praise--lent him the vast sum of 140 florins--say L7; he got a few
pupils who paid him two florins a month. He must have toiled like a
slave, in a wet, cold garret, and often without sufficient to eat. Yet,
as in everything he undertook, dogged did it. He never became a
splendid executant, like Bach and Handel before him, and Mozart and
Beethoven immediately after, but he must have been head and shoulders
above the ordinary musical practitioner.

His first opportunity came when he made the acquaintance of one Felix
Kurz, a well-known comic actor, for whom he wrote the comic opera, _Der
Neue Krumme Teufel_. This, judging from the places it was played at,
seems to have had quite a vogue. The music is lost; I have never seen
the words. But through this operetta or pantomime with songs he appears
to have been introduced to Metastasio, who was, of course, a mighty
great man at that epoch--a kind of Scribe. Anyhow, Metastasio was
superintending the education of the two daughters of a Spanish family,
the de Martines, and Haydn was engaged to teach the elder music.
Metastasio brought him to the notice of Porpora--then quite as important
a person as Metastasio himself--and Porpora made Haydn an offer. Haydn
was to clean the boots and do other household jobs, and he was to
accompany when Porpora gave lessons. In return, he was to have lessons
from Porpora and to be fed and clothed. He accepted, and went off with
his new master to Mannersdorf.

His service with Porpora brought him innumerable advantages. If he had
lowly duties to attend to, that amounted to nothing. He lived in the
eighteenth century, not in the nineteenth or twentieth. He was not
regarded as a clever musician forced to do lackey's work; he was a
lackey--or, at least, a peasant--given a chance of making himself a
clever musician. In those days birth and breeding counted for
much--everything. If a man could not boast of these, then he must have
money; and even money would not always fetch him everything. The Court
musicians were classed lower than domestic servants, and generally paid
less. Now and again a triumphant, assertive personality like Handel
would break through all the rules of etiquette; but even Handel could
have done little without his marvellous finger-skill--for he was
reckoned finest amongst the European players of his time--and with his
fingers Haydn--we have his own confession for it--was never
extraordinary. He could not extemporise as Handel,