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 he 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.