After, say, 1785, the old contrapuntal smack has gone out of his writing, and his form has grown definite.  Often, indeed, his outlines are much too hard, as was natural at a time when he was with all his might trying to take his principles in a firm grip.  If we take a typical symphony of this time, we find, first the adagio introduction.  This feature, as we all know, was turned to noble use by Beethoven, notably in the seventh symphony; but it is not an essential.  Mozart scarcely used it, and even with Haydn I fancy the Prince must have liked it, or we should not find it so often.  The allegro is in what the text-books call the “accepted” form, first and second subjects—­often not clearly differentiated, but more and more so as time passed—­“working-out” section and recapitulation with or without coda.  Here we have complete unity, and as much variety as the composer wanted.  With all the richness and variety, the intellectual structure is so firm and distinctly marked that the mind grasps the whole thing at once.  Then comes the slow movement, sometimes with two distinct themes, sometimes with only one, varied at each repetition, and with episodes composed of fresh matter between the repetitions.  The minuet and trio are little, if at all, different from those of Emanuel Bach.  The finale is generally a bit of a romp; the structural plan is that of the first movement, or a rondo.  So much for the form.  As for the music, it is, I say, free from counterpoint, and is more and more filled with the spirit of folk-song.  The themes sing and the music takes its impulse and motion from them; the web is no longer made up of contrapuntal workings:  counterpoint is never more than an accompaniment, a helpful device.  What Wagner called the melos, the melody, or melodic outline, that begins at the beginning and ends only at the end—­this is the thing.  The influence of the folk-song is certainly most marked in the slow movements, just as that of the dance is shown in the finales.  Haydn’s adagios, at his best, speak with the deepest yet the simplest feeling.  A fairly close analogy is that of Burns, who, with little natural inspiration, found inspiration in his native ballads, and often worked up the merest doggerel into artistic shapes of wondrous poignancy.  Haydn’s habitual temper was cheerful, and his music rattles along with a certain gaiety of gallop very far away from the mechanical grinding or pounding accents of the contrapuntalists. (I don’t mean the great men; I mean the Wagenseils, Gossecs and the rest, who were trying to do the new thing without shaking off the old contrapuntal fetters.) But the spirit of his native songs was continually touching him and informed his melodies with a degree of emotion that we find in none of the other strivers after symphonic form.