memory of Baron Swieten, the good friend of more than one composer,
to hold him up needlessly to ridicule. [In one of George Thomson's
letters to Mrs Hunter we read: "It it is not the first time that
your muse and Haydn's have met, as we see from the beautiful
canzonets. Would he had been directed by you about the words to
'The Creation'! It is lamentable to see such divine music joined
with such miserable broken English. He (Haydn) wrote me lately that
in three years, by the performance of 'The Creation' and 'The
Seasons' at Vienna, 40,000 florins had been raised for the poor
families of musicians."]

The Stimulus of London

Haydn set to work on "The Creation" with all the ardour of a first
love. Naumann suggests that his high spirits were due to the
"enthusiastic plaudits of the English people," and that the birth
of both "The Creation" and "The Seasons" was "unquestionably owing
to the new man he felt within himself after his visit to England."
There was now, in short, burning within his breast, "a spirit of
conscious strength which he knew not he possessed, or knowing, was
unaware of its true worth." This is somewhat exaggerated. Handel
wrote "The Messiah" in twenty-four days; it took Haydn the best part
of eighteen months to complete "The Creation," from which we may
infer that "the sad laws of time" had not stopped their operation
simply because he had been to London. No doubt, as we have already
more than hinted, he was roused and stimulated by the new scenes
and the unfamiliar modes of life which he saw and experienced in
England. His temporary release from the fetters of official life
had also an exhilarating influence. So much we learn indeed from
himself. Thus, writing from London to Frau von Genzinger, he says: