Herewith I declare all the works concerning which you have written to me to be your property; the list of them will be copied again and sent to you signed by me as your confessed property. I also agree to the price, 50 ducats. Does this satisfy you? Perhaps I may be able to send you instead of the variations for violin and violoncello ~a set of variations for four hands~ on a song of mine with which you will also have to print the poem by Goethe, as I wrote these variations in an album as a souvenir and consider them better than the others; are you content? The ~transcriptions~ are not by me, but I revised them and improved them in part, therefore do not come along with an announcement that I had arranged them, because if you do you will lie, and, I haven’t either time or patience for such work. Are you agreed? Now farewell, I can wish you only large success, and I would willingly give you everything as a gift if it were possible for me thus to get through the world, but--consider, everything about me has an official appointment and knows what he has to live on, but, good God, where at the Imperial Court is there a place for a ~parvum talentum com ego~? [Sidenote: CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEORGE THOMSON] In this year began the correspondence with Thomson. George Thomson, a Scotch gentleman (born March 4, 1757, at Limekilns, Dunfermline, died at Leith, February 18, 1851), distinguished himself by tastes and acquirements which led to his appointment, when still a young man, as “Secretary to the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures in Scotland”--a Board established at the time of the Union of the Kingdoms, 1707 (not the Crowns, 1603), of England and Scotland--an office from which he retired upon a full pension after a service of fifty years. He was, especially, a promoter of all good music and an earnest reviver of ancient Scotch melody. As one means of improving the public taste and at the same time of giving currency to Scotch national airs, he had published sonatas with such melodies for themes, composed for him by Pleyel in Paris, and Koželuch in Vienna---two instrumental composers enjoying then a European reputation now difficult to appreciate. The fame of the new composer at Vienna having now reached Edinburgh, Thomson applied to him for works of a like character. Only the signature of the reply seems to be in Beethoven’s hand: A Monsieur George Thomson, Nr. 28 York Place Edinburgh. North Britain Vienna le 5. 8^{bre} 1803. Monsieur!