I ask your forgiveness a thousand times for the trouble I cause you. I
cannot understand how it is that there are so many mistakes in the copying
of the Sonata. This incorrectness no doubt proceeds from my no longer being
able to keep a copyist of my own; circumstances have brought this about.
May God send me more prosperity, till ---- is in a better position! This
will not be for a whole year to come. It is really dreadful the turn
affairs have taken, and the reduction of my salary, while no man can tell
what the issue is to be till the aforesaid year has elapsed.

If the Sonata be not suitable for London, I could send another, or you
might omit the _Largo_, and begin at once with the _Fugue_ in the last
movement, or the first movement, _Adagio_, and the third the _Scherzo_, the
_Largo_, and the _Allegro risoluto_. I leave it to you to settle as you
think best. This Sonata was written at a time of great pressure. It is hard
to write for the sake of daily bread; and yet I have actually come to this!

We can correspond again about my visit to London. To be rescued from this
wretched and miserable condition is my only hope of deliverance, for as it
is I can neither enjoy health, nor accomplish what I could do under more
favorable auspices.


263.

TO THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY IN LAIBACH.[1]

Vienna, May 4, 1819.

I fully appreciate the high compliment paid to me by the respected members
of the Philharmonic Society, in acknowledgment of my poor musical deserts,