But in addition to thus clearing away the haze of misapprehension that had settled round our master's character as a learner, the efforts of Thayer and Nottebohm have also thrown much light on two questions which have proved more or less perplexing to all students, and to the brief consideration of which we would now ask the reader's attention. First, then, how is it that Beethoven's genius as a composer was so late, comparatively speaking, in developing? At the time of his arrival in Vienna he was in his twenty-second year, and before that age Mozart, as we know, had produced no less than 293 works. Yet our master passed his boyhood in an atmosphere where every influence tended to quicken the musical life, and to hasten, rather than retard, its growth. Are we to take the handful of works--the little sonatas, the crude preludes, and other trifles generally recognised as composed in Bonn, to be the sole outcome of that period? Impossible! Alexander Thayer may fairly be said to have solved the problem by a single reference to chronology. He finds that between the years 1795-1802 (that is, a period _commencing immediately after the conclusion of his studies_) Beethoven published no fewer than ninety-two works, many of them of the first magnitude, including two symphonies, an oratorio, three concertos, nine trios, thirty-two sonatas, with and without accompaniment--and this during a time when his leisure for composition must have been scant indeed. We find him in these years incessantly occupied in more mechanical work, teaching, perfecting his style as a pianoforte virtuoso, travelling, continuing his studies with Salieri, and, in addition, enjoying life as he went along, not burying himself hermit-wise in his works, as was the case at a later date. Moreover, in Thayer's words: "Precisely at the time when he began to devote himself _exclusively_ to composition, this wondrous fertility suddenly ceased. The solution lies on the surface" viz., that many, if not most, of these works were actually composed in Bonn, and deliberately kept back by the author for a certain time. "Why?" we ask; "on what account?" "Until he had attained, by study and observation, to the _certainty_ that he stood on the firm basis of a thoroughly-grounded knowledge," replies Thayer, Beethoven would give nothing to the world. That goal reached, the creations of his youthful fancy are taken in hand again one by one; the critical file, guided by the "dictates of an enlightened judgment," is faithfully applied, and the composition, bearing the final _imprimatur_ of its author's satisfaction, launched to meet its fate. Well might Beethoven laugh securely at his critics!--he had been beforehand with them--he had sat in judgment on himself.