474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



climbing the difficult height of fame. His early creative activity has 

 the same exuberance, the same prodigality as that of Mozart, and the 

 quality of this early production may be seen in the fact that he was 

 only seventeen and a half years old when he composed the well-known 

 overture to the "Midsummer-Night's Dream." The development of 

 Schubert's genius exhibits a similar velocity of movement at the out- 

 set. After trying his hand at smaller compositions he essayed a sym- 

 phony in his seventeenth year, and a few months after produced his 

 first mass a work, says Sir G. Grove, which is as striking an instance 

 f early ripeness of talent as Mendelssohn's overture. 



If we compare with this rapid upward movement the early course 

 of Beethoven's genius we see a marked difference. If, says the au- 

 thority just quoted, we compare what this composer had done by twenty- 

 two with the abundant productivity of the three others by the same 

 age, we have to pronounce the works to be few and unimportant. He 

 bas to show against Mozart's thirty-six symphonies only one, and 

 against the same writer's twenty-eight operas, cantatas, and masses, 

 nothing at all. It was not till the age of twenty-five that Beethoven 

 published works of high importance (including the first three sonatas 

 for the piano, and the song " Adelaide"). And he first attacked large 

 compositions, quintets for strings, symphonies, etc., in his thirtieth year. 



Backwardness in original musical production is exemplified by two 

 writers of opera, Gluck and Wagner, both of whom began as imitators 

 of others, and only struck out a new path in middle life. Another ex- 

 ample is Sebastian Bach, who did not compose till after forty. But 

 perhaps the most noteworthy instance of late musical development is 

 Haydn, who, though he gained a certain limited reputation in his 

 youth, did not divulge the secret of his great powers till toward the 

 age of sixty. 



Nevertheless, in spite of these inequalities, it may be safely said 

 that, as a rule, the great musical composers have redeemed the promise 

 of a precocious youth with a creditable alacrity. This may be seen 

 by a glance at the following figures : Out of thirty names selected for 

 examination, I find that eighteen unquestionably reached eminence 

 under twenty-five, or twenty-two in all under thirty ; leaving eight 

 who attained fame after thirty. Thus about three fifths of the illus- 

 trious names in the history of music came into possession of their full 

 intellectual heritage on, or soon after, attaining their majority. 



Painters and Sculptors. The history of art is so rich in illus- 

 trations of precocity that it is difficult to select the best examples. 

 Mantegna showed such marked ability as a child that he was taken up 

 by a patron and entered by his master in the guild of painters before 

 the completion of his eleventh yoar. Again, Andrea del Sarto is said 

 to have shown fondness for drawing as a child, and at the early age of 

 seven to have been introduced to the world of art in the shop of a 

 goldsmith. Raphael seems to have been a painter from the cradle. He 



