equal to that at Düsseldorf. The Elector ran operas on a magnificent scale, but if the motive that lay behind the invitation to Handel was to secure his services, he failed signally, for, with a gift of plate from the Elector to mark the visit, Handel left him and set out for Holland.

By that route he reached London. The autumn of 1710 was waning when he set foot on these shores, friendless, unable to speak a word of the language. Other German musicians had come before him and settled down in comparative affluence. There was Pepusch, there was Haym; both must have wondered what had drawn Handel to London. Pepusch openly mocked. He had just started his Academy of Ancient Music, and doubtless felt that he could afford to laugh at the invader.

Handel did just what he had intended. He put up an opera in London, made an extraordinary hit with it, then went quietly back to the Hanoverian Court to answer his parole.

By which time, no doubt, Pepusch had ceased to laugh, and Haym had serious thoughts of writing a libretto for the Saxon who came here and did things in this stampede fashion.

Handel was a force to be reckoned with. Haym knew it, even if Pepusch's more solemn intelligence had failed to absorb the fact.

CHAPTER V

THE FIRST VISIT TO LONDON

WHEN Handel arrived in London, Purcell had been dead

fifteen years.

Purcell had carried English music to the heights, and the years that followed his passing found it at its lowest point of mediocrity. Only just before his death, Purcell had said: "Music is yet in its nonage, a froward child which gives hope of what he may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more encouragement. It is now leaving Italian, which is its best master, and studying a little of the French air, to give it somewhat more of gaiety and fashion." 1

Prophetic words. After the death of Purcell, English music collapsed. The woful efforts of men who knew nothing of the first rudiments of harmony and counterpoint appeared on the London stage, failed miserably, and cost their patrons small fortunes. Itinerant Italian musicians had begun to flock to London, drawn by the knowledge that London looked to Italy to retrieve its opera from the "Slough of the devil." Operas of indifferent worth were staged with Italian and English words, so that the audiences only understood half that was sung and were bored to death.

So important was this Italian influence that Addison of Spectator fame had made a special journey to Italy to study it. When he returned he put on Rosamund to Thomas Clayton's music, a perpetration of noise which irritated audiences for three nights only, and then dropped into permanent oblivion. The failure fired Addison's blood. He hectored and advised through the Spectator on the absurdities of Italian operas. He esteemed them as no higher than the devil's artless strumming, so that when Handel arrived with his Italian reputa

1 "Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne," vol. ii. p. 339.

tion behind him, Addison, a slave to his liver through overdining, and with a pen ever ready to tilt at the first excuse, settled himself into his chair and waited for him.

London in 1710 was in a curious state of discord. Operas had failed in strings, and their attractions were so few that the inhabitants of the town thought again before venturing into the night for a theatre with the risk of being waylaid and robbed on the way home. A wave of crime had swept over the metropolis. Robberies were enacted in Piccadilly; houses in Bond Street openly pilfered in broad daylight. Night watchmen were trussed like fowls in the principal thoroughfares while my lady's coach on its way to the theatre passed within a few yards. The streets were ill-lit and stank of stale garbage, and the courtyards that led from them were thieves' kitchens and murder shops. One was arrested on the word of an informer for nothing at all when passing down a main London street at night. The Haymarket Theatre played continuously to a losing box-office. Drury Lane-a forbidding thoroughfare, which only the boldest would traverse at night-turned out failure after failure. Small wonder, then, that those who alone could keep a theatre open preferred to linger over their wine and gaming, rather than venture through a gauntlet of marauders, to hear indifferent music and piffling libretti.

When Handel arrived in London every condition of the theatrical world was against him, and was heaped as a mighty load upon the burden he already had to bear in his ignorance of the language and his lack of influence. By some means he came in touch at once with Aaron Hill, who was running the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, and finding it difficult to make the box-office balance the expenses.

Hill was a figure of opportunity, and he was precisely Handel's age. He had knocked about the world, after being left unprovided for as an urchin of fourteen in the London streets. At fifteen he went to Constantinople, where his relation, Lord Paget, was English Ambassador. Lord Paget was surprised to have this scion of his poor relations thrust upon him in a strange capital. He was considerably annoyed. Being rather a proud and pompous person he almost responded

Who produced Handel's first opera, "Rinaldo," when he came to London.

PIETRO METASTASIO,

The Italian poet, whose libretti, in adapted form, were the foundation of several Handel operas, notably "Siroe.'