seems to have excluded the best domestic influences from his home; but he found a circle of true and genial fiends in the family of Breuning; one of whom, Stephan, his boyhood's playmate, remained his attached friend through life, watched his last moments, was appointed his executor, and died very soon after him. This friendship had occasional ruptures—one caused by rivalry in a youthful love affair; but it was too full of the fond associations of their early times to be ever permanently broken. His first connection with this family was in the capacity of teacher, the duties of which he always discharged with the utmost repugnance; the widow Von Breuning not only forgave his constant dereliction, but, with parental kindness, encouraged his companionship of her children, amongst whom he became familiar with literature, and so made up for the scanty education he had received at the free school. Before the completion of his fifteenth year, the elector appointed Beethoven organist of his chapel. In this situation he played off one of those practical jokes for which, to the last, he had an especial relish, in confusing a singer who chanted the Lamentations in Passion Week, by changing the key in the accompaniment during a sustained note of the voice; the compromised chanter complained of this trick to the elector; but the young organist had too good a friend in his patron from childhood for him to punish this offence, farther than by an official reprimand, which was rather a compliment to his talent than a disgrace of his abuse of it. The genial humour, which is one of the most prominent characteristics of Beethoven's writing—such as we find expressed in the scherzo of his Pianoforte and Violin Sonata in F; in the last movement of his Pianoforte Concerto in G, and of his Solo Sonata in the same key. Op. 79; in that of his Symphony in F; and in many other instances—showing a love of fun and a capacity for witticism that has rarely been, and never so fully, embodied in music—is powerfully illustrated by this personal trait of the composer, which stopped not at practical jesting, but led him to indulge in every kind of facetia that presented itself to his vivacious fancy. We can well suppose him—whose conversation abounded with bon mots and repartee, who exulted in mock-heroic grandiloquence, and who would risk a friendship rather than forego a banter—absolutely laughing aloud as he set down on paper some of the movements that have been cited, and chuckling over them with an unctuous enjoyment as absorbing as the glowing rapture in which he revealed his loftiest inspirations. He had at this time another patron besides the elector, in Count Waldstein—to whom he subsequently dedicated his Sonata in C, Op. 53—at whose instance it was that the elector gave him the appointment, which, as his talented teacher, Neefe, was still in the full exercise of his powers, and so had no need of an assistant, was but the graceful pretext for paying him a salary, and so relieving his limited circumstances. Beethoven wrote the music, of which the count had the credit, for a ballet represented by the nobility at the court; but he was more than repaid for this sacrifice, by being, at his patron's instigation, sent in 1787 on a mission to Vienna, where he became acquainted with Mozart, and indeed received some lessons of him. The great musician promptly perceived the indications of extraordinary power in his young disciple; but he had not the opportunity to benefit him further than by his illustrious example, and by the emulation this induced, in consequence of Beethoven's early return to Bonn, occasioned probably by the illness of his mother, who died in this year. For her he had a fond affection; and in the grief of the moment, which was aggravated by pecuniary embarrassment, Franz Ries, the violinist—who, with Bernhard Romberg, and himself, was engaged as chamber musician to the elector—showed him such timely sympathy as he could never forget:—"Tell your father," said Beethoven to the son of his old friend, when he brought him an introduction from the violinist in Vienna, "that I remember the death of my mother." We may suppose that, from their various character, in his intercourse with his parents, he made the experience of both affection and contradiction, which only could have implanted the tenderness and the fretful irritability which were afterwards as conspicuous in his personality as in his works. At the end of 1790 Beethoven was introduced to Haydn, at a breakfast given to him by the band of the elector's chapel on his first return from England, when a cantata of the young composer—of which no vestige remains—was performed; and he was warmly encouraged by the veteran musician. Shortly after the completion of his twenty-first y ar, through the liberality of the elector, he made his second visit to Vienna, where he found so many advantageous opportunities that his return was repeatedly deferred, until he decided to make the Austrian capital his permanent residence. His father died in this year, and he was now launched in the world, with no care but for his art and for his own progress in it. Mozart was no more; but his influence was perhaps stronger than when he was personally present to exert it; thus the highest class of music was in general esteem, and the most aspiring genius found ready recognition and cordial encouragement. The Baron Von Swieten—who engaged Mozart to instrument the Messiah, and who furnished Haydn with the text of the Creation—had frequent musical performances, in which Beethoven constantly participated; and the Prince Lichnowsky was ever ready to receive him as a guest, and to create opportunities for the display of those brilliant abilities, which it was no little merit in him to appreciate; further, the prince settled upon him an annuity of 600 florins, to be continued till he should obtain an official appointment; but this was only one among countless services that his truly noble family rendered to the artist, which Beethoven acknowledged, in his dedications to him and to his brother, Count Moritz, of several of his most important works. The prince proved, indeed, a most cordial zeal for the musician, in his tolerance of the countless caprices of his client, who bore his favours so gracelessly, as often to dine at a tavern rather than submit to the restraint of dressing, and of punctual presence at the prince's table, and to give many other such whimsical tokens of independence.
Settled at Vienna, Beethoven placed himself under the tuition of Haydn; but, on showing some pieces the master had revised to Schenk, a creditable composer, who pointed out errors in them which Hadyn had overlooked, he formed the idea, which he never relinquished, that he received lessons, but not instruction from him. Under this impression, he refused Haydn's proposal that he should style himself his pupil on the works he printed. His irritable temper was further excited against the venerable symphonist, by Haydn's advising him, with worldly prudence, not to publish the third of his first set of trios—that in C minor—which Beethoven considered, and posterity confirms the judgment, the best of the three. He dedicated to him, however, the next work he printed, and so paid him a worthy homage without compromising himself Though he had previously published several works, and had written many that have never appeared, the trios were the first to which he affixed a number; and we may infer from this that he chose to date his career as a composer from them. Now, and for some time later, all he wrote bears the impress of his time; and even when we feel it most to be Beethovenish, this is but because we fail to identify in it a marked characteristic of Mozart (powerfully evinced in this master's Pianoforte Sonata in C minor), which seems to have especially fascinated him, and in the development of which may be traced much that is generally accounted peculiar to our author; in the trio, named above as his favourite, this manner is particularly apparent. It may have been among his causes of dissatisfaction with Haydn, that this master thought more highly of him as a player than as a composer; and so sanctioned an opinion, repugnant to his self-esteem, that was then prevalent. His playing may well have raised the enthusiasm of all who heard it; for though wanting in mechanical finish, and even, occasionally, in accuracy, it had a charm, from its deep expression, from its fiery energy and from its highly-wrought character—from, in fact, the thoroughly artistic spirit it embodied, which has never been surpassed; and we have little to wonder that the less appreciable talent of composition should have been at the time partially eclipsed by one so dazzling. Beethoven was glad to take the opportunity of Hadyn's second visit to England in 1794, for breaking connection with him; and immediately placed himself under Albrechtsberger, with whom he went through a course of contrapuntal study. A superficial observer of his works might apply the composer's comment upon his late, also to his present master; for, though it appears, from his taking every occasion to introduce it, to have been his particular ambition to excel in fugal writing, it is in this style that he is less successful than in any other. His counterpoint has an effect of stiffness and effort, singularly opposed to the spontaneous freedom that characterizes everything else he wrote; but this results, not from unskilful training and insufficient knowledge, it is rather because the nature of his ideas renders them insusceptible of this kind of treatment; and crudity is the consequence of forcing them into uncongenial
