from Porpora and to be fed and clothed. He accepted, and went off with
his new master to Mannersdorf.

His service with Porpora brought him innumerable advantages. If he had
lowly duties to attend to, that amounted to nothing. He lived in the
eighteenth century, not in the nineteenth or twentieth. He was not
regarded as a clever musician forced to do lackey's work; he was a
lackey--or, at least, a peasant--given a chance of making himself a
clever musician. In those days birth and breeding counted for
much--everything. If a man could not boast of these, then he must have
money; and even money would not always fetch him everything. The Court
musicians were classed lower than domestic servants, and generally paid
less. Now and again a triumphant, assertive personality like Handel
would break through all the rules of etiquette; but even Handel could
have done little without his marvellous finger-skill--for he was
reckoned finest amongst the European players of his time--and with his
fingers Haydn--we have his own confession for it--was never
extraordinary. He could not extemporise as Handel, and Bach in more
restricted circles, had done, nor as Mozart and Beethoven were soon to
do. Beethoven won social status for the musician tribe, but Beethoven,
while as brilliant an executant as Handel, also had the advantage of
reaching manhood just when the upset of the French Revolution was
destroying all old-world notions. Even in old-fashioned Germany the
Rights of Man were asserting themselves. In England, for many a long day
afterwards, the musician had no higher standing than Haydn had. The few
who mixed with the Great were mainly charlatans of the type of Sir
George Smart, and they took mighty pains to be of humble behaviour in
the presence of their betters.

Haydn did remarkably well in the petty pigtail courts of Austria. He