and triple
harmonics, the successions of harmonics in thirds and sixths, so
difficult for small hands, owing to the stretch they require, were to
him as child's play. When playing an accentuated pizzicato with the left
hand, while the melody was played by the hand of the bow, the fourth
finger pinched the string with prodigious power even when the other
three fingers were placed."

There are anecdotes told of Paganini's artistic contests with rival
violinists, chief among whom were Lafont and Lipinski, both of whom he
eclipsed, and of his playing a concerto in manuscript at sight, with the
music upside down on the rack.

Of his appearance we are told, in an account of a concert in London: "A
tall, haggard figure, with long, black hair, strangely falling down to
his shoulders, slid forward like a spectral apparition. There was
something awful, unearthly in that countenance; but his play! our pen
seems involuntarily to evade the difficult task of giving utterance to
sensations which are beyond the reach of language." After detailing the
performance, the account continues: "These excellencies consist in the
combination of absolute mechanical perfection of every imaginable kind,
perfection hitherto unknown and unthought of, with the higher attributes
of the human mind, inseparable from eminence in the fine arts,
intellectual superiority, sensibility, deep feeling, poesy, genius."

In regard to this accomplishment of playing on one string, a critic
said: "To effect so much on a single string is truly wonderful;
nevertheless any good player can extract more from two than from one. If
Paganini really produces so much effect on a single string, he would
certainly obtain more from two. Then why not employ them? We answer,
because he is waxing exceedingly wealthy by playing on one." Paganini
seems to have reasoned from the opposite point, viz., that if the
retention of two strings be regarded with such wonder, how much greater
the marvel will be if only one is used.

To offset these suggestions of charlatanism, or perhaps rather to show
that, with all his charlatanism, Paganini was a marvel, we may see what
effect his playing had upon some men who were not likely to be caught by
mere trickery. Rossini, upon being asked how he liked Paganini, replied:
"I have wept but three times in my life; the first, on the failure of my
earliest opera; the second time, when, in a boat with some friends, a
turkey stuffed with truffles fell o