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. In 1651, “he began to exercise his natural and insatiable genie to music. He exercised his hand on the violin, and, having a good eare to take any tune at first hearing, he could quickly draw it out from the violin, but not with the same tuning of the strings that others used. He wanted understanding, friends and money, to pick him out a good master; otherwise he might have equalled in that instrument, and in singing, any person then in the University. He had some companions that were musical, but they wanted instruction as well as he.” The next year, being obliged to go into the country, for change of air and exercise, with a view to rid himself of an ague, he states that “while he continued there, he followed the plow on _well_-days, and sometimes plowed: and, having had, from his most tender years, an Proctor, a young man and a new comer:—John Packer, one of the university musitians. But Mr. Low, a proud man, could not endure any common musitian to come to the meeting, much less to play among them. Of this kind I must rank Joh. Haselwood, an apothecary, a starch’d formal clister-pipe, who usually played on the base-viol, and sometimes on the counter-tenor. He was very conceited of his skill (though he had but little of it), and therefore would be ever and anon ready to take up a viol[11] before his betters; which being observed by all, they usually called him _Handlewood_. The rest were but beginners. Proctor died soon after this time; he had been bred up by Mr. John Jenkins, the mirrour and wonder of his age for musick, was excellent for the lyra-viol and division-viol, good at the treble-viol, and violin, and all comprehended in a man of three or four and twenty yeares of age. He was much admired at the meetings, and exceedingly pitied by all the facultie for his loss.”