The woodcuts above the Contents to this work represent Sir Michael Mercator (1491-1544), a musical instrument maker, it is said virginal maker, to King Henry VIII. The portrait has been engraved from a medal in the British Museum executed by Mercator himself, for he was a goldsmith and medallist as well as instrument maker, by Mr. John Hipkins, who has also engraved the Jewish Shophar and the woodcut on the title-page. The legend upon the medal informs us that Mercator was the first knight created from Venloo by the King. He gained knighthood and other distinctions by his success in secret diplomatic services. The researches of Mr. W.H. James Weale, who called the attention of the present writer to Mercator, have determined his arrival in this country to have been in 1527, when he brought letters of introduction to Cardinal Wolsey from Floris d'Egmont, Count de Buren and Lord of Isselstein, and others, and two musical instruments--as he was an organ-builder, it is to be presumed virginals. The King engaged him at an annual salary. It will be observed in the portrait that Mercator wears, attached to his collar, the Tudor Rose. Mr. Weale has published his discoveries concerning him in _Le Beffroi_, an artistic and antiquarian periodical printed at Bruges. Mr. Weale's Descriptive Catalogue of the rare manuscripts and printed books in the Historical Music Loan Collection of 1885, for the publication of which we are indebted to Mr. Bernard Quaritch, may be appropriately mentioned in this connection. [Illustration: XIX] PLATE XIX. VIOLA DA GAMBA. The old Bass Viol (French _Basse de Viole_) derives its name of Viola da Gamba (leg viol) from its having been held between the knees of the player, whence the German "Kniegeige." Shakspeare speaks of it as "viol-de-gamboys" in _Twelfth Night_--where Sir Toby Belch in his panegyric on Sir Andrew Aguecheek says, "He plays o' the viol-de-gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature." Domenichino's famous St. Cecilia is represented as playing upon a viola da gamba. It was the bass of the chest (or family) of viols. A quotation from the recently published autobiography of the Honourable Roger North, who was born in 1653, aptly describes the domestic use of those once admired instruments. He says his grandfather, Dudley, third Lord North, when at his country seat in Norfolk, "would convoke his musical family ... and for important regale of the company the concerts were usually all viols to the organ or harpsichord. The violin came in late and imperfectly. When the hands were well supplied the whole chest went to work, that is six viols, music being formed for it which would seem a strange sort of music now, being an interwoven hum-drum." Roger North became himself a proficient upon both treble and bass viols.