men who do this kind of work are always the second-rate men: first come
the inventors, the pioneers, and then the perfecters; it is always at
the close of a school that the tip-top men arise. They claw in their
material from everywhere around, and use it up so thoroughly as to leave
nothing for the later comers to do with it that was not done before, and
done better, done when the stuff was fresh and the impulse full of its
first vigour. Haydn did a lot of spade-work for Mozart and Beethoven,
especially Mozart; but that was early, more than twenty years before
his death, and it is significant that the portion of his life-work which
most influenced and directed Mozart and Beethoven is chiefly second-rate
music. When he was writing the music that forces us to place him near
the noblest composers, he obeyed the invariable rule, and was in turn
being influenced by Mozart. The case is remarkable, but it is only what
anyone with a seeing eye might have predicted, and to us to-day it is
quite plain.

It is the constructive part of his work--the work of his middle
period--we must now briefly examine. In the list of his principal
compositions for the period 1761-1790 are included nearly one hundred
symphonies and other orchestral works, innumerable trios, quartets,
operas, songs, and clavier or piano pieces, one oratorio, _The Seven
Words_, and other sacred pieces. How many of them are heard to-day? How
many could be heard with pleasure? Very, very few. If anyone who
happened to be familiar with the Salomon symphonies--belonging to his
last period, after he had known Mozart--and _The Creation_ heard some of
this older stuff for the first time, he would hardly believe that the
man who in his age wrote so much fresh, vital music, charged with colour
and energy, could in the prime of physical life have written music that
is now so old-fashioned and stale. To this general verdict exceptions
must be made in the cases of some of the quartets, the clavier pieces,