Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/260

248 who admitted that his own fluency and versatility m composition, especially in contrapuntal forms, had much of its origin in a careful study of the scores of the old Leipzig cantor. Mendelssohn was also very prominent in bringing the music of Bach before the public of his day, and securing for it its proper recognition by the musical world.

Bach was a very religious man, and is doubtless enjoying the reward of a well-spent life. But while the recognition of to-day cannot save him the poverty and trials of his years of painstaking composition, who can say that it may not even now afford him pleasure to know that the century succeeding the one in which he lived has awarded him the olive wreath which was then withheld.  

While some of the men whom we have to thank for our best music had to struggle hard for the necessities of life, and then were not always successful in obtaining them, others have lived in luxury and have even been famous as gourmands.

Rossini, for one, was quite an epicure. It is told that he once gave his picture to his provision dealer with the words "To my stomach's best friend" inscribed on it. The merchant thought this too good an advertisement to lose and so had the whole thing engraved on his bill-heads and circulars.

Dussek was a notorious glutton, in fact, over eating and drinking brought him to his death-bed. His patron, Prince Benevento, besides paying him a good salary furnished him seats for three at his tables, and it was no infrequent thing that Dussek "got outside of" the provisions at all three places.

Many a time was Händel caricatured in England as an overfed glutton. In one fanciful engraving he was pictured as a huge hog sitting on the organ bench surrounded with cabbages and strings of sausage. There