despised and rejected of men, was their Creator, Redeemer, King of Kings, Lord of Lords! To be sure the playhouse is an unfit place for such a performance, but I fear I shall be in Oxfordshire before it is heard at the Foundling Hospital, where the benevolent design and the attendance of little boys and girls adds a peculiar beauty even unto this noblest composition. But Handel who could suit such music to such words deserves to be maintained, and these two nights, I am told, have made him amends for the solitude of his other oratorios." 1

One questions whether Handel ever had any thought of making money out of Messiah, and, since London did not seem to want it he withdrew it. From time to time he revived it for a single performance. He associated it with all his later charity for the Foundling Hospital, and, during his lifetime, he raised eleven thousand pounds for the Hospital by its performance. Perhaps those days of its composition still bore their vivid impress. At any rate, when the Foundling Hospital wanted to get a Bill through Parliament to authorise the regular performance of Messiah, Handel rose in his wrath as if the Governors had trodden on sacred ground. They were going to steal his rights-so he felt. "What for they take my music to Parliament !" he exclaimed in his anger, and had the Bill withdrawn.

He ultimately declared that " He saw the lovely youth" in Theodora that later oratorio of ill-fortune-was the greatest chorus he ever wrote. The "Hallelujah Chorus " was his second favourite. But, as a work apart, Messiah was his one creation that ever pleased him, and which he never heavily altered. His final oratorio Jephtha remained fragrant to him till the end, because, as a complete work, it was the last offering of a fruitful life. The Triumph of Time and Truth sang always through his years, and was altered and re-altered, until the work of 1708 would scarcely compare with the version of his later life. But Messiah remained to him the one beautiful thing that held in it all those vagrant thoughts he had ever had of religion and its influence.

1 Carter-Talbot Correspondence.

2 Messiah was performed three times in 1743, not at all in 1744, twice only in 1745, and not again until 1749.

Handel's Aspiration

After Messiah had been produced in London, he happened to call upon Lord Kinnoul, who had heard the work and complimented Handel upon it. "My lord," replied Handel, “I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better."

Happy soul! He knew, as few creators do, that he had done something for humanity. He at least realised what he had given.

CHAPTER XXII

THE SECOND FAILURE

As soon as the season closed, Handel began the composition of a secular oratorio, Semele, the words of which had been adapted from Congreve. He composed the first bars on 3rd June, and finished the work on 4th July, probably with every intention of producing it at the beginning of the autumn

season.

But, as had so frequently happened, the affairs of the nation intervened, and caused him to lay aside this oratorio based on mythology, in order to take an active part in the nation's rejoicing. On the 27th of June the battle of Dettingen had been fought at the little village on the River Main, and it resulted in an English victory. More remarkable, King George himself had led the English troops into battle.

The conflict had been so unexpected, and the news of the King's valour more unexpected still, that London was thrown into a fever of excitement. This unsympathetic King, who lolled about in the salons, who talked an improvised English to all the best ladies of the town, this miserable figure, afraid even now of some phantom return of his wife, had shown courage no one believed him to possess. There was no martial bearing about George; he had no liking for things military, nor the breath of cannon. He only sallied into war from some certain sense of duty-a sense more oddly developed in him than in either of the Georges-sitting his horse very badly, till the horse, alarmed by the firing, ran away, and nearly bore him into the enemy's ranks. At least he tried to look the part, and to take his war experiences seriously. When he regained safety he dismounted, and, finding his feet firm on the good earth, exclaimed: "Now I know I shall not run away away!" 1

1 W. M. Thackeray, "The Four Georges.”

The Dettingen Te Deum

George and Dettingen completely changed the attitude of the English people towards the Court. Quel courage! Quelle bonne chance! His retinue, safely snugged in the Palace while the Royal master was away nearly getting killed, covered him with compliments when he returned at the head of his troops, very smiling and tired of campaigning. The obese little man loved the fêting better than he had loved the smoke of Louis' cannon. He held receptions. He held more receptions. There must be a proper celebration-crowds, the sound of cannon—a procession of course, a procession—and martial music. He sent for the Court musician, Handel.

On the 17th of July Handel began his Dettingen Te Deum, and on the 30th he began the Dettingen Anthem. Many of Handel's biographers declare that for the Te Deum he adapted some of the composing of an Italian priest named Urio, who had lived in the seventeenth century. But no definite proof of any kind has ever been discovered. These charges of plagiarism have constantly recurred in the Handel biographies.1 He stole from Bach; Bach stole from him. He stole here; he stole there. He probably did adapt certain airs which were public property at the time. A phrase caught him and ran subconsciously through the weft of the music then in his mind. But that Handel, more gifted with originality than most of the composers the world has known, should prowl about looking for the indifferent work of lesser and unknown people is a foolish charge. His brain was always fertile with more melody than his pen could put to score.

When the Te Deum was performed at the Chapel Royal on 27th November it was declared to be one of the most majestic works that ever came from the master. It took rank beside the Funeral Anthem as the greatest composition for public occasion he had produced. Every kettledrum and trumpet that he could press into service had been secured. The music was martial, stately. It moved the King deeply. Could any man, save Handel, have put into the rattle and rumble of drums the glories of Dettingen? What pomp! What

1 Mr P. Robinson, in his admirable work, Handel and His Orbit," adequately deals with, and largely disproves, the charges of plagiarism brought against Handel by his enemies. It is not proposed to introduce a technical survey of these points into this volume.-Author.

clamour! What uplift! And what thoughts passed through George's mind as he listened. The field and the smoke wreaths... the bolting, foolish horse, and his own silly plight-why had he ever come!. The break of the French across the river . . . and the howling of the mob in the streets when he returned! Perhaps he had never really appreciated Handel till now. Even the Funeral Anthem

had not moved him so much, since he had never understood death, and was most conscious when the Anthem was played in all the state at Westminster that he was a central figure, standing out in the great sounds, and pitied for his loss. He loved pity, because he could pose, through it, as became a King.

Handel produced nothing further in 1743. He kept Semele, complete to the last phrase and note, in his drawer for eight months. Illness had begun to attack him again. "Mr Handel has a palsy and cannot compose," wrote Horace Walpole at this season. He remained in London, but the old antagonisms against him were springing up again because he had, by his concerts, drawn patrons from the bastard Italian operas which Lord Middlesex was now providing at the King's Theatre. The competition did not affect Middlesex alone. The pick of Society had backed the noble entrepreneur with their money. Handel was therefore helping to keep the dividends expected from the King's Theatre out of the pockets of those who, in earlier times, had been his hosts.

The cabal against him grew in strength as the winter progressed, and when, on the 10th February 1744, he produced Semele, he had an angry Society ranged in line against him. If Semele was rather stupid in its story, Handel had at least given it some glorious airs. "Where'er you walk," had a grace which has held it high in popularity for nearly two centuries, since it bears all the delightful atmosphere of some of the best themes in Acis and Galatea. "O Sleep, why dost thou leave me?" is a little jewel, clean cut and haunting. "Now Love, that everlasting boy" is the essence of all living, all happiness. And yet Semele was only performed four times, and, oddly enough, is almost unknown in this country, in spite of the fact that, from beginning to end, it is Handel at his best, both in