The cornet is nothing more nor less than a bugle, a development of the old post-horn. There is nothing elegant, nor distinguished about the cornet (the old _zinke_ of Mediæval times). Quite the contrary. But several centuries ago it was used to play the upper part in the Sackbut group;[27] and as there was a bass sackbut, there was no need for a bass cornet. After a time a French priest, named Guillaume, who was canon of Auxerre, invented the serpent. This was a huge wooden instrument covered with leather pierced with holes on the side and furnished with a big, cupped mouthpiece. This serpent was _the bass of the cornet family_. It is now obsolete. It is hanging up in the wall in the instrument-maker’s workshop facing page 40. The serpent’s place was taken by the ophicleide, which is said to have been invented in 1790, by Frichot, a French musician living in London; but Regibo of Lille had made some improvements in the serpent ten years earlier. Probably Frichot carried Regibo’s improvements a little farther. First, the new instrument was called the serpentcleide; afterwards by a combination of two Greek words, meaning “snake” and “key.” Its voice was coarse and the instrument lacked suppleness. Besides, it was difficult for the performer to play precisely in tune. Mendelssohn wrote for it. It goes down into the depths (sixteen-foot A) in _Elijah_ and it is used in the Clown’s March in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.[28] Wagner uses it in _Rienzi_; Berlioz, in the Amen Chorus in the _Damnation of Faust_; and Bizet, in _Carmen_. Taste became too refined for the ophicleide; and its place was taken by the double-bassoon until the bass tuba was brought to perfection. The sonorous, majestic, velvety roll of the bass tuba has very little resemblance to the race from which it came. To-day its plebeian origin is forgotten and the bass tuba might be classed as belonging to the trombone, or even to the horn family. It seems a little unkind to remind it of its coarse ancestor, the serpentcleide. “Minds have been confused,” writes Cecil Forsyth, “partly by Wagner’s unfortunate misnomer _Tuben_ for a family of instruments only one of which is a true tuba and partly by a number of inaccurate descriptions in which the distinction between the whole-tube and the half-tube groups of valve-brass have been overlooked. “The orchestral godfather of all this group of instruments was Richard Wagner. His intention was to introduce a new tone-color into the orchestra akin to, but different from, that of the horns. The new instruments were to be (and actually were) _modified horns_. In particular they were to be strong and contrast with the trombones and trumpets and were to have an even compass of about four octaves. Wagner’s idea was to write eight horn parts and so arrange the parts for his new instruments that four of his horn-players could be turned over at any time to play them.