His fiddle must be his inseparable companion, cultivated before all other society, beloved before all other worldly objects—the means and the end, the cause and the reward, of his assiduous toils. Such are the conditions on which the _mastery_ of this “so potent art” depends. Through this road must they travel, who aspire to real excellence. Alas! what sort of compliance with such discipline are we to expect from the miscellaneous, fitful gentleman whom we designate too roundly by the term Amateur! What full conquest can we anticipate for him, who is the volatile lover of a mistress so jealous that she was never yet _entirely_ won, save by the most refined arts of study, and by attentions the most persevering and the most delicate? No—there is no sane hope of consummate swam upon _easy terms_; and accordingly we find that, although Amateurs are sufficiently abundant, good players among them are not _very_ numerous—and accomplished ones, positively few. The Duke of Buckingham, Charles the Second’s rattling favourite, so noted for the versatility of his acquirements, is characterized, in one of Pope’s summary lines, as Chemist, _Fiddler_, Statesman, and Buffoon; and the amount of his qualification in the two _latter_ respects has been pretty nicely weighed and exhibited; but what kind of a _fiddler_ was he? History is ashamed to say—but her silence is well understood by philosophy to signify contempt: it is a silence more expressive than words—than even those memorable words, “So much for Buckingham!” Dr. Johnson, whose habit of sound judgment has marked itself on almost every subject that came within the grasp of his comprehensive mind, appears to have duly appreciated the exemplary labours which distinguish the Violinist by _profession_. We all know how little _music_ there was in the great Doctor’s soul; but, even as regards the mechanical part of musical practice, few of us have given him credit for such a readiness to estimate fairly, as he has been really recorded to have shewn. The fact is, that he was a prodigiously hard-working man himself, and had an honest admiration for hard work, in whatever career manifested. “There is nothing, I think” (quoth he) “in which the power of art is shewn so much as in playing on the fiddle. In all other things, we can do something _at first_. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but—_give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing_.” If a _learned man_ can thus calculate the value of professional application, a _child_ can feel its results, and, feeling, can discern between the practised player and the deficient dilettante—as we have already seen in the little story which had for its hero the infant Earl of Mornington.