allow the poor composer to turn about. It was dimly lighted. It
"contained no stove, and the roof was in such bad repair that the
rain and the snow made unceremonious entry and drenched the young
artist in his bed. In winter the water in his jug froze so hard
during the night that he had to go and draw direct from the
well." For neighbours he had successively a journeyman printer, a
footman and a cook. These were not likely to respect his desire
for quiet, but the mere fact of his having a room all to himself
made him oblivious of external annoyances. As he expressed it,
he was "too happy to envy the lot of kings." He had his old,
worm-eaten spinet, and his health and his good spirits; and
although he was still poor and unknown, he was "making himself
all the time," like Sir Walter Scott in Liddesdale.

An Early Composition

Needless to say, he was composing a great deal. Much of his
manuscript was, of course, torn up or consigned to the flames,
but one piece of work survived. This was his first Mass in F (No.
11 in Novello's edition), erroneously dated by some writers 1742.
It shows signs of immaturity and inexperience, but when Haydn in
his old age came upon the long-forgotten score he was so far from
being displeased with it that he rearranged the music, inserting
additional wind parts. One biographer sees in this procedure "a
striking testimony to the genius of the lad of eighteen." We need
not read it in that way. It rather shows a natural human
tenderness for his first work, a weakness, some might call it,
but even so, more pardonable than the weakness--well illustrated
by some later instances--of hunting out early productions and
publishing them without a touch of revision.