This is pretty and fanciful, but far too vague to be at all satisfactory. Apollo might appear to play on an instrument, in which antiquarian ingenuity might discover some latent resemblance to the violin; but where was his _bow_? M. Baillot has not ventured to assert that he had one—and we may safely conclude that he had _not_, if we except the bow that was his admitted attribute. As for the affinity to the lyre, it is indeed as faint as the most determined genealogist, studious of an exercise, could wish. It has been remarked, by some curious observer, that, among the range of statues at the head of the canal at Versailles, an Orpheus is seen (known by the three-headed dog that barks between his legs), to whom the sculptor has given _a violin_, upon which he appears scraping away with all the furor of a blind itinerant. But is the statue, or its original, an antique? We may rest in safe assurance that it is a modern-antique; as much so, as the ingenious figment of Nero’s _fiddling_ a capriccio to the roaring accompaniment of the flames of Rome! As for the _fidicula_ of the Romans (or rather, of the Latin Dictionary), it is evidently, as far as it has been made to apply to the fiddle, no legitimate family name. The _violin_ very positively disowns all relationship with it, and leaves it to settle its claims with the _guitar_. As far as the _mere name_ goes, however, it is not impossible that a connection may exist, and that the word-hunting Skinner may be right in deriving the Anglo-Saxon word _fithele_ from the older German _vedel_, and thence from the Latin _fidicula_, which, it is hardly necessary to state, was any thing but a fiddle, and therefore “had no business” to lend its appellation in the way here noticed. On the whole, as regards the pretensions alleged on the side of the ancients for the honor of having had the violin in existence among them, it may be safely remarked, that, if nothing like the _bow_, which is obviously connected most essentially with the expression and character of the violin, can be traced to their days, the violin itself, _à fortiori_, cannot be said to have belonged to them; and all those questionable shapes which have been speculatively put forward as possible fiddles, must be thrown back again into the field of antiquarian conjecture, to await some other appropriation. The following remarks by Dr. Burney may be taken as a fair summary of all that needs to be observed on this head: