The combination of bowing, with _pizzicato_ by the left hand, if not new, was employed by Paganini to a degree never attempted before. Lastly, there was his wonderful performance on the fourth string, which he tuned up to B flat, and sometimes even a semitone higher. Much of his use of these devices is put down as clap-trap, yet since his day many violinists have employed the same means, if they have not achieved the same result. [Illustration: PLATE 18. (_See Appendix._)] [Illustration: PLATE 19. (_See Appendix._)] [Illustration: PLATE 20. (_See Appendix._)] [Illustration: PLATE 21. (_See Appendix._)] [Illustration: PLATE 22. (_See Appendix._)] Let us consider, for a moment, the performances on the G string. It is certain that Paganini was not the originator of that manner of playing, for Leopold Mozart wrote of Esser[44] as playing on the G string alone with the greatest ease. Compositions for a single string were also written before Paganini's day, for Friedrich Wilhelm Rust (1739-1796) composed a violin sonata for the E string. But Paganini made such a feature of this species of performance because it pleased the public, and, in giving the audiences that which they preferred rather than that which his artistic conscience should have prompted, he became the pupil of his age, and fell from his high estate. On the other hand, he may be said to have discovered the powers of the fourth string, to which, by the employment of harmonics, he gave a compass of three octaves. He was censured for his partiality in this direction, but in these days every violinist plays a solo on the G string. Is not Bach's "Aria" played everywhere as a fourth string solo? Yet, as musicians know, it was not written for that string, nor as a solo, forming, as it does, the theme of the slow movement of the "Overture in D," for strings, two oboes, three trumpets, and drums. Moreover, in Mozart's Violin Concerto in E flat, No. 6, composed in 1766, there is in the slow movement, an eight-bar period for the G string, and also one of the same length in the Finale. In Beethoven's Violin Concerto the principal theme of the Rondo is assigned to the G string, and also when it recurs after the second subject. This work was composed in 1806, a short time after Paganini wrote his "Napoleon Sonata," but was heard in public years before Paganini's was so performed. These two compositions are mentioned merely to show that the charm of the fourth string was not unknown in early days; to refer to later works would be superfluous.