MDCCC." The medal was accompanied by a eulogistic address, to
which the recipient duly replied in a rather flowery epistle. "I
have often," he wrote, "doubted whether my name would survive me,
but your goodness inspires me with confidence, and the token of
esteem with which you have honoured me perhaps justifies my hope
that I shall not wholly die. Yes, gentlemen, you have crowned my
gray hairs, and strewn flowers on the brink of my grave." Seven
years after this Haydn received another medal from Paris--from
the Societe Academique des Enfants d'Apollon, who had elected him
an honorary member.

A second performance of "The Creation" took place in the French
capital on December 24, 1800, when Napoleon I. escaped the
infernal machine in the Rue Nicaise. It was, however, in England,
the home of oratorio, that the work naturally took firmest root.
It was performed at the Worcester Festival of 1800, at the
Hereford Festival of the following year, and at Gloucester in
1802. Within a few years it had taken its place by the side of
Handel's best works of the kind, and its popularity remained
untouched until Mendelssohn's "Elijah" was heard at Birmingham in
1847. Even now, although it has lost something of its old-time
vogue, it is still to be found in the repertory of our leading
choral societies. It is said that when a friend urged Haydn to
hurry the completion of the oratorio, he replied: "I spend much
time over it because I intend it to last a long time." How
delighted he would have been could he have foreseen that it would
still be sung and listened to with pleasure in the early years of
the twentieth century.

"The Creation" criticized