, _Geige_ (Modern German).

_Fythele_, _Fithele_,—and _Fythelers_ (fiddlers) are alluded to in the

Old English Romances. In the legendary life of St. Christopher, written

about the year 1200, is this passage:—

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Cristofre hym served longe;

The Kynge loved melodye of _fithele_ and of songe.

The poet Lidgate, at the beginning of the 15th century, writes of

Instrumentys that did excelle,

Many moo than I kan telle:

Harpys, _Fythales_, and eke Rotys, &c.

Chaucer, in his “Canterbury Tales,” says of the Oxford Clerk, that he

was so fond of books and study, as to have loved Aristotle better

Than robes rich, or _fidel_, or sautrie—

and his Absolon, the Parish-Clerk, a genius of a different cast, and

exquisitely described, is a spruce little fellow, who sang, danced, and

played on the species of fiddle then known. An instrument remotely

allied to the fiddle—the _ribible_, a diminutive of _rebec_, a small

viol with three strings—is also alluded to by Chaucer. Referring to a

later period, there is evidence to show that an instrument of the violin

kind was used in England before the dissolution of monasteries, in the

time of our eighth Henry, in the fact that something similar to it in

shape is seen depicted upon a glass window of the chancel of Dronfield

church, in the county of Derby; an edifice which was erected early in

the sixteenth century.

At what period the _legitimate_ violin may have found its way from Italy

into this country, it would, I fear, be very difficult to ascertain with

exactness; but it is easy to suppose that, when once that event had

occurred, the neater shape and superior qualities exhibited by the new

comer, would speedily render him the model for imitation, and lead to

the multiplication of his species here, and to the displacement of the

baser resemblances to him. The true instrument, however, was for a long

while among us, ere its merits came into just appreciation. Until the

period of the Restoration, it was held, for the most part, in very low

esteem, and seldom found in less humble hands than those of fiddlers at

fairs, and such like itinerant caterers of melody for the populace[6].

Its grand attribute, the superior power of expressing almost all that a

human voice can produce, except the articulation of words, was at first

so utterly unknown, that it was not considered a gentleman’s instrument,

or worthy of being admitted into “good company.” The lute[7], the harp,

the viol, and theorbo, were in full possession of the public ear, and

the poetic pen; nor has this latter authority ever been thoroughly

propitiated by the later-born child of Melos, whose first screams on

coming into the world may perhaps have irrecoverably alarmed the

sensitive sons of Apollo. Moreover, poetry is ever apt to prefer the old

to the new, and often recoils with distaste from what is modern.

“Though the violin surpasses the lute,” says a recent ingenious writer,

“as much as the musket surpasses the bow and arrow, yet Cupid has not

yet learned to wound his votaries with a bullet, nor have our poets

begun to write odes or stanzas to their violins.”

In the 39th Queen Elizabeth, a statute was passed by which “Ministrels,

wandering abroad,” were included among “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy

beggars,” and were adjudged to be punished as such. “This act,” says

Percy, in his Reliques of English Poetry, “seems to have put an end to

the profession.” That writer suggests, however, that although the

character ceased to exist, the appellation might be continued, and

applied to fiddlers, or other common musicians; and in this sense, he

adds, it is used in an ordinance in the time of Cromwell (1656), wherein

it is enacted that if any of the “persons commonly called _Fiddlers_ or

_Minstrels_ shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling, and making

music in any inn, alehouse, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering

themselves, or desiring or intreating any ... to hear them play or make

music in any of the places aforesaid,” they are to be “adjudged and

declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars[8].” By a similar

change or declension, according to Mr. Percy, John of Gaunt’s _King of

the Minstrels_ came, at length, to be called, like the _Roi des Violons_

in France, _King of the Fiddles_—it being always to be borne in mind,

nevertheless, that it was only as yet a baser kind of instrument which

brought its professors into such _scrapes_[9].

The term _crowd_, as well as that of _fiddle_, was commonly used in

England before the appearance of the perfect Violin, but appears to have

been soon disused (along with the barbarous instrument it designated)

after that period. Butler, in his “Hudibras,” employs both terms

indiscriminately, and seems to find enjoyment in linking them with mean

and ludicrous associations—a tendency which must be allowed to have been

quite in keeping with the feeling of the times he describes. His motley

rabble, whom he puts in the way of the knight and his squire, were

special affecters of the instrument he delights to dishonour,

And to _crack’d fiddle_, and hoarse tabor,

In merriment did drudge and labor.

He makes contemptuous allusion, also, to certain persons

That keep their consciences in cases,

As fiddlers do their _crowds_ and bases.

Crowdero, 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:

A _squeaking engine_ he applied

Unto his neck, on north-east side,

Just where the hangman does dispose,

To special friends, the knot of noose.

When 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

But, to that purpose, first surrender

The fiddler, as the prime offender!

It 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_,

And, by your doom, must be allow’d

To be, or be no more, a crowd.

In France, certain ancient and respectable monuments, and particularly

a figure on the portico of the venerable Cathedral of Notre Dame at

Paris, representing King Chilperic with a sort of Violin in his hand,

have been referred to as proofs that an instrument of this nature was

very early held in esteem in that country; and the minstrels in the

highest estimation with the public, were at all times the best

_Violists_ of their age. Among the instruments represented in the

beautiful illuminations of the splendid copy of the _Roman d’Alexandre_,

in the Bodleian library at Oxford, are Viols with three strings, played

upon with a clumsy bow.

In Italy, as in France, the viol appears to have enjoyed earlier favour

than in England, where the fiddle or _crowd_ (the descendant, probably,

of the Welsh instrument _crwth_) was its predecessor. The instruments

chiefly used by the ladies and gentlemen in the Decameron, are the lute

and the viol—upon which latter some of the _ladies_ are represented as

performing.

An ingenious Piedmontese, Michele Todini, published a pamphlet at Rome,

1676, wherein are described various musical inventions of his own, “of

special merit, though of little note.” Amongst them were two Violins,

the pitch of one of which could, by an adroit mechanical contrivance, be

at once heightened a whole tone, a third, or even a fifth; while the

other, under the usual strings, had a second set of strings, like those

of a kit, tuned in the octave above, and was so contrived that the

Violin and kit might either be played separately, or both together, at

the pleasure of the performer. In the 23rd Chapter of this little tract

is a description of a _Viola di gamba_, so constructed, that, without

shifting the neck, all the four kinds of Violins, namely, the treble

Violin, the contralto (or _Viola bastarda_), and the tenor and bass

viol, could be played upon it. Todini had originally given the bass of

this instrument an unusual depth; but he abandoned that, when he

invented the _double bass_,—which instrument he was the first to

introduce and play upon in oratorios, concerts, and serenades.

The arms and seal of the town of Alzei, in the neighbourhood of Worms,

consist of a crowned lion rampant, holding a _fiddle_ in his paws. The

_fiddle_ alone appears to have been the original bearing; for the

palatine lion was first joined to the _fiddle_ when Duke Conrad of

Hohenstauffen was enfeoffed by the Emperor Frederick I with the

Palatinate of the Rhine. His son-in-law, the Palsgrave Henry, calls the

Steward (_Trucksess_) of Alzei, his vassal, in a bill of feoffment,

dated in 1209, and in another document, 1211. This Steward, however, and

Winter of Alzei, bore the _fiddle_ as their arms. On account of these

arms, the inhabitants of Alzei are mockingly called _fiddlers_ by their

neighbours[10].

Connected with the history of the instrument in England, there is a

curious old custom, now “invisible, or dimly seen,” and I know not when

commenced, which is thus described in Hone’s Table Book:—

“The concluding dance at a country wake, or other general meeting, is

the ‘Cushion Dance;’ and if it be not called for, when the company are

tired with dancing, the _fiddler_, who has an interest in it, which will

be seen hereafter, frequently plays the tune to remind them of it. A

young man of the company leaves the room, the poor young women,

uninformed of the plot against them, suspecting nothing; but he no

sooner returns, bearing a cushion in one hand and a pewter pot in the

other, than they are aware of the mischief intended, and would certainly

make their escape, had not the bearer of cushion and pot, aware of the

invincible aversion which young women have to be saluted by young men,

prevented their flight by locking the door, and putting the key in his

pocket. The dance then begins.

“The young man advances to the fiddler, drops a penny in the pot, and

gives it to one of his companions. Cushion then dances round the room,

followed by pot, and when they again reach the fiddler, the cushion

says, in a sort of recitative, accompanied by the music, ‘This dance it

will no farther go.’

“The fiddler, in return, sings or says (for it partakes of both), ‘I

pray, kind Sir, why say you so?’

“The answer is, ‘Because Joan Sanderson won’t come to.’

“‘But,’ replies the fiddler, ‘she must come to, and she _shall_ come to,

whether she will or no.’

“The young man, thus armed with the authority of the village musician,

recommences his dance round the room, but stops when he comes to the

girl he likes best, and drops the cushion at her feet. She puts her

penny in the pewter pot, and kneels down with the young man on the

cushion; and he salutes her.

“When they rise, the woman takes up the cushion, and leads the dance,

the man following, and holding the skirt of her gown; and, having made

the circuit of the room, they stop near the fiddler, and the same

dialogue is repeated, except that, as it is now the woman who speaks,

it is _John_ Sanderson who won’t come to, and the fiddler’s mandate is

issued to _him_, not to her.

“The woman drops the cushion at the feet of her favourite man: the same

ceremony and the same dance are repeated, till every man and woman (the

pot-bearer last) have been taken out, and all have danced round the room

in a file. The _pence_ are the perquisite of the _fiddler_. There is a

description of this dance in Miss Hutton’s ‘Oakwood Hall.’”

Then follows, in Hone’s Book, a further illustration of this curious

custom, in “numerous verse”—but the prose account is here sufficient.

The dialogue in the old puppet dramas (says Strutt) were mere jumbles of

absurdity and nonsense, intermixed with low immoral discourses passing

between Punch and the fiddler, for the orchestra rarely admitted of more

than one minstrel; and these flashes of merriment were made offensive to

decency by the actions of the puppet. In the reign of James II, there

was a noted merry-andrew named Philips; “This man,” says Granger, “was

some time fiddler to a puppet-show; in which capacity he held many a

dialogue with Punch, in much the same strain as he did afterwards with

the mountebank doctor, his master upon the stage. This zany, being

regularly educated, had confessedly the advantage of his brethren.”

The following may be seen in volume the 1st of Purcell’s Catches, on two

persons of the name of Young, father and son, who lived in St. Paul’s

Churchyard—The one was an excellent instrument-maker, and the other an

excellent performer on the fiddle.

You scrapers that want a good fiddle, well strung,

You must go to the man that is old, while he’s Young;

But if this same fiddle you fain would play bold,

You must go to his son, who’ll be Young when he’s old.

There’s old Young and young Young, both men of renown,

Old sells, and Young plays, the best fiddle in town;

Young and old live together, and may they live long,

Young, to play an old fiddle; old, sell a new song!

The zealous, ingenious, minute and gossiping Anthony Wood, to whose

journalizing propensity we are indebted for a free insight into the

state of music at Oxford, during the time of the Civil War (when musical

sounds were scarcely any where else to be heard in the kingdom), was an

ardent admirer of the violin, while its admirers were yet scarce; and

has left us, in his life, written by himself, some particulars relating

to the instrument, that are too pleasant, as well as curious, to be here

passed by. Let me introduce this quaint worthy, speaking of himself in

the third person, and under the abridged designation of A. W.

In 1651, “he began to exercise his natural and insatiable genie to

music. He exercised his hand on the violin, and, having a good eare to

take any tune at first hearing, he could quickly draw it out from the

violin, but not with the same tuning of the strings that others used. He

wanted understanding, friends and money, to pick him out a good master;

otherwise he might have equalled in that instrument, and in singing, any

person then in the University. He had some companions that were musical,

but they wanted instruction as well as he.”

The next year, being obliged to go into the country, for change of air

and exercise, with a view to rid himself of an ague, he states that

“while he continued there, he followed the plow on _well_-days, and

sometimes plowed: and, having had, from his most tender years, an

extraordinary ravishing delight in music, he practised there, without

the help of an instructor, to play on the Violin. It was then that he

tuned his strings in fourths, and _not_ fifths, according to the manner;

and having a good eare, and being ready to sing any tune upon hearing it

once or twice, he could play it also in a short time, with the said way

of tuning, which was never knowne before.

“After he had spent the summer in a lonish and retired condition, he

returned to Oxon; and, being advised by some persons, he entertained a

Master of Musick to teach him the usual way of playing on the violin,

that is, by having every string tuned _five_ notes lower than the one

going before. The master was Charles Griffith, one of the musicians

belonging to the City of Oxon, whom he then thought to be a most

excellent artist: but when A. W. improved himself on that instrument, he

found he was not so. He gave him 2_s._ 6_d._ entrance, _and so

quarterly_. This person, after he had extremely wondered how he could

play so many tunes as he did by _fourths_, without a director or guide,

tuned his violin by _fifths_, and gave him instructions how to proceed,

leaving then a lesson with him to practice against his next coming.

“Having, by 1654, obtained a proficiency in musick, he and his

companions were not without silly frolicks, not now to be

maintained.”—What should these frolics be, but to disguise themselves in

poor habits, and, like country fiddlers, scrape for their livings! After

strolling about to Farringdon Fair, and other places, and gaining money,

victuals and drink for their trouble, they were overtaken, in returning

home, by certain soldiers, who forced them to play in the open field,

and then left them