A prejudice overcome.—Another story of a clergyman fond of fiddling—in this instance, a Scotchman—is to be found in Tait’s Magazine.—“A number of his parishioners considered it as quite derogatory to his calling, that he should play upon the fiddle; so a deputation of them waited upon him, and remonstrated against this crying enormity. He said—“Gentlemen, did you ever see my fiddle, or hear me play?”—“No!”—“You shall do both,” said he; and immediately brought a violoncello, on which he struck up a Psalm tone, asking if they had any objection to join him with their voices. They complied; and, when all was over, they expressed themselves perfectly satisfied of his orthodoxy. “A muckle, respectable, releegious-sounding fiddle like that, there was nae harm in. Na, na! it was nane o’ yer scandalous penny-weddin’ fiddles that they had heard o’!”
It will not have been forgotten, by some of my readers, that the musical propensities of the Rev. Charles Wesley were made a subject of stringent comment by the poet Cowper, who pointed his remarks by the line—
“With wire and catgut he concludes the day.”
It is recorded, however (if I rightly remember), that the candid and kind-hearted Cowper saw reason, afterwards, to alter his impressions on that head, and to regret that he had reflected, with such freedom of pen, on the harmless recreations of the earnestly pious minister.
——From the foregoing incidental references to men of the sacred calling, we pass, by no violent transition, into the church-yard. On a stone, in the porch at the southern entrance of the collegiate church, Wolverhampton, is the following singular epitaph. “Near this place lies Claudius Phillips, whose absolute contempt of riches, and inimitable performance upon the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him. He was born in Wales, made the tour of Europe, and, after the experience of both kinds of fortune, died in 1733.”
Belonging to the same equivocal species of association with the grave, and by no means to be commended for its admixture of the quaint with the solemn, is the following “musician’s epitaph,” from whence gotten, I am unable to say:—
Ah! what avails, when wrapped in shroud and pall, Who jigged, who fiddled, or who sang the best? What are to me the crotchets, quavers, all, When I have found an everlasting rest?
Fifty Years’ Fiddling.—“An interesting jubilee was lately kept here (Mannheim). The scholars of our venerable Orchestra Director, M. Erasmus Eisenmenger, now in his 70th year, met to celebrate the fiftieth year of his life spent as an artist. It is worthy of remark that he played, in the same musical saloon, the same concerto on the violin that he had executed fifty years ago—as well as a double concerto of Viotti, which he played with his pupil, Chapel-master Frey, with a spirit and vigour quite wonderful at his age.” (Harmonicon, 1830.)—[The curious in coincidences ought to be informed whether it was also the same fiddle, as formerly, that was thus eloquent in the hands of the worthy old gentleman.]
Another fifty years of it!—Teobaldo Gatti, a native of Florence, died at Paris in 1727, at a very advanced age, after having been, for rather more than half a century, a performer on the bass-viol in the orchestra of the Opera there. Is it possible to be more completely identified with one’s instrument?
Glory made out of Shame.—A stranger, visiting Greenwich Hospital, saw a pensioner in a yellow coat, which is the punishment for disorderly behaviour. Surprised at the singularity of the man’s appearance, he asked him what it meant? “Oh, sir,” replied the fellow, “we who wear yellow coats are the music, and it is I who play the first fiddle.” (Hawkins’s anecdotes.)