hint to purchasers. To buy a fiddle when about, Your way unto a Chemist’s win, Where, if but twelve-pence you lay out, You’re sure to get a vial “in.”
[59] Should there be any to whom the foregoing estimate (which aims at being a candid one) may seem to render imperfect justice to the claims it deals with, I can only remind them that they have the same freedom as myself to indulge their opinion, and to assert it. Nay, I will even furnish them with four measured lines, by way of a text from which to expand their own more propitious adjudication; provided only, that they will accept them as conceived in any other spirit than that of ill-nature, which is hereby wholly disavowed:—
Ask not how long shall flourish yet his fame, Nor when shall cease the record of his glory! Oblivion dares not to efface his name, Since e’en the tomb cries out “Memento Mori!”
[60] “Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain.”—Johnson.
[61] It must be borne in mind, that the three Quartett Concerts had been given, with Mr. Dando as Leader, at the Horn Tavern; and the four “Concerti da Camera,” at the Hanover Square Rooms;—that both parties had advertised their forthcoming series;—and that it was pretty extensively rumoured that the Blagrove, Gattie, Dando, and Lucas party had combined to try their fortune in the new field.
[62] In the getting-up of Concertos for the annual Concours in Paris, the Violin students exercise a perseverance and length of labour truly surprising; and, in the result, such is the perfect manner in which the same Concerto is executed successively by sometimes a dozen candidates, that it would puzzle the most skilful judges to discriminate the individual to whom the prize should be awarded. In such cases, were it not for the subsequent resource—the safe and certain test of sight-playing, which brings into operation the intellect as well as the hand—it would perhaps be impossible to give a single decision that should not be open to dispute. Thus great is the power of execution which practice confers—and thus rigorous, the need of that practice!
[63] If an Amateur, who is capable of murdering time, should yet have the grace of a disposition to offer some apology for the act, I would suggest his quoting, for that purpose, the subjoined rhyming octave:—
“Cease, cease this fiddling,” cried Sir John, To Ned, his tune-perplexing son— “You lose your time, you idle lout.” “No, sir, my time I keep, throughout.” “Psha! keep time! no, kill time, you mean,” Mutter’d the father, full of spleen. “Kill him! well, sure, sir, I’m no zany, For killing him who has killed so many.”
[64] The injurious and disqualifying effect of musical vanity, complained of in France as well as here, is thus noticed by M. Castil-Blaze:—“Although music is every where taught to our youth, and is an art cultivated by a very considerable number of Amateurs, we find very few amongst them who are really useful with regard to playing in concert. And this proceeds, partly, from the fact of each individual desiring to occupy the first place. I have known violin-players renounce their instrument, because of finding themselves restricted to the second part. As for your tenor, it is a department not to be mentioned, and is left in the hands of those good elderly dullards who have already forgotten the half of what they never very well knew.”
[65] As it is neither hoped nor intended that this chapter should constitute a gradus, or complete code of instruction for the young student, I do but hint at a few of the streams of information that Footnote: are open to him. A more extended view of these would result to him from a reference to the printed catalogues of those very diligent purveyors of pabulum for auricular purposes, Messrs. Cocks and Co.; but, should he look upon a copious Catalogue as little better than a strange road without a guide, or a labyrinth without a clue—and should he have no live preceptor at hand, to consult—I would point his attention to an available help from the same quarter, namely, “Hamilton’s Catechism for the Violin,” small in compass as in cost, wherein he will find, briefly indicated, the various steps by which, with due regard to continuous advancement, he should make his way.