The original manuscripts being lost, further chronological notices concerning them must be sought for in the sketchbooks. Here Nottebohm comes to our assistance. In the Petter collection at Vienna there are sketches for the last movement of the G major Quartet, the last movement of the B-flat Quartet (among them one which was discarded), both deviating from the printed form more or less, and one for the last movement of the F major Quartet, this approaching pretty closely the ultimate form; thus this quartet was farther advanced than the others. Associated with this sketch are sketches for the Sonata in B-flat, Op. 22, and for the easy Variations in G major which were begun while work was in progress on the last movement of the Quartet in G. Beethoven worked simultaneously on the first movement of Op. 22 and the scherzo of the first Quartet; while working on the last movement of the Quartet in B-flat the rondo of the Sonata was begun. The sketches date from 1799 and 1800. Inasmuch as they occur before those for the Horn Sonata, which was composed very hurriedly and performed on April 18, 1800, the sketches were doubtless written earlier. One of the variations of the Quartet in A major was sketched much earlier--in 1794 or 1795. A little sketch for the first movement of the F major Quartet found beside sketches for the Violin Sonata, Op. 24, no doubt belongs to the revised form of the Quartet. In a sketchbook formerly in the possession of Grassnick in Berlin, there are sketches for the Quartet in D major which are near the ultimate form, except that there is a different theme for the last movement. Then comes a beginning in G major inscribed “Quartet 2,” the germ of the theme of the second Quartet. There was, therefore, at the time no second Quartet, and that in D is the first. There follows “Der Kuss,” sketches for the “Opferlied,” the Rondo in G major, Op. 51, No. 2, to a passage from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” to Gellert’s “Meine Lebenszeit verstreicht,” in G minor, to an intermezzo for pianoforte, to the revised form of the B-flat Concerto (which he played in Prague in 1798), and to various songs. The indications are, therefore, that the sketches were written in 1798. Then come sketches for the variations on “La stessa, la stessissima,” which originated and were published in the beginning of 1799, and after them extended sketches for the first movement of the F major Quartet, of which those belonging to the first movement are in an advanced stage, those for the second movement less so. A few sketches for a “third” quartet (thus specified) which were not used show that there was no third at the time; therefore, the Quartet in F is the second and was planned in 1799. Another sketchbook contains the continuation of the sketches for the F major Quartet, and, indeed, for all the movements; then an unused sketch for a “third” quartet (still not yet in existence), then to two songs by Goethe (one “Ich denke