roubled with no illusions, no morbid introspection. He seemed
to accept the theology of the time in simple sincerity as a sufficient
explanation of the world and human existence. He had little desire to
write sacred music. He felt that his enormous force found its finest
exercise in song-making; and Italian opera, consisting nearly wholly
of songs, was his favourite form to the finish. The instinct was a
true one. It is as a song-writer he is supreme, surpassing as he does
Schubert, and sometimes even Mozart. Mozart is a prince of
song-writers; but Handel is their king. He does not get the breezy
picturesqueness of Purcell, nor the entrancing absolute beauty that
Mozart often gets; but as pieces of art, each constructed so as to
get the most out of the human voice in expressing a rich human passion
in a noble form, they stand unapproachable in their perfection. For
many reasons the English public refused to hear them in his own time,
and Handel, as a general whose business was to win the battle, not in
this or that way, but in any possible way, turned his attention to
oratorio, and in this found success and a fortune. In this lies also
our great gain, for in addition to the Italian opera songs we have the
oratorio choruses. But when we come to think of it, might not
Buononcini and Cuzzoni laugh to see how time has avenged them on their
old enemy? For Handel's best music is in the songs, which rarely find
a singer; and his fame is kept alive by performances of "Israel in
Egypt" at the Albert Hall, where (until lately) evangelical small
grocers crowded to hear the duet for two basses, "The Lord is a man of
war," which Handel did not write, massacred by a huge bass chorus.

His "Messiah" is in much the same plight as Milton's "Paradise Lost,"
the plays of Shakespeare and the source of all true religion--it
suffers from being so excessively well known and so generally accepted
as a classic that few want to hear it, and none think it worth knowing
thoroughly. A few years ago the late Sir Joseph Barnby went through
the entire work in St. James's Hall with his Guildhall students; but
such a feat had not, I believe, been accomplished previously within
living memory, and certainly it has not been attempted again since. We
constantly speak of the "Messiah" as the most popular oratorio ever
written; but even in the provinces only selections from it are sung,
and in the metropolis the selections are cut very short indeed,
frequentl