“What!” exclaims the enquiring virtuoso, “is this box of a thing, this piece of base carpentry, this formal oblong square, to be supposed the foundation of that neat form and those graceful inflections which make up the ‘complement externe’ of what men call the violin? Can dulness engender fancy—and can straight lines and right angles have for their lineal descendant the ‘line of beauty?’” The soberest person would answer, this is quite unlikely; the man of taste would deny it to be in the nature of things. No, no; our Cambrian codger _may_ have been a tolerable subject in his way—a good fellow for rough work among the mountains, and instrumental enough in the amusement of capering rusticity—but he must not be allowed, bad musician though we freely admit he may have been, to give himself _false airs_, and to assume honors to which his form and physiognomy give the lie. Let him be satisfied to be considered “_sui generis_,” unless he would rashly prefer illustrious illegitimacy, and be styled the _base violin_.[1] If we were disposed, in England proper, to get up a claim for the first local habitation afforded to the violin, we might put together a much better case for the instrument that was familiar to the Anglo-Saxon gleemen, as early as the 10th century, than can be shown in behalf of the candidate just dismissed. We could produce an individual that should display a far better face, and should appear with, at least, no great disgrace to the Fiddle Family, though bearing about him none of the refinements of fashion. It may be as well to exhibit him at once:— [Illustration] In this representation (borrowed from “Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes of the People of England”) we discern something which it is possible to call a fiddle, without much violence to our notions “de rerum natura.” There is grotesqueness, but not deformity: there is much of the general character of the true violin, though some of its most particular beauties are wanting. It is true that the sound-holes look as if no notes save _circulars_ were to be permitted to issue through them—that the tail-piece seems forced to do duty for a bridge—that the sides have no indented middle, or waist, to give the aspect of elegance, and accommodate the play of the bow over the two extreme strings—that the finger-board is non-existent—and that the scroll, that crowning charm of the fiddle’s form, is but poorly made amends for by the excrescent oddity substituted at the end of the neck. With all this, however, there _is_ visible warrant for calling it a _sort_ of fiddle. Though even a forty-antiquary power might fail to prove it the origin of the stock, it has claims to be regarded as exhibiting no very remote analogy to the violin; and thus far, therefore, it may defy the competition of the _Crwth_. Whether it was really born in Saxon England, however, or introduced from Germany, might be a point for nice speculation, were it worth while to agitate the enquiry.