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literally, one of the most beautiful and strange remnants of all that was once most sacred in this British land,-all to which we owe, whether the heart, or the voice, of the Douglas “tender and true,” or the minstrel of the Eildons, or the bard of Plynlimmon, or the Ellen of the lonely Isle,¹-to whose lips Scott has entrusted the most beautiful Ave Maria that was ever sung, and which can never be sung rightly again until it is remembered that the harp is the true ancient instrument of Scotland, as well as of Ireland.*

* Although the violin was known as early as 1270, and occurs again and again in French and Italian sculpture and illumination, its introduction, in superseding both the voice, the golden bell, and the silver trumpet,² was entirely owing to the demoralization of the Spanish kingdom in Naples, of which Evelyn writes in 1644,³ “The building of the city is, for the size, the most magnificent in Europe. To it belongeth three thousand churches and monasteries, and those best built and adorned of any in Italy. They greatly affect the Spanish gravity in their habit, delight in good horses, the streets are full of gallants on horseback, and in coaches and sedans, from hence first brought into England by Sir Sanders Duncomb; the country people so jovial, and addicted to music, that the very husbandmen almost universally play on the guitar, singing and composing songs in praise of their sweet-hearts, and will commonly go to the field with their fiddle,-they are merry, witty, and genial, all which I attribute to the excellent quality of the air.”

What Evelyn means by the fiddle is not quite certain, since he himself, going to study “in Padua, far beyond the sea,”⁴ there learned to play on “ye theorba, taught by Signior Dominico Bassano, who had a daughter married to a doctor of laws, that played and sung to nine several instruments, with that skill and addresse as few masters in Italy exceeded her; she likewise composed divers excellent pieces. I had never seen any play on the Naples viol before.”

¹ [The references here are to Bishop Gawin Douglas (the translator of Virgil, for whom see Vol. XXXIV. p. 339), whom Ruskin associates with the old song (“O Douglas, O Douglas Tendir and trewe”-The Buke of the Howlat, st. xxxi.); to Thomas of Ercildoune (see Vol. XXXIV. p. 331); to The Bard of Gray:

“Mountains, ye mourn in vain

Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head”;

and to The Lady of the Lake, canto iii. 29.]

² [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 83 (Vol. XXIX. p. 259).]

³ [See the Diary for February 8, 1644-1645; and for the passage about the theorba, October 10, 1645.]

⁴ [The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. 11:-

“He learned the art that none may name,

In Padua, far beyond the sea.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]