With the equally, and yet more popularly celebrated Haydn, Dr. Burney
was in correspondence many years before that noble and truly CREATIVE
composer visited England; and almost enthusiastic was the admiration
with which the musical historian opened upon the subject, and the
matchless merits, of that sublime genius, in the fourth volume of the
History of Music. “I am now,” he says, “happily arrived at that part of
my narrative where it is necessary to speak of HAYDN, the incomparable
HAYDN; from whose productions I have received more pleasure late in
life, when tired of most other music, than I ever enjoyed in the most
ignorant and rapturous part of my youth, when every thing was new,
and the disposition to be pleased was undiminished by criticism, or
satiety.”