Bankruptcy and paralysis--visit to Aix-la-Chapelle--the last
operas--Vauxhall Gardens--Handel's "borrowings"--visit to
Ireland--_Messiah_ and other oratorios.
The collapse of the Opera left Handel not only bankrupt, but with seriously
endangered health. In April 1737 it had been announced that he was
"indisposed with the rheumatism," from which he made a slight temporary
recovery; but before the season was over it became clear that he was
suffering from paralysis. "His right arm was become useless to him," says
Mainwaring, "and how greatly his senses were disordered at intervals, for a
long time, appeared from an hundred instances, which are better forgotten
than recorded." With some difficulty his medical advisers persuaded him to
go to the sulphur bath of Aix-la-Chapelle, where, according to Mainwaring,
he submitted to prolonged and drastic treatment. His cure was considered
remarkably rapid, and the nuns (presumably nursing sisters) who heard him
play the organ within a few hours of leaving his bath ascribed it to a
miracle. "Such a conclusion," observes our clerical biographer, "in such
persons was natural enough."
It has been asserted that during his stay at Aix, Handel composed a cantata
for the five-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Elbing, a town in
East Prussia between Danzig and Königsberg. A German researcher about 1869
appears to have discovered documents at Elbing mentioning the cantata,
with the name of the poet and that of a local singer, Jean du Grain, who
composed the recitatives; Handel "of London" was said to have composed the
choruses. No trace of the music has survived, and there seems to be no
evidence whatever to connect this work with Handel's visit to Aix. Nor is
it possible to suggest any reason why the authorities of this remote place
should have applied to Handel for a composition.
According to Mainwaring, Handel stayed six weeks at Aix; the London papers
announced his return on November 7, 1737. The management of the Opera
had now been taken over by Heidegger, but the death of Queen Caroline on
November 20 caused all theatres to be closed from that date until the end
of December. It was announced in the papers that the Opera would reopen
on January 10 with a new oratorio by Handel, called _Saul_, but this
performance did not take place, and the theatre actually reopened on
January 7 with his new opera _Faramondo_. This opera was the first work
that Handel had undertaken after his return to London, but its composition
was interrupted by that of the Funeral Anthem for the Queen. Although she
died on November 20, Handel did not receive the King's command to write the
anthem until December 7, as George II was strangely undecided in making
arrangements for the funeral. It was finally fixed for December 17, and
a special organ was hurriedly built for it in Henry VII's chapel at
Westminster Abbey. Handel's anthem was performed by 80 singers and 100
instrumentalists. Queen Caroline had been one of his most faithful friends,
and his gratitude and affection for her found utterance in music which
Burney placed "at the head of all his works for expression, harmony and
pleasing effects."
It was at ten at night on Christmas Eve that Handel finished the score of
_Faramondo_; on Boxing Day he began the composition of _Serse_. _Faramondo_
had only six performances, and _Serse_ did not appear on the stage until
April 15, when it ran for five nights only. It is remembered now, if at
all, by the fact that the first song in it is the so-called "celebrated
Largo," but the opera as a whole is of curious interest. "He was neither
in health, prosperity, or spirits," says Burney, "when it was composed;
appearances remain in his foul score [i.e. rough copy] of a mind
disturbed, if not diseased. There are more passages, and even whole pages,
cancelled in this score, than in any one of all his former operas."
_Serse_, it must be explained, is a comic opera, and the only comic opera
that Handel ever wrote. What induced him to attempt this style it is
difficult to conceive. It is of course true that the failure of Handel's
earlier operas was largely due to the success of _The Beggar's
Opera_ (1728), and of other comic entertainments which succeeded
it--_Hurlothrumbo_ (1729), _Pasquin_ (1736) and _The Dragon of Wantley_
(1737). A new type of comic opera had arisen in Italy too, and comic
_intermezzi_ were first seen in Italian grand opera in London in January
1737, although it was not until 1748 that a real company of Italian
comic-opera singers came over to England. But what is more important to
notice is that the whole style of Italian opera was changing during the
second quarter of the century. Handel had continued to develop his own
style, based on the grand manner of old Scarlatti, but Handel's operas were
practically unknown outside London and Hamburg; in Italy, Scarlatti's style
had already become old-fashioned before his death in 1725, and opera was
moving on towards the lighter and flimsier manner of Galuppi, who first
came to London in this year of _Serse_, 1738.
In choosing the libretto of _Serse_, Handel seems to have been making a
desperate attempt to keep up with the taste of the day. Humour he had
in plenty; one has only to recall _Acis and Galatea_. But the humour of
_Serse_, diverting as it is to the modern historical student, is neither
the musical nor the dramatic humour of 1737; the plot bears no resemblance
whatever to the Neapolitan comic operas of Vinci and Pergolesi, but rather
recalls the very early operas, based on Spanish comedies, composed by
Alessandro Scarlatti in the 1680's. _Serse_ was revived a few years ago
in Germany, considerably cut about and reduced to one act, in which
arrangement it had some success; but we can well understand its complete
failure on its first London production.
