“The woman drops the cushion at the feet of her favourite man: the same ceremony and the same dance are repeated, till every man and woman (the pot-bearer last) have been taken out, and all have danced round the room in a file. The _pence_ are the perquisite of the _fiddler_. There is a description of this dance in Miss Hutton’s ‘Oakwood Hall.’” Then follows, in Hone’s Book, a further illustration of this curious custom, in “numerous verse”—but the prose account is here sufficient. The dialogue in the old puppet dramas (says Strutt) were mere jumbles of absurdity and nonsense, intermixed with low immoral discourses passing between Punch and the fiddler, for the orchestra rarely admitted of more than one minstrel; and these flashes of merriment were made offensive to decency by the actions of the puppet. In the reign of James II, there was a noted merry-andrew named Philips; “This man,” says Granger, “was some time fiddler to a puppet-show; in which capacity he held many a dialogue with Punch, in much the same strain as he did afterwards with the mountebank doctor, his master upon the stage. This zany, being regularly educated, had confessedly the advantage of his brethren.” The following may be seen in volume the 1st of Purcell’s Catches, on two persons of the name of Young, father and son, who lived in St. Paul’s Churchyard—The one was an excellent instrument-maker, and the other an excellent performer on the fiddle. You scrapers that want a good fiddle, well strung, You must go to the man that is old, while he’s Young; But if this same fiddle you fain would play bold, You must go to his son, who’ll be Young when he’s old. There’s old Young and young Young, both men of renown, Old sells, and Young plays, the best fiddle in town; Young and old live together, and may they live long, Young, to play an old fiddle; old, sell a new song! The zealous, ingenious, minute and gossiping Anthony Wood, to whose journalizing propensity we are indebted for a free insight into the state of music at Oxford, during the time of the Civil War (when musical sounds were scarcely any where else to be heard in the kingdom), was an ardent admirer of the violin, while its admirers were yet scarce; and has left us, in his life, written by himself, some particulars relating to the instrument, that are too pleasant, as well as curious, to be here passed by. Let me introduce this quaint worthy, speaking of himself in the third person, and under the abridged designation of A. W.