If your soul be not too drony, Haste, to hear renowned Masoni! Scarce Napoleon (nick-named Boney) Was more wondrous than Masoni! ‘Pollo’s pet, Euterpe’s crony, Is the exquisite Masoni. All the sweets that live in honey Are concentred in Masoni! Fiddlers should be rich and toney— This—and more, is great Masoni. Swifter, far, than hare or poney, Run the triplets of Masoni— And Astonishment bends low knee To the flights of high Masoni! Utterly himself unknown he Should be, who not knows Masoni. Dead must be the heart, and stony, That is moved not by Masoni! Money, without ceremony, Shower’d should be on Masoni! E’en from Greece Colocotroni Well might come, to hear Masoni! So, again I tell ye, on’y Go, and listen to Masoni!
The length to which these notices of the artists of Italy has already extended, is one of the reasons precluding detail with respect to some others of the later names belonging to that country. Paganini, however, is neither to be thus dismissed, nor to be here briefly treated of at the end of a chapter. To him, as standing alone in the history and practice of his art, and as forming an object of very widely-diffused curiosity, I propose devoting a separate notice in the ensuing chapter. I cannot, in the mean time, omit wholly to advert to the name of Spagnoletti, whose taste and refinement, in the conspicuous situation which he filled for so many years in London, rendered him a highly valued model for the attention of our own cultivators of the instrument. Who is there amongst those who were frequenters of the King’s Theatre, during his time of office, that will not recollect, with feelings of interest, the delicate grace of Spagnoletti’s playing—his obviously intense, yet not obtrusive, enthusiasm—and his oft-repeated sidelong depressions of the head, as if to drink in more fully, at the left ear, the delicious tones which he enticed from his own instrument? His peculiar sensitiveness under the impression of a false note, and his liberality of spirit, and readiness to speak commendingly of his brethren of the bow, are among the further traits which denoted him to those who had the opportunity of closer observation. Spagnoletti’s original name is said to have been Paolo Diana. I have heard an anecdote which, if it may be depended on, exemplifies his quickness of temper. It was to the effect that Spagnoletti, having chanced to quarrel one morning with Ambrogetti, challenged him on the spot; and that the singer put aside the abrupt invitation, by the phlegmatic remark that he had not breakfasted!
CHAPTER III.
PAGANINI.
“Natura il fece, e poi ruppe la stampa.”—Ariosto.
“The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”—Pope.
Who has not heard of Paganini—and who, that boasts of an ear, has not heard Paganini himself? Fame, catching up the echoes of his glory, has caused them to reverberate through her trump, and to far furore even to the uttermost parts of the civilized world; and the hero himself, following in her rear, has gone forth to fulfil her proclamations, to reap his laurels, to achieve the general conquest of ears, and to receive in gold the tribute of admiring nations! Tongues and pens have vied with each other in celebrating his name; and ‘Ercles’ vein has been drawn upon in his behalf, till its exhausted stream could no further go.
Nicolo Paganini came into this breathing world at Genoa. The date of his birth, like most of the circumstances of his life, has been variously represented; but the most probable account fixes it on the 18th of February, 1784. His parents were of humble rank, but not so low as has been pretended in some of the “supposures hypothetical” that have been mixed up with the history of their marvel-moving son. To suit the humor of these fancies, the conjectured father has been depressed to the condition of a street-porter, bearing (along with his burdens) some name too obscure to be recorded; while the person known as Paganini père has been asserted to possess no other rights of paternity than what are conferred by adoption. This story, were it a true one, would reflect no discredit on an artist who has owed to his own genius the wide celebrity attaching to his name. “Miserum est aliorum incumbere famæ,” says the Roman poet; and the feeling of modern times is daily more and more confirming the sentiment. By another version, the father of Paganini has been styled a small trader, with a large tendency to seek his fortune through the calculation of lottery-chances. His actual station, as appears most likely, was originally that of a mercantile clerk; and it is concurrently allowed that this father, putative or positive, had music enough in his soul, or in his head, to perceive the indications of the faculty in his infant son, and to resolve on its full development; although the means he took for this purpose were as little creditable to his paternal pretensions, as they were injudicious with reference to their object. Ere yet the boy, however, had received into his tiny hands the instrument that was destined to make him “a miracle of man,” the world, it appears, was very near being deprived of him altogether! It is stated that, at the age of four years, he was attacked by the measles, attended, in his case, with unusually aggravated symptoms. So extraordinary an influence did the disease exercise on his nervous system, that he remained during an entire day in the state of catalepsy, or apparent death, and had actually been enveloped in a shroud, when a slight movement fortunately revealed the fact of his existence, and saved him from the horrors of a premature interment.
The musical discipline adopted by his father appears to have begun in pretty close sequence to this shock; and the days of hard work for poor little Paganini were made to commence, by a shameful perversion, before he could plainly speak. As soon as he could hold a violin, his father put one into his hands, and made him sit beside him from morning till night, to practise it. The willing enthusiasm of the child, as well as the tenderness of his age, might have disarmed the severity of any ordinary preceptor; but the rigor of a stern father, when sharpened by ambition and avarice, can forget the measure of an infant’s powers. The slightest fault, the most pardonable inadvertence, was harshly visited upon the Liliputian performer; and even the privation of food was sometimes resorted to, as part of the barbarous system to enforce precocity. A lasting influence of baneful kind was thus wrought upon a constitution naturally delicate and sensitive: the sickly child, incapable of attaining a healthful maturity, was merged into the suffering man.