Joseph Haydn, to give the composer the name which he now usually
bears, was the second of the twelve children born to the Rohrau
wheelwright. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but it was
either the 31st of March or the 1st of April 1732. Haydn himself
gave the latter as the correct date, alleging that his brother
Michael had fixed upon the previous day to save him from being
called an April fool! Probably we shall not be far off the mark
if we assume with Pohl that Haydn was born in the night between
the 31st of March and the 1st of April.

His Precocity

Very few details have come down to us in regard to his earlier
years; and such details as we have refer almost wholly to his
musical precocity. It was not such a precocity as that of Mozart,
who was playing minuets at the age of four, and writing concertos
when he was five; but just on that account it is all the more
credible. One's sympathies are with the frank Philistine who
pooh-poohs the tales told of baby composers, and hints that they
must have been a trial to their friends. Precocious they no doubt
were; but precocity often evaporates before it can become genius,
leaving a sediment of disappointed hopes and vain ambitions. In
literature, as Mr Andrew Lang has well observed, genius may show
itself chiefly in acquisition, as in Sir Walter Scott, who, as a
boy, was packing all sorts of lore into a singularly capacious
mind, while doing next to nothing that was noticeable. In music
it is different. Various learning is not so important as a keenly
sensitive organism. The principal thing is emotion, duly ordered
by the intellect, not intellect touched by emotion. Haydn's
precocity at any rate was of this sort. It proclaimed itself in a