least a thirty fold profit. The sixth piece has long had its
companion, so pray make an end of the affair and send me either my music
or my money."

The Haydn of these fierce little notes is not the gentle recluse we are
apt to imagine him. They show, on the contrary, that he was not wanting
in spirit when occasion demanded. He was himself upright and honest in
all his dealings. And he never forgot a kindness, as more than one entry
in his will abundantly testifies. He was absolutely without malice, and
there are several instances of his repaying a slight with a generous
deed or a thoughtful action. His practical tribute to the memory of
Werner, who called him a fop and a "scribbler of songs," has been
cited. His forbearance with Pleyel, who had allowed himself to be pitted
against him by the London faction, should also be recalled; and it is
perhaps worth mentioning further that he put himself to some trouble to
get a passport for Pleyel during the long wars of the French Revolution.
He carried his kindliness and gentleness even into "the troubled region
of artistic life," and made friends where other men would have made
foes.

Unspoiled by Success

His modesty has often been insisted upon. Success did not spoil him. In
a letter of 1799 he asks that a certain statement in his favour should
not be mentioned, lest he "be accused of conceit and arrogance, from
which my Heavenly Father has preserved me all my life long." Here he
spoke the simple truth. At the same time, while entirely free from
presumption and vanity, he was perfectly alive to his own merits, and
liked to have them acknowledged. When visitors came to see him nothing
gave him greater pleasure than to open his cabinets and show the medals,
that had been struck in his honour, along with the other gifts he had
received from admirers. Like a true man of genius, as Pohl says, he
enjoyed distinction and fame, but carefully avoided ambition.

High Ideals

Of his calling and opportunities as an artist he had a very high idea.
Acknowledging a compliment paid to him in 1802 by the members of the
Musical Union in Bergen, he wrote of the happiness it gave him to think
of so many families susceptible of true feeling deriving pleasure and
enjoyment from his compositions.

"Often when contending with the obstacles of every sort opposed to my
work, often when my powers both of body and mind failed, and I felt it
a hard matter to persevere in the course I had entered