The friendship between Leighton and Joachim was close and real, and no wonder; the two personalities so artistic, so refined, were eminently suited to one another. Both were above all, quite apart from their art, charming companions. They were of about the same age; Joachim, who survived Leighton by nine years, was one year younger. At dinner at our house one day Joachim told us how it was that he became an artist. When he was a tiny boy of about four years his father, who lived at Kittsee near Pressburg, went one day into the town to attend a fair and brought home as a fairing for the child a little sixpenny toy fiddle. Little Joseph seized upon it eagerly, it became his constant companion, he contrived to coax a tune out of it, and his destiny was fixed. There can be no doubt that as an exponent of the highest masterpieces of classical music he was the greatest violinist that ever lived. There have been other artists full of technical accomplishments, fired by the most intense musical passion—but for the power of throwing himself, as it were, into the very inmost soul of the great masters and reverently realizing their intentions he never had an equal. That he had all the fire of his rivals, all their passion, he could show upon occasion, as, for instance, in his wild, corybantic rendering of the Hungarian dances which he and Brahms adapted; but when he was dealing with the more serious school of music he proved that he had something more. There, tender and true as a lover should be, he exercised the most supreme self-effacement, and became the very voice of the tone poet at whose shrine he was at the time officiating as high priest. So great was his sympathy for his composer that when he played it was not Joachim who was speaking to you but Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms. He was one of the most amiable of men, and would often carry his violin with him to the house of a friend, never weary of giving pleasure. In that he was unlike some artists who resent, as I must say I think they are justified in doing, any attempt at making use of them. Arthur Sullivan once told me how at an evening party the hostess went up to him and said: “Oh! Sir Arthur, it would be so sweet of you if you would play us something.” The answer was characteristic. “My dear lady, there is John Millais. If he will sit down and make a sketch for you, I will play. He has been painting all day, I have been working at music all day, so we are both in the same boat.”