lonely fashion.... I have many visitors, but it confuses
me so much to talk to them that at last I scarcely know what I am saying
and only long to be left in peace." The condition of a man of naturally
genial and optimistic temperament can easily be imagined from all
this--perhaps even more from the fact of his having a card printed to
hand to inquirers who called, bearing the words:

Hin ist alle meine Kraft; Alt and schwach bin ich.

[Fled for ever is my strength; Old and weak am I.]

Last Works

But while Haydn was thus suffering from the natural disabilities of his
years, he was not wholly divorced from his art. It is true that nothing
of any real importance came from his pen after "The Seasons," but a good
deal of work of various kinds was done, some of which it is impossible
for the biographer to ignore. One rather novel undertaking carries us
back to the end of 1799, about which time he was first asked by George
Thomson, the friend of Burns, to write accompaniments for certain
Scottish songs to be published in Thomson's well-known national
collections. The correspondence which followed is interesting in many
ways, and as it is not noticed in any other biography of Haydn, we
propose to deal with it here. [The letters passed through the present
writer's hands some five years ago, when he was preparing his Life of
George Thomson(1898). They are now in the British Museum with the other
Thomson correspondence.]

A Scottish Admirer

George Thomson engaged at one time or other the services of Beethoven,
Pleyel, Weber, Hummel, Bishop and Kozeluch. But Haydn was his first
love. A genius of the kind, he writes in 1811 "never before existed and
probably never will be surpassed." He is "the inimitable Haydn," the
"delectable," the "father of us all," and so on. On the other hand,
Haydn was proud of what he did for Thomson. "I boast of this work," he
said, "and by it I flatter myself my name will live in Scotland many
years after my death." Nay, if we may trust an authority cited by
Thomson, so highly did he think of "the symphonies and accompaniments
which he composed for my melodies as to have the original score of each
framed and hung all over the walls of his bedroom." Little wonder
that Thomson "loved the dear old man" and regretted that his worldly
circumstances did not allow him to erect a statue to the composer at his
own expense!

We have called this writing of symphonies and accompaniments for George
Thoms