for one performance or more, and having been rewarded according to their deserts, passed on their way. Great personages visited the Prince in state, and were regally entertained, Haydn everlastingly writing special music. Maria Theresa stayed for three days in 1773, and thus we get the Empress Theresa symphony in C, also two operas of sorts, L'Infideltà Delusa and Philemon and Baucis, specially composed for the occasion. What with retinues of servants bustling about, banquets, balls, hunting-parties, dramas, operas, concerts, the scene must have always been lively enough—there can have been nothing of stagnation. When the Prince went on visits he also travelled in state, and took his band and singers with him. When at home, we read, the artists spent their spare time at the café; but I cannot think that Haydn ever had much leisure.

It was not until 1769 that Prince, conductor, band, singers and all visited Vienna. Nothing remarkable occurred. To celebrate the great and joyful event Haydn wrote one opera, La Spezziata, which was given at the house of von Sommerau—then they went back to Esterház, and saw no more of Vienna for eight years. Of this eight years there is nothing to set down save a list of compositions. How the man, such a man—for in his quiet methodical way he loved pleasure—stood it at all, I don't know, but stand it he did. However, in 1776-1777 there was a little diversion. Haydn composed an opera, La Vera Constanza, for the Court theatre in Vienna, and intrigues for some rival composer—his name does not matter—began. A rival won the first round in the contest; his opera was produced. In disgust Haydn had his score taken away, and it was soon sung at Esterház. I suppose Haydn would have considered it a sin to waste good material. Moreover, it was given at a suburban theatre of Vienna, and it proved so far successful that Artaria, the publisher, thought it worth while to engrave half a dozen songs and a duet from it. The opera which beat his at the Court theatre is utterly forgotten; we know of the other because of the composer's name. Some years later, in 1784, he had another touch of the ways of men in the busy world, sent, perhaps, to reconcile him to his habitual seclusion. As far back as 1771 he had written his first oratorio—which I am not ashamed to say I have never looked at—Il Ritorno di Tobia. It was performed, apparently with éclat, by the Vienna Tonkünstler Societät, of which body Haydn wished to become a member. He put down his name, and paid his subscription, and was not a little surprised to learn that the condition on which alone he would be elected was that he should compose works for the society whenever he was asked. Now, those works would have become the society's property, if only because they alone would have the scores, and Haydn was a busy man, a man of European reputation, whose music was worth money, and a shrewd business man, who saw no fun in throwing money away. His annoyance may be conceived. He withdrew his subscription—it is a wonder they would let him have it—and would have nothing to do with the society until after his return from England in 1791, when the feud was ended, and he was triumphantly elected senior assessor—whatever that may be. What the society was thinking in the first instance I cannot guess, unless it was that a mere professional composer and Kapellmeister should pay double, or considerably more than double, for the honour of belonging to so distinguished a body of amateurs. Anyhow, in the long run Haydn was so well pleased with them that he seems to have made over to them The Creation and The Seasons, from which they derived profits that enabled them to keep their heads above water when darker days came. Long before this date, however, honours were being thrown at him. His opera, L'Isolu Disabilite, to Metastasio's words, was sung in concert form at Vienna in 1779, and the Accademia Filarmonica of Modena made him a member; Haydn sent the score to the King of Spain, who repaid the compliment with a gold snuff-box. In the same year he got a little relief from the unbroken routine of his duties, for the theatre at Esterház was burnt to the ground, and Prince Nicolaus, seeing no means of passing his evenings, took a trip to Paris. Whether, from Haydn's point of view, he did well or not is open to question; for a fiddler named Polzelli had come to Esterház, and Haydn could find nothing better to do than flirt with his wife Luigia. He did more than flirt—he went a trifle further, and the lady took full advantage of his infatuation. She everlastingly importuned him for money, and made him sign a promise to marry her if ever he should be free to do so. Finally, the trouble came to an end somehow; but in his will Haydn left the lady an allowance for life.

The new theatre was built, and reopened in 1780 with a representation of La Fideltà Premiare. This pleased every one so much that it was given once at a concert under Haydn's direction, that the Emperor Joseph might hear it, and it led to Artaria, who was a very great gun in the publishing line of business, taking him up in serious earnest. Life went on much as it had done before the fire, or, if it was not quite so monotonous, it was still dull enough. Honours came to him from abroad, and when in Vienna he made the acquaintance of many more or less celebrated men. Michael Kelly is well worth reading on the subject, for Michael was no fool, and very much more than an ordinary celebrity-hunter. Haydn's friendship with Mozart is the most interesting feature of this period, and a very beautiful incident in the lives of two men of genius. Mozart, said Haydn, was the greatest composer then living; Mozart regarded Haydn as a father, and dedicated some quartets to him in phrases revealing the deepest affection. The intimacy ended when Haydn left, towards the end of 1790, on his first trip to England; in 1791 Mozart perished miserably, and was laid in a pauper's grave—the man whom Haydn called the greatest composer of the time was buried by the parish, and in 1792 Haydn returned triumphantly from England, his brow wreathed with laurel, figuratively, and his pockets crammed with English notes and gold, literally. There are a few other odds and ends worth mentioning. His opera, Orlando Paladino, written in 1782, made a great hit, and under its German name of Ritter Roland was the last of his stage works to ride off the stage. In 1781 the Grand Duke Paul and his wife had heard some of his quartets, and the Duchess was so pleased with them that she took lessons from the composer, and made him a present. London, too, had heard of him, and was thinking of him; and William Forster, the publisher, made arrangements with him which resulted in the publication in England of eighty-two symphonies and twenty-four quartets, not to mention other works. In 1785 he produced one of the most beautiful of his works, The Seven Words. This, I must own, I have never heard in its original form. It was commissioned by some priests of a church at Cadiz: seven slow movements to be played between meditations to be spoken on the words of Christ on the Cross. In this shape it became well known, and, later, Haydn himself conducted it in London as a Passione Instrumentale. The theme inspired him, and it was a further inspiration to add words and arrange the music for chorus. Nothing he had composed up to this, whether for church or theatre or concert, matched it for a strange blend of the pathetic and the sublime. Had he died in 1790 his name might have lived by this work alone. In a style as different from Bach's and Handel's as their styles were different from Palestrina's and Byrde's, he proved himself one of the mighty brotherhood who knew how to write sacred music. It was first given with the words at Eisenstadt in 1797, and it is