The only satisfaction which Handel received in that unfortunate season of
1738 was the proceeds of his benefit concert at the Haymarket on March 28,
organised for him by his friends, apparently rather against his own wish.
According to Burney the net receipts were £800; Mainwaring puts the figure
at £1,500. Even if we accept Burney's estimate, the sum is remarkable,
and particularly so in view of the known hostility of a large section
of society towards the composer. It can only be supposed that Handel's
physical and mental collapse had been grave enough to awaken a wide-spread
sense of pity for his misfortunes. Another mark of popular appreciation
was the erection of a statue of Handel, executed by Roubiliac, at Vauxhall
Gardens, in recognition of the pleasure which his music had afforded to the
frequenters of that famous resort. This piece of "laudable idolatry," as
Burney calls it, was thus described by a contemporary journalist: "Mr.
Handel is represented in a loose robe, sweeping the lyre, and listening to
its sounds; which a little boy sculptured at his feet seems to be writing
down on the back of a violon-cello. The whole composition is in an elegant
taste." Commissioned by an impresario who had made a fortune out of the use
of Handel's music, it now appropriately adorns the vestibule of Messrs.
Novello's music-shop in Wardour Street.
Charles Jennens, writing to his cousin Lord Guernsey on September 19, 1738,
remarks that "Mr. Handel's head is more full of maggots than ever." Towards
the end of July he had begun the composition of _Saul_, for which Jennens
had provided the libretto three years before. It is evident that Handel
intended to startle his audiences with his new oratorio scheme. He had
ordered a new organ for the theatre at a cost of £500, constructed so that
he might have a better command of his performers, and he had also acquired
another instrument, which Jennens calls a "Tubalcain"--in other words a set
of bells played from a keyboard--which he intended to use in the scene in
which the Israelites welcome David after his victory over the Philistines.
It is curious that Handel should have dramatised the insanity of Saul just
after he had himself recovered from mental derangement.
No sooner was _Saul_ finished (September 27) than Handel, four days later,
began the composition of _Israel in Egypt_. _Saul_ was first performed on
January 16, 1739, and enjoyed a moderate success, but _Israel_ (April 4)
was a failure, even after it had been shortened and made more attractive by
the insertion of Italian opera songs.
_Israel in Egypt_ is the most conspicuous example of a strange and almost
unaccountable habit which from about this period began to show itself in
Handel's methods of composition--the incorporation of large quantities
of music by other composers. Samuel Wesley was the first person to draw
attention to this practice of Handel's, though only in a private letter of
1808. In 1831 Dr. Crotch, in his professorial lectures at Oxford, named no
less than twenty-nine composers whom Handel had "quoted or copied." The
researches of Chrysander, Dr. Max Seiffert, Ebenezer Prout, and Sedley
Taylor eventually proved beyond dispute that not only _Israel_, but several
other works of Handel were largely made up from the music of other men.
Chrysander maintained that Handel began appropriating other men's ideas
as early as 1707, for not only _Rodrigo_ and _Agrippina_, but also _La
Resurrezione_ and the _Laudate pueri_ show obvious reminiscences of
Keiser's opera _Octavia_ (Hamburg, 1705). These were probably subconscious,
like Handel's reminiscences of Scarlatti and others at this period; they
need not be taken any more seriously than Schubert's frequent reminiscences
of Beethoven. But in _Atalanta_ (1736) and _Giustino_ (1737), Prout
discovered quotations and adaptations several bars long from a _Passion_ by
Graun, which is known to have been composed not many years before. Further
fragments of this _Passion_ were identified by Prout in _Alexander's Feast_
and the _Wedding Anthem_ (1736); _Saul_, like _Israel_, incorporates
several movements from a _Te Deum_ by Urio (_fl_. 1660). From this date
onwards until the end of his career Handel systematically drew upon the
works of other musicians.
There has been much controversy over this question, and many attempts have
been made to explain away Handel's "borrowings" so as to leave no moral
stain on his character, which indeed, by all contemporary accounts, was
scrupulously upright. Sedley Taylor (1906) was certainly anxious to clear
Handel's character, but still more concerned to arrive at the exact truth,
and his method of presenting the evidence throws a new light on Handel's
procedure. He showed that in most cases Handel made frequent alterations in
the music which he utilised, almost as if Stradella (to cite one name
out of many) had been a young pupil to whom he was giving a lesson in
composition.
A careful study of these alterations suggests a reason for Handel's action
which seems not to have occurred to any previous writer on the subject. No
one seems to have noticed hitherto that Handel's "borrowings" begin in
1736 on a small scale, and become more frequent in 1737, after which they
develop into a regular habit. It seems only natural therefore to connect
them with Handel's mental collapse; it became acute in the spring of 1737,
but it may well have been approaching in the previous year.
There is no need to go so far as to suggest that Handel suffered from moral
insanity and was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong; but
it is quite conceivable that his paralytic stroke affected his brain in
such a way that he may sometimes have had a difficulty in starting a
composition. Biographers of Handel have more than once drawn attention to
phases in which he seems to have suffered from the inability to make a
definite decision. Indecision is a common symptom of overstrained nerves,
and anyone who has attempted musical composition or taught it to students
will understand the hesitation and uncertainty which often attends the
first writing down of a musical theme, although, once the initial idea has
been settled, the continuation and development of it may proceed without
difficulty. Any musician who studies the examples printed by Sedley Taylor
will at once exclaim that for a man of Handel's experience, to say nothing
of his fertility or indeed of his genius, it would have been far less
trouble to compose an original setting of given words than to adapt them
so laboriously to music written by someone else for a totally different
purpose. But after his attack of paralysis there may well have been
occasional moments when Handel could not make up his mind to write down an
idea of his own, but may very likely have found that when once he had an
idea ready on paper before him, whether that of another composer or an
old one of his own, he could then continue to compose, and often make
alterations in the music under his eyes which transformed it from a
commonplace into a masterpiece.
In the autumn of 1739 Handel transferred his concerts to the smaller
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where at first there seemed some hope of
success. On November 17 he produced his setting of Dryden's _Ode for St.
Cecilia's Day_; it was repeated several times, _Alexander's Feast_ and
_Acis and Galatea_ being added to the programmes. But a month later an
exceptionally severe frost set in; the Thames was frozen over, and for two
months it was useless to open the theatre, owing to the impossibility of
warming it adequately. In February he produced _L'Allegro_, adapted by
Charles Jennens from Milton's _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, to which
Jennens had added a third part of his own, _Il Moderato_; but the public,
whether from indifference to the work or from fear of the cold, refused to
come to it. Handel was once more on the verge of ruin, but that did not
prevent him from giving a performance of his two most popular works, _Acis_
and _Alexander's Feast_, for the benefit of a new musical charity.
The charity in which Handel was so keenly interested had been founded in
1738 to assist impoverished musicians and their families; it still carries
on its honourable work under the title of the Royal Society of Musicians of
Great Britain.
The same year saw the inauguration of another charitable institution which
owed much to the continued generosity of Handel, the Foundling Hospital.
Like Hogarth, who was also a benefactor, Handel did not confine his support
to an occasional gift, but took the warmest personal interest in the place,
and eventually both he and Hogarth were made governors of it.
The managers of the Opera had found themselves quite unable to continue
productions on the grand scale of former years. In the winter of 1739-40
there had been an insignificant season at Covent Garden; it seems to have
been directed by the Italian composer Pescetti, who, in the following
winter, started concerts at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. Mrs.
Pendarves, who during the last few years had not lived much in London, and
had thus dropped out of Handel's life, wrote in November: "The concerts
begin next Saturday at the Haymarket. Carestini sings, Pescetti composes;
the house is made up into little boxes, like the playhouses abroad." Dr.
Burney gives a comic account of the undertaking. "The opera, a tawdry,
expensive and meretricious lady, who had been accustomed to high keeping,
was now reduced to a very humble state. Her establishment was not only
diminished, but her servants reduced to half-pay. Pescetti seems to
have been her prime minister, Carestini her head man, the Muscovita her
favourite woman, and Andreoni a servant for all work." Concerts and
_pasticcios_ formed the main repertory, and Burney ascribes such success as
they enjoyed to the fact that the Little Theatre was a "snug retreat" in
which those who had the courage to quit their firesides during the great
frost might keep reasonably warm.
Handel had nothing to do with this theatre, but in 1740 again rented the
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where on November 8 he revived _Parnaso
in Festa_ "in its original oratorio manner, with the addition of scenes,
dresses and concertos on the organ and several other instruments." It had
but one performance; on the 22nd, Handel produced a new opera, or, as
Burney calls it, an _operetta_, which had no more than two performances.
This was _Imeneo_. On January 10, 1741, he brought out another new opera,
_Deidamia_, which ran for three nights. _Imeneo_ is a work of little
importance; _Deidamia_, on the other hand, contains several very beautiful
songs. But Dr. Burney, notwithstanding his admiration of it, has to admit
that much of it was old-fashioned, in the style of Handel's youth, and
sometimes "languid and antique." To Handel's admirers to-day such criticism