TARTINI, AN ITALIAN MUSICIAN.
Tartini was a celebrated musician, born at Pirano, in Istria, and being much inclined to the study of music in his early youth, dreamed one night, that he made a compact with the Devil, who promised to be at his service on all occasions: and during this vision, every thing succeeded according to his mind: his wishes were prevented, and his desires always surpassed, by the assistance of this new servant. At last, he imagined that he presented the Devil with his violin, in order to discover what kind of a musician he was; when, to his great astonishment, he heard him play a solo, so singularly beautiful, and which he executed with such superior taste and precision, that it surpassed all the music which he had ever heard or conceived in his life. So great was his surprise, and so exquisite was his delight upon this occasion, that it deprived him of the power of breathing. He awoke with the violence of his sensations, and instantly seized his fiddle, in hopes of expressing what he had just heard, but in vain: he, however, then composed a piece of music, which is, perhaps, the best of all his works, and called it, the Devil’s Sonata; but it was so far inferior to what he had produced in his sleep, that he declared he would have broken his instrument, and abandoned music for ever, if he could have found any other means of subsistence.