he seemed to mix his colours in buckets and hurl them with the surest artistic aim at his gigantic canvases.  A comparison of the angels’ chorus “Glory to God in the highest” in Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” with the same thing as set in the “Messiah” will show not only how widely different were the aims of the two men, but also throws the minute cunning of the Leipzig schoolmaster into startling contrast with the daring recklessness of the tremendous London impresario.  Of course both men possessed wonderful contrapuntal skill; but in Bach’s case there is time and patience as well as skill, and in Handel’s only consummate audacity and intellectual grip.  Handel was by far a greater man than Bach—­he appears to me, indeed, the greatest man who has yet lived; but though he achieves miracles as a musician, his music was to him only one of many modes of using the irresistible creative instinct and energy within him.  Any one who looks in Handel for the characteristic complicated music of the typical German masters will be disappointed even as the Germans are disappointed; but those who are prepared to let Handel say what he has to say in his own chosen way will find in his music the most admirable style ever attained to by any musician, the most perfect fusion of manner and matter.  It is a grand, large, and broad style, because Handel had a large and grand matter to express; and if it errs at all it errs on the right side—­it has too few rather than too many notes.

On the whole, the “Messiah” is as vigorous, rich, picturesque and tender as the best of Handel’s oratorios—­even “Belshazzar” does not beat it.  There is scarcely any padding; there are many of Handel’s most perfect songs and most gorgeous choruses; and the architecture of the work is planned with a magnificence, and executed with a lucky completeness, attained only perhaps elsewhere in “Israel in Egypt”—­for which achievement Handel borrowed much of the bricks and mortar from other edifices.  Theological though the subject is, the oratorio is as much a hymn to joy as the Ninth symphony; and there is in it far more of genuine joy, of sheer delight in living.  Of the sense of sin—­the most cowardly illusion ever invented by a degenerate people—­there is no sign; where Bach would have been abased in the dust, Handel is bright, shining, confident, cocksure that all is right with the world.  Mingled with the marvellous tenderness of “Comfort ye” there is an odd air of authority, a conviction that everything is going well, and that no one need worry; and nothing fresher, fuller of spring-freshness, almost of rollicking jollity, has ever been written than “Every valley shall be exalted.”  “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed” is in rather the same vein, though a deeper note of feeling is struck.  The effect of the alto voices leading off, followed immediately by the rest of the chorus and orchestra, is overwhelming; and the chant of the basses at “For the mouth of the Lord” is