save of the calibre of a Spohr, a Joachim, and a
Molique, can afford to be taxed. Perhaps, as a
body, the French violinists, as represented by
Leclair, inheriting Italian traditions from Lulli,
were in advance of their contemporaries of
other countries—but so loose is all record of
Music at that period, that nothing beyond
conjecture is possible.

I have tried, in the above, to touch on a few
of the leading points and peculiarities of the
leading instrument of the orchestra—the most
singular representative of conservative and
progressive life in combination that the story of
Music, that most capricious among the arts,
includes. It would be easy to swell these
paragraphs to any extent, by offering characters of
what may be called the representative men of
the violin, such as Farini, Geminiani, Rode,
Viotti, Lafont; but these can be found by any
reader who ransacks the dictionaries; so that I
shall content myself with rummaging my own
peculiar stores of recollection regarding some of
the great players of this nineteenth century.

Of course, the first of these to be named is
Paganini; but the man whom to name, so as to
give any distinct record of the impression made
on me by him, is most difficult. There are
people of genius who rule by disturbing, not
subjugating, the spirits of those who listen to
them. One of these (to cite a parallel in music)
was Malibran as compared with Pasta; another,
the great Genoese violinist, who convulsed
Europe by his triumphs, as no instrumentalist
(the Abbé Liszt not excepted) has done before
or since his apparition.

One may well talk of "apparition " in Paganini's
case; because the intense and eccentric
personality of the man had its share in the
attention his performances excited. A Vampire
in an orchestra is not an every-day sight; and
never did man by dress and gesture make more
of a ghostly aspect than did he, neither more
obviously thereby invite the fabrication of the
marvellous anecdotes which Fancy makes out of
nothing, for Scandal to repeat. Paganini's real
life had been miserable and disorderly enough to
satisfy such foolish people as think mystery and
error inevitable accompaniments of genius. It
was a long fever-fit of gambling, and avarice,
and self-indulgence; alternating with the exercise
of most startling progress in art. With most
hearers, owing to the exaggeration of his
expression, to which his limitless execution enabled
him to give the fullest scope, Paganini passed
as being fuller of passion than any instrumentalist
who ever appeared. Such is not my own
impression. I never could rid myself when I
heard him, though I was then inexperienced and
liable to be carried away by what is astonishing,
of a conviction of the player's eccentricity; which
gave a false pathos to his slow movements, and
a regulated caprice to his brilliant effects. His
execution was limitless; his tone was thin, and
chargeable with a certain abuse of trembling
vibration, which, for a time, became tiresomely
fashionable; but the tone was unimpeachable in
purity. His peculiar effects in execution, in staccato
and pizzicato passages, in a command of the
fourth string so complete as to enable him to turn
the violin into a monochord—those glassy
harmonic sounds (which, however, when used to
excess satiate), are now understood not to have
been invented by him, but by Durand or Duranowski,
a miscreant belonging to the class of
vagabond geniuses, wrecked by their wasteful
profligacy, whose number, happily for art,
diminishes year by year. Spohr, in his
Autobiography, declares that the harmonic effects
had been also anticipated by the "once famous
Scheller"—another violinist of great talent and
disordered life, who was possibly ruined by his
connexion with the unclean and profligate
Count of Würtemberg, and who passed out of
sight in want and misery. But though Scheller
may have heard Duranowski, it is improbable
that the Genoese artist ever crossed Scheller's
path. The harmonic feat is not worth much.

It may be added, that from the time when
he rose into notoriety, Paganini took small
pains to maintain his powers of execution by
practice; never, it is said, taking his violin
from its case betwixt exhibition and exhibition,
and showing small general interest in music;
the exception being the munificent present
volunteered by this miserly man to M. Berlioz,
as the continuer of Beethoven, which has
become a historical anecdote.

Paganini's playing of classical music was in
no respect remarkable. His great concert
pieces composed for himself, though unequal;
were excellent in point of grace, fancy, and
opportunity for display. He was the original
"Carnival of Venice;" and threw into the
changes of that insignificant gondola-tune an
amount of whim, contrast, and reckless gaiety
(costume, almost, one might say), impossible to
forget. To sum up, whether his strength was
that of health or fever, whether his taste was
always unimpeachable or the reverse, whether
he was more powerful to surprise than to move,
or not—as an executive artist, whose genius
left his impress on his generation, Paganini
stands unparagoned. For a time, the influence
was not a good one. Sham Paganinis appeared
by the score, and made concert-music hideous.
One or two of these were meant by nature for
better things; to give an example, the Norwegian
virtuoso, M. Ole Bull, whose peculiarities
amounted to a specimen of those close and
ingenious parodies of a strange original, which
perplex and cause regret in every honest observer.
To have justified his choice of style. M. Ole Bull
should have carried out Paganini's effects, as
Paganini carried out Duranowski's. Only the
feat was simply impossible.

At the antipodes to this magnificent curiosity
of Genius working out its purposes, not
without resource to empiricism, stands in the
modern history of the Violin a man whose
notable talent almost rose to genius: and whose
influence on his art was wider, healthier, and
will probably prove longer-lived than that of
his Italian contemporary—Louis Spohr. The
impetus given by him to the school of German