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

THE VIOL GOTHIC. 3
idolatrous sacrifices. These people made no scruple
of handling gutts and garbages, and were so free
with humane bodys as to make drinking cupps of
their sculls. And when the discovery of the vertue
of the bow was made, and understood, the verlltost"
went to work and modeI'd the use of it, and its
subject the Viol, with great improvement, to all
purposes of musick, and brought it to a parallel
state with the Organ itself. And by adapting sizes
to the severall diapasons as well above E la as the
doubles below, severall person's take their parts,
and consorts are performed with small trouble, and
in all perfection. The invention needs no encomium
to recomend it to posterity ; for altho' it hath bin in
practise many hundred years, no considerable alterations
of it in forme or application have bin made
which any memoriall can account for. And now no
improvement is thought of or desired, but in the
choice of the materiall, and curiosity of the workmanship.
I shall take leave of the Violl with a
remembrance on ely of a merry discovery of Kircher's
in one of his windy volumes,* which is a note
added to the picture of a Lute and a Guittarre,
that the old Hebrews used to sound them with the
scratch of an horse tail bow." ! !
With this scornful allusion to Kircher's knowledge
of the bow, we will close North's Memoires of
Musick, staying but to call the reader's attention
to what appears to be a singularly correct estimate
B 2
* Musurgia Universalis, 1650..