forced to become original. Whether it made him original or not, he
never thought of changing it until his prince died, and for a time his
services were not wanted at Esterhaz or Eisenstadt. Then he came to
England, and by his success here made a European reputation (for it
was then as it is now--an artist was only accepted on the musical
Continent after he had been stamped with the hall-mark of unmusical
England). Finally he settled in Vienna, was for a time the teacher of
Beethoven, declared his belief that the first chorus of the
"Creation" came direct from heaven, and died a world-famous man.

To the nineteenth century mind it seems rather an odd life for an
artist: at least it strikes one as a life, despite Haydn's own
opinion, not particularly conducive to originality. To use extreme
language, it might almost be called a monotonous and soporific mode of
existence. Probably its chief advantage was the opportunity it
afforded, or perhaps the necessity it enforced, of ceaseless industry.
Certainly that industry bore fruit in Haydn's steady increase of
inventive power as he went on composing. But he only took the
prodigious leap from the second to the first rank of composers after
he had been free for a time from his long slavery, and had been in
England and been aroused and stimulated by new scenes, unfamiliar
modes of life, and by contact with many and widely differing types of
mind. Some of his later music makes one think that if the leap--a leap
almost unparalleled in the history of art--had been possible twenty
years sooner, Haydn might have won a place by the side of Mozart and
Handel and Bach, instead of being the lowest of their great company.
On the other hand, one cannot think of the man--lively, genial,
kind-hearted, garrulous, broadly humorous, actively observant of
details, careful in small money matters--and assert with one's hand on
one's heart that he was cast in gigantic or heroic mould. That he had