The beauty of Clegg’s tone, and the graces of his execution, won for him many admirers as a performer; but, alas! he purchased at far too dear a sacrifice the fame for which he strove. About the year 1742, he had so deranged his faculties by intense study and practice, that it became necessary to confine him in Bedlam. There, during lucid intervals, he was allowed the use of his instrument; and it was long an _amusement_, as fashionable as it was inhuman, to visit him, among other lunatics, in the hope of encountering him at some moment of security from his “battle of the brain,” in order to be entertained, either by his fiddle, or his folly! Barbarity like this has now happily ceased to disgrace the movements of fashion, and only leaves a feeling of _wonder_, to qualify the indignation which its remembrance excites. THOMAS COLLET, of eccentric memory, enjoyed the reputation of being one of our principal native performers about the year 1745, when he led the orchestra of Vauxhall Gardens; an appointment then more highly considered than in these days. Possessing very little, however, either of taste or of musical knowledge, he was always an inelegant player, and owed his success to his powers of execution alone; yet _these_ must have been exerted within a very confined compass, for Parke, in his “Musical Memoirs,” asserts Collet to have had such an aversion to _playing high_, that he dismissed one of his violin-performers for flourishing on the _half-shift_! Parke has added an anecdote about him, which must be confessed to savour not a little of the marvellous. “Although this gentleman, who was a great pigeon-fancier (continues Parke), did not go aloft on the _fiddle_, he went every day up to the top of his _house_, to see his pigeons fly; and on one occasion he was so lost in admiration of them, that, while clapping his hands and walking backwards, he walked over the leads of the house, and in the fall must have been dashed to pieces, had not his clothes been caught by a lamp-iron, to which he remained suspended (more frightened than hurt) until taken down by the passers-by.”