bumptiousness.  Besides, they all won their positions through being the best men in the field, and they held them with a proud consciousness of being the best men.  But in Handel we have a polished gentleman, a lord amongst lords, almost a king amongst kings; and had his musical powers been much smaller than they were, he might quite possibly have gained and held his position just the same.  He slighted the Elector of Hanover; and when that noble creature became George I. of England, Handel had only to do the handsome thing, as a handsome gentleman should, to be immediately taken back into favour.  He was educated—­was, in fact, a university man of the German sort; he could write and spell, and add up rows of figures, and had many other accomplishments which gentlemen of the period affected a little to despise.  He had a pungent and a copious wit.  He had quite a commercial genius; he was an impresario, and had engagements to offer other people instead of having to beg for engagements for himself; and he was always treated by the British with all the respect they keep for the man who has made money, or, having lost it, is fast making it again.  He fought for the lordship of opera against nearly the whole English nobility, and they paid him the compliment of banding together with as much ado to ruin him as if their purpose had been to drive his royal master from the throne.  He treated all opposition with a splendid good-humoured disdain.  If his theatre was empty, then the music sounded the better.  If a singer threatened to jump on the harpsichord because Handel’s accompaniments attracted more notice than the singing, Handel asked for the date of the proposed performance that it might be advertised, for more people would come to see the singer jump than hear him sing.  He was, in short, a most superb person, quite the grand seigneur.  Think of Bach, the little shabby unimportant cantor, or of Beethoven, important enough but shabby, and with a great sorrow in his eyes, and an air of weariness, almost of defeat.  Then look at the magnificent Mr. Handel in Hudson’s portrait:  fashionably dressed in a great periwig and gorgeous scarlet coat, victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied, jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)—­too proud to ask for recognition were homage refused.  This portrait helps us to understand the ascendency Handel gained over his contemporaries and over posterity.

But his lofty position was not entirely due to his overwhelming personality.  His intellect, if less vast, less comprehensive, than Beethoven’s, was less like the intellect of a great peasant:  it was swifter, keener, surer.  Where Beethoven plodded, Handel leaped.  And a degree of genius which did nothing for Bach, a little for Mozart, and all for Beethoven, did something for Handel.  Without a voice worth taking into consideration, he could, and at least on one occasion did, sing so touchingly that the leading singer of the age dared not risk