andt dat other brecious taugh-ter of iniquity, Pelzebub’s spoiled child, the bretty-f aced Faustina?  Oh! the mad rage vot I have to answer for, vot with one and the oder of these fine latdies’ airs andt graces.  Again, to you nod remember dat ubstardt buppy Senesino, and the goxgomb Farinelli?  Next, again, mine some-dimes nodtable rival Bononcini, and old Borbora?  Ha, ha, ha! all at war wid me, andt all at war wid themselves.  Such a gonfusion of rivalshibs, andt double-facedness, andt hybocrisy, and malice, vot would make a gomigal subject for a boem in rhymes, or a biece for the stage, as I hopes to be saved.’”

IX.

We now turn from the man to his music.  In his daily life with the world we get a spectacle of a quick, passionate temper, incased in a great burly frame, and raging into whirlwinds of excitement at small provocation; a gourmand devoted to the pleasure of the table, sometimes indeed gratifying his appetite in no seemly fashion, resembling his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson in many notable ways.  Handel as a man was of the earth, earthy, in the extreme, and marked by many whimsical and disagreeable faults.  But in his art we recognize a genius so colossal, massive, and self-poised as to raise admiration to its superlative of awe.  When Handel had disencumbered himself of tradition, convention, the trappings of time and circumstance, he attained a place in musical creation, solitary and unique.  His genius found expression in forms large and austere, disdaining the luxuriant and trivial.  He embodied the spirit of Protestantism in music; and a recognition of this fact is probably the key of the admiration felt for him by the Anglo-Saxon races.

Handel possessed an inexhaustible fund of melody of the noblest order; an almost unequaled command of musical expression; perfect power over all the resources of his science; the faculty of wielding huge masses of tone with perfect ease and felicity; and he was without rival in the sublimity of ideas.  The problem which he so successfully solved in the oratorio was that of giving such dramatic force to the music, in which he clothed the sacred texts, as to be able to dispense with all scenic and stage effects.  One of the finest operatic composers of the time, the rival of Bach as an instrumental composer, and performer on the harpsichord or organ, the unanimous verdict of the musical world is that no one has ever equaled him in completeness, range of effect, elevation and variety of conception, and sublimity in the treatment of sacred music.  We can readily appreciate Handel’s own words when describing his own sensations in writing the “Messiah:”  “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.”

The great man died on Good Friday night, 1759, aged seventy-five years.  He had often wished “he might breathe his last on Good Friday, in hope,” he said, “of meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and Saviour, on the day of his resurrection.”  The old blind musician had his wish.