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, frequently by the sapient device of taking out all the best numbers and leaving only those that appeal to the religious instincts of Clapham.  I cannot resist the suspicion that but for the words of “He was despised,” “Behold, and see,” and “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” Clapham would have tired of the oratorio before now, and that but for its having become a Christmas institution, like roast beef, plum-puddings, mince-pies, and other indigestible foods, it would no longer be heard in the provinces.  And perhaps it would be better forgotten—­perhaps Handel would rather have seen it forgotten than regarded as it is regarded, than existing merely as an aid to evangelical religion or an after-dinner digestive on Christmas Day.  Still, during the last hundred and fifty years, it has suffered so many humiliations that possibly one more, even this last one, does not so much matter.  First its great domes and pillars and mighty arches were prettily ornamented and tinted by Mozart, who surely knew not what he did; then in England a barbarous traditional method of singing it was evolved; later it was Costa-mongered; finally even the late eminent Macfarren, the worst enemy music has ever had in this country, did not disdain to prepare “a performing edition,” and to improve Mozart’s improvements on Handel.  One wonders whether Mozart, when he overlaid the “Messiah” with his gay tinsel-work, dreamed that some Costa, encouraged by Mozart’s own example, and without brains enough to guess that he had nothing like Mozart’s brains, would in like manner desecrate “Don Giovanni.”  Like “Don Giovanni,” there the “Messiah” lies, almost unrecognisable under its outrageous adornments, misunderstood, its splendours largely unknown and hardly even suspected, the best known and the least known of oratorios, a work spoken of as fine by those who cannot hum one of its greatest themes or in the least comprehend the plan on which its noblest choruses are constructed.