No artist ever lived who so piqued public curiosity, and invested himself with a species of weird romance, which compassed him as with a cloud.  The personality of the individual so unique and extraordinary, the genius of the artist so transcendant in its way, the mystery which surrounded all the movements of the man, conspired to make him an object of such interest that the announcement of a concert by him in any European city made as much stir as some great public event.  Crowds followed his strange figure in the streets wherever he went, and, had the time been the mediaeval ages, he himself a celebrated magician or sorcerer, credited with power over the spirits of earth and air, his appearance could not have aroused a thrill of attention more absorbing.  Over men of genius, as well as the commonplace herd, he cast the same spell, stamping himself as a personage who could be compared with no other.

The German poet Heine thus describes his first acquaintance with this paragon of violinists: 

“It was in the theatre at Hamburg that I first heard Paganini’s violin.  Although it was fast-day, all the commercial magnates of the town were present in the front boxes, the goddesses Juno of Wandrahm, and the goddesses Aphrodite of Dreckwall.  A religious hush pervaded the whole assembly; every eye was directed toward the stage, every ear was strained for hearing.  At last a dark figure, which seemed to ascend from the under world, appeared on the stage.  It was Paganini in full evening dress, black coat and waistcoat cut after a most villainous pattern, such as is perhaps in accordance with the infernal etiquette of the court of Proserpine, and black trousers fitting awkwardly to his thin legs.  His long arms appeared still longer as he advanced, holding in one hand his violin, and in the other the bow, hanging down so as almost to touch the ground—­all the while making a series of extraordinary reverences.  In the angular contortions of his body there was something so painfully wooden, and also something so like the movements of a droll animal, that a strange disposition to laughter overcame the audience; but his face, which the glaring footlights caused to assume an even more corpse-like aspect than was natural to it, had in it something so appealing, something so imbecile and meek, that a strange feeling of compassion removed all tendency to laughter.  Had he learned these reverences from an automaton or a performing dog?  Is this beseeching look the look of one who is sick unto death, or does there lurk behind it the mocking cunning of a miser?  Is that a mortal who in the agony of death stands before the public in the art arena, and, like a dying gladiator, bids for their applause in his last convulsions? or is it some phantom arisen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who comes to suck, if not the blood from our hearts, at least the money from our pockets?  Questions such as these kept chasing each other through the brain while Paganini continued his apparently interminable series of complimentary bows; but all such questionings instantly take flight the moment the great master puts his violin to his chin and began to play.