THE V I O LIN AND ITS MUSIC, GEORGE HART, "HE VIOLIN: ITS ...

94 THE VIOLI,'\T AND ITS MUSIC.
speaks of the Lutes of Laux Maller as having
been most highly valued in his time, "pitiful, old,
battered, cracked things valued at one hundred
pounds apiece."
Whatever the first cost of a Lute might have been,
it must have been insignificant to its maintenance in
catgut, if we may rely upon the accounts handed
down to us relative to Lute-strings. It has been said
keeping a Lute must have been on a par with keeping
a horse. That the demand for Lute-strings was
large is shown from the circumstance of the public
being invited in the year 1688, to take shares in a
company for the supply of the article, and the projectors
held out to the subscribers the hope of
immense gains.* Whether the ever-confiding British
public responded to the appeal I know not.
Whilst on the subject of Lute-strings it may not
be uninteresting to Violinists to know that the wellknown
practice of testing the purity of a gut string
by holding it between the fingers of each hand and
setting it vibrating is mentioned in probably the
earliest book on the Lute, that of Adrian Le Roy,
published at Paris in 1570.
Although it would be easy to recount much that
is entertaining in relation to this bnce favourite
instrument, it is necessary to remember that our
subject is the Viol and not the Lute ; but let us stay
but a moment more to listen to Thomas Mace
* Macaulay's " History of England." Vol. :4, p. 320.