“These were old, but we have now very excellent good workmen who (no doubt) can work as well as those if they be so well paid for their work as they were, yet we chiefly value old instruments before new, for by experience they are found to be far the best. The reason for which I can no further dive into than to say, I apprehend that by extream age the wood (and those other adjuncts) glew, parchment, paper, lynings of cloath (as some use), but above all the vernish. These are all so very much (by time) dryed. Linefied, made gentle, rarified, or (to say better even) agefied, so that that stiffness, stubbornness, or clunginess, which is natural to such bodies are so debilitated and made plyable, that the pores of the wood have a more and free liberty to move, stir, or secretly vibrate, by which means the air (which is the life of all things both animate and inanimate), has a more free and easy recourse to pass and repass, and whether I have hit upon the right cause I know not, but sure I am that age adds goodness to instruments, therefore they have the advantage of all our late workmen. “Now suppose you cannot procure an entire chest of viols suitable, etc. Then thus. Endeavour to pick up (here or there) so many excellent good odd ones as near suiting as you can (every way), viz., both for shape, wood, colour, etc., but especially for size. And to be exact in that take this certain rule, viz., let your bass be larger, then your trebles must be just as short again in the string, viz., from bridge to nut, as are your basses, because they should stand 8 notes higher than the basses. Therefore, as short again (for the middle of every string is an 8th) the tenors (in the string) just so long as from the bridge to F fret because they stand a 4th higher. “Let this suffice to put you into a complete order for viols.” We have given the above quotation _in extenso_ without breaking in with any comment, in order that the student may better understand the peculiar phraseology used by this ancient authority. The student will observe that old instruments were equally valued in those days as in these, and this too was at a period anterior to the fame of the great Stradivarius, whose grand period commenced with the opening of the eighteenth century.[1]