With his publishers his relations were, on the whole, of a calmer and more stable nature than with his princely friends. It must be noted that Beethoven is the first composer whose works were placed before the public in the manner which has now become universal. Although music printing had been practised since the sixteenth century, the publisher in the modern sense did not arrive until about Beethoven’s time. The works of the eighteenth century composers were often produced from manuscript and kept in that state in the libraries of private houses, and whatever copies were made were generally at the express order of some musical patron. Neither Mozart nor Haydn had a ‘publisher’ in the modern sense--a man who purchases the author’s work outright or on royalties, taking his own risk in printing and selling it. The greater part of Beethoven’s compositions were sold outright to the distinguished house of Breitkopf and Härtel, and, all things considered, he was well paid. In those days it took a week for a letter to travel from Vienna to Leipzig, and Beethoven’s patience was often sorely tried by delays not due to tardiness of post. The correspondence is not lacking in those frantic calls for proof, questions about dates of publication, alarms over errors, and other matters so familiar to every composer and author. In earlier days, Simrock of Bonn undertook the publication of some of the master’s work, but did not come up to his ideas in respect to time. The following letter, concerning the Sonata in A, opus 47, shows that even the impatient Beethoven could bear good-naturedly with a certain amount of irritating trouble: ‘Dear, best Herr Simrock: I have been all the time waiting anxiously for my sonata which I gave you--but in vain. Do please write and tell me the reason of the delay--whether you have taken it from me merely to give it as food to the moths or do you wish to claim it by special imperial privilege? Well, I thought that might have happened long ago. This slow devil who was to beat out this sonata, where is he hiding? As a rule you are a quick devil, it is known that, like Faust, you are in league with the black one, and on that very account _so beloved_ by your comrades.’ It is said that Nägeli of Zürich on receiving for publication the Sonata in G (opus 31, No. 1), undertook to improve a passage which he considered too abrupt or heterodox, and added four measures of his own. The liberty was discovered in proof, and the publication immediately transferred to Simrock, who produced a correct version. Nägeli, however, still retained and adhered to his own version, copies of which are still occasionally met with.