READE.
"19, ALBERT GATE, _May 9, 1878_."

[Footnote 13: The hero of Mr. Read's "Jack of All Trades, a
Matter-of-fact Romance."]

LEIGH HUNT ON PAGANINI.

"'I projected,' says Leigh Hunt, 'a poem to be called "A Day with the
Reader." I proposed to invite the reader to breakfast, dine and sup
with me, partly at home, and partly at a country inn, to vary the
circumstances. It was to be written both gravely and gaily; in an
exalted, or in a lowly strain, according to the topics of which it
treated. The fragment on Paganini was a part of the exordium:--

"So played of late to every passing thought,
With finest change (might I but half as well
So write!) the pale magician of the bow," &c.

I wished to write in the same manner, because Paganini with his Violin
could move both the tears and the laughter of his audience, and (as I
have described him doing in the verses) would now give you the notes
of birds in trees, and even hens feeding in a farmyard (which was a
corner into which I meant to take my companion), and now melt you into
grief and pity, or mystify you with witchcraft, or put you into a
state of lofty triumph like a conqueror. The phrase of _smiting_ the
chord--

"He _smote_; and clinging to the serious chords
With godlike ravishment," &c.

was no classical commonplace; nor, in respect to impression on the
mind, was it exaggeration to say, that from a single chord he would
fetch out--

"The voice of quires, and weight
Of the built organ."

Paganini, the first time I saw and heard him, and the first time he
struck a note, seemed literally to _strike_ it--to give it a blow. The
house was so crammed, that being among the squeezers in the
standing-room at the side of the pit, I happened to catch the first
glance of his face through the arm a-kimbo of a man who was perched up
before me, which made a kind of frame for it; and there on the stage,
in that frame, as through a perspective glass, were the face, bust,
and the raised hand of the wonderful musician, with the instrument at
his chin, just going to commence, and looking exactly as I have
described him.

"His hand
Loading the air with dumb expectancy
Suspended, ere it fell, a nation's breath.
He _smote_; and clinging to the serious chords
With godlike ravishment, drew forth a breath
So deep, so strong, so fervid, thick with love--
Blissful, yet laden as with twenty prayers,