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HAY his own composition. This piece was a satire on the lame Baron Affligio, official director of the court opera, who had sufficient authority to suppress it after the third representation. About this time Haydn's means of subsistence were eked out by an engagement to play the violin in one of the churches at Vienna, and by another to play the organ in the private chapel of Count Haugwitz. We next find him lodging in the same house with Metastasio, whose niece was his pupil; and he seems to have derived great advantages from his intercourse with the poet, learning from him to regard art in its highest sense, and receiving thus the noblest stimulus to his ambition. By him he was introduced to the mistress of Count Corner, the Venetian ambassador. The lady's fondness for singing had induced her admirer to bring the famous Porpora in his suite, as her instructor, and Haydn was engaged to accompany her in her practice. It was mainly with the purpose of witnessing Porpora's lessons that he undertook this duty; and he was happy to discharge any, the most menial offices for the old Italian during the three months he spent with the lady and her teacher at Manensdorf, for the sake of ingratiating himself in his esteem, and so obtaining the benefit of his instructions. With the same object of gaining information in his art, he attached himself for some time also to the composer Wagenseil; but there is no reason to believe that he ever received a lesson from either him or Porpora. It is said to have been in 1752 that he wrote his first violin quartet (one in B flat), which was composed for performance at the house of an amateur, Baron Fürnberg, who used to have frequent music parties, in which Haydn assisted. We must suppose it to have been prior to this date that the Countess Thun, who had met with some of Haydn's music, sought him out with some difficulty, and, discovering his indigent condition, made him a present of twenty-five ducats, and greatly aided him by her countenance and encouragement. In 1758, he was engaged as second kapellmeister by Count Mortzin, in whose service he wrote his first symphony (one in D), which was played at one of the count's private concerts in 1759, when Prince Antony Esterhazy was present; and this illustrious dilettante was so charmed with the work, that he asked the count to relinquish its composer to him. Haydn was accidentally absent from this performance; the transfer of his engagement was thus not ratified at the time, and the matter was accordingly forgotten by the prince. He would have lost this great advance in his fortunes, but for the kindly efforts of Friedberg, the leader of the prince's band, who advised him to compose another symphony, and caused this (one in C, op. 1, No. 5) to be played on his patron's birthday, 19th March, 1760. Esterhazy, as much pleased with this composition as he had been with the former, immediately gave Haydn the appointment of second kapellmeister, which he held until the death of Werner left the principal office open to him. It was now that, having secured a permanent competency, he married Anne, the second daughter of his early benefactor, Keller. This appears to have been an alliance of gratitude rather than of love. Haydn is said to have been attached to the poor wigmaker's elder daughter; she, in the interim, had entered a convent, and he could only fulfil a promise to become his old friend's son-in-law by taking her sister. His wife is said to have been a prude and a bigot; be this as it may, they had no happiness with each other, and soon agreed to a separation. He, however, allowed her an adequate maintenance until her death in 1800. Haydn consoled himself, for his conjugal misadventure in the society of a lady named Boselli, a singer engaged like himself by Prince Esterhazy, and to whom he was always faithful.

Prince Antony died in 1761, and his son Nicolas renewed the composer's engagement, who was now in a position, the most advantageous for an artist, of independence of the world, and with no cares but for the development of his powers. For nine months of the year he lived at Eisenstadt, the residence of his patron; and he spent the other three months at Vienna during the prince's visit to the capital. There was a theatre in the palace, at which twice a week an opera was performed; and for this establishment Haydn wrote the majority of his German, and probably some of his Italian operas. His duty was also to direct an orchestral concert every afternoon, and to furnish new compositions for these performances. Here, then, was the field for the cultivation of that extraordinary genius to which modern instrumental music is indebted, if not for its origination, certainly for the maturing of the art of form, which distinguishes all that has been written since from all that was produced before the time of Haydn. In 1774 the composer's house was burned in a conflagration that destroyed the quarter of the town of Eisenstadt in which he dwelt, and in this calamity a large number of his MSS. were lost. He was away at the time; and Pleyel, his pupil, relates a notable proof of the prince's esteem for him in the fact that he had the house rebuilt, and the furniture restored, before Haydn could return. In 1775 Haydn completed the oratorio of "Il Ritorno di Tobia," which had been commenced and laid aside in 1763. This work was produced at Vienna, and was for some time annually performed there for the benefit of the widows of musicians; he made considerable alterations in Tobia, if not entirely remodelled it, after his second return from England in 1795. The fame of the composer now extended all over Europe; but his first engagement out of his own country was to write six symphonies in 1784 for a series of concerts given in the Loge-olympique at Paris. In 1785 he produced the succession of instrumental movements called the "Seven last words of the Redeemer," for the solemn celebration of the passion at Cadiz, where this ceremony consisted in the bishop's enunciation of the words of the Divine Agony, after each of which one of these deeply pathetic pieces was performed. Michael Haydn added vocal parts with appropriate words to the work, in which form it is classed as one of the composer's oratorios; he himself also arranged it for string instruments, and in this shape it is counted among his violin quartets. Haydn was solicited in 1787 to give one of his operas for performance at Prague; he declined this proposal, preferring to write an opera expressly for the Bavarian capital, where the lyric drama at the time held a higher character than anywhere else. With a noble diffidence of his own powers, however, in comparison with those of Mozart, whose "Figaro" was then making its triumphant success in the city, he finally relinquished this intention. In 1790 the prince, his patron, died; and the musical establishment over which Haydn presided, was then broken up. The thirty years spent by this great master in the service of the Esterhazy family, may seem barren of incident; but their eminent importance to the progress of music is proved by the vast number of works he wrote during the undisturbed tranquillity of that period, the production of each one of which was an event in the history of the art, since each one was a signal advance towards the maturity, not only of Haydn's genius, but of the principles it was his great task to develop. A new field was now opened for the labours of the master, and this was the one in which he has left the most imperishable imprints of his power. Salaman the violinist, resident in London, formed the design of engaging either Haydn or Mozart to compose for the professional concerts of which he was the director, and to come hither to conduct their works; he went accordingly to Vienna to propose the matter to his immortal countrymen, and it was settled between them that Haydn should be the first to come, but that Mozart should succeed him in the following year. In the middle of 1791 Haydn set out for London; here he worked, during the remainder of the year, at the first six of the symphonies he composed for Salaman, and on the 4th of February following the series of concerts was inaugurated, by the production of the first of these great works, in which the world acknowledges the masterpieces of the author. Haydn's success here was immense, and he returned to Vienna with as much profit as glory. He took now the house at Gumpendorf, which was his residence for the rest of his life, and resumed the systematic course of daily composition which he had pursued during his long abode at Eisenstadt. At this time Beethoven became his pupil; but there appears to have been little sympathy between the young giant of instrumental music and the founder of the school in which he was to win his immortality. The death of Mozart before the production of the first of Haydn's symphonies in London prevented the completion of Salaman's design; and the great sensation Haydn had created here, induced his friend to offer him a second engagement. He came accordingly in the summer of 1793, and again spent the greater part of a year in London. During this time he wrote and brought out the latter six of the Salaman symphonies, and he composed eight pieces of an opera called "Orfeo" for performance at the king's theatre; but its production being delayed, he left the country without completing it. Here also he wrote the well-known English canzonets, and the Italian cantata "Ariana in Naxos," which last he published himself at his lodging in Great Pulteney Street. He received here the greatest honours from all ranks and all classes; the king and the prince of Wales