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of keeping time in which we neither come to a stand-still, nor omit, nor pass over any thing. But there is another sort of keeping time, in which we may observe all this very correctly, and yet commit errors against time.
These faults consist in this—that, in the course of the piece, we either continually play quicker and quicker or slower and slower; or else, that we sometimes play too quick, and then again too slow.
Into the error of accelerating the time, just such young and lively persons as my dear Miss Cecilia are most apt to fall; and who knows whether I have not guessed right when I imagine that you sometimes begin a piece which goes off pretty fluently, at first very quietly and sagely; but then, becoming excited as you go on, you play quicker and quicker, and at last, finish with such rapidity as if your fingers were holding a run-away pony? Have I not guessed right?
To avoid this, you must practise even those pieces which you already play well, as composedly and as attentively as when you first began to study them; and in so doing, you must not allow the fingers to indulge their own fancies, or to be in the least degree inattentive. For the fingers are little disobedient creatures, if they are not kept well-reined in; and they
