Handel and Shakespeare have left us the best that any have left us; yet,
in spite of this, how much of their lives was wasted. Fancy Handel
expending himself upon the Moabites and Ammonites, or even the Jews
themselves, year after year, as he did in the fulness of his power; and
fancy what we might have had from Shakespeare if he had gossipped to us
about himself and his times and the people he met in London and at
Stratford-on-Avon instead of writing some of what he did write.
Nevertheless we have the men, seen through their work notwithstanding
their subjects, who stand and live to us. It is the figure of Handel as
a man, and of Shakespeare as a man, which we value even more than their
work. I feel the presence of Handel behind every note of his music.