ommenced 22nd August, 1741.

"End of 1st part, 28th August.

"End of 2nd, 6th September.

"End of 3rd, 12th September, 1741.

"Filled up on the 14th."

This Herculean work was therefore accomplished in twenty-three days; and
Handel was then fifty-six years old!

It is a strange phenomenon: when men of genius are to die YOUNG, they
complete their masterpieces at _once_. Mozart rendered up his soul at
thirty-nine; Raphael painted "The School of Athens" at twenty-five, and
"The Transfiguration" at thirty-seven; Paul Potter his "Bull" at
twenty-two; Rossini composed "The Barber of Sevile" when he was
twenty-three, "William Tell" at thirty-seven, and afterwards wrote no
more. If these men had lived longer, it would have been impossible for
them to surpass themselves.

Great artists, on the other hand, who are destined to have _long lives_
are _slow in production_, or rather they produce their best things in
the _decline of life_. Handel, _e.g._, composed his greatest works, "The
Funeral Anthem," "Israel," "The Messiah," "Samson," "The Dettingen Te
Deum," and "Judas Macabbeus," _after he was fifty-two_ years old. Gluck
had not composed one of his operas when he was fifty. Haydn was an old
man of sixty-five when he produced the "Creation." Murillo became
Murillo only at forty years of age. Poussin was seventy when he painted
"The Deluge," which is the most poetically great of all his noble
pictures. Michael Angelo counted more than sixty years when he encrusted
his incomparable fresco, "The Last Judgment," upon the walls of the
Sistine Chapel; and he was eighty-seven when he raised the cupola of St.
Peter's to the heavens. And our own Milton was sixty-three when he
wrote "Paradise Lost!"

But, to return--Handel set out on his journey and charitable mission,
4th August, 1741. It is to this journey Pope alludes in his "Dunciad:"--

"But soon, ah! soon, rebellion will commence,
If music meanly borrows aid from sense;
Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briareus, with his hundred hands,
To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars' drums."

He was stayed by contrary winds in the ancient and picturesque city of
Chester. Dr. Burney says, "I was at the public school in Chester, and
very well remember seeing him smoke a pipe over a dish of coffee at the
Exchange coffee house; and, being extremely curious to see so
extraordinary a man, I watch