The original documents for a biographical sketch, excepting the vast mass of manuscript music, are less abundant than with most other musicians of the highest rank. For this fact several causes may be assigned. Schubert was as careless of fame as Shakespeare. He was shy of disposition and inclined to withdraw himself from the world's gaze. He was not a virtuoso, and was never called upon, like the youthful Mozart, to play the piano or any other instrument before crowned heads, or in the presence of a public wild with enthusiasm; nor did he ever come into prominence as a director or conductor, like Handel and Mendelssohn. There was thus no occasion for him to make long journeys and become personally known to his contemporaries. In the course of his short life, except for a little travelling in rural Styria and Upper Austria, he never went outside of Vienna; and there he was not, like Beethoven, thrown habitually into the society of aristocratic people; his few companions were for the most part of humble station, though some of them in later years were not unknown to fame. The obscurity of Schubert during his lifetime cannot be better illustrated than by the fact that such a kindred spirit should have lived so many years in the same city with Beethoven--and Vienna was not then a large city--before attracting his attention. Nor did Schubert acquire distinction as a musical critic, like Schumann, or leave behind him writings characterized by philosophic acuteness or literary charm. He was simply and purely a composer, the most prolific, all things considered, that ever lived. He poured forth with incredible rapidity, songs, symphonies, sonatas, operas, masses, chamber-music, until sudden death overtook him. A great deal of this music he never heard himself except in his innermost soul; much of it still remained in manuscript forty years after his death; during his life he was known chiefly as a song writer, and in that department his unequalled excellence was recognized by few, while it was too soon for any one to comprehend the significance of his creative work in its relations to the development of modern music. Thus the reputation of Schubert, more than that of any other composer of like eminence, is a posthumous reputation. His existence was too large a fact for mankind to take in until after he had passed away. These facts account for the comparative slightness of biographical material in Schubert's case. There is, nevertheless, material enough to give us an adequate picture of that singularly simple and uneventful life, the details of which are largely comprised in the record of the compositions turned off one after another with bewildering rapidity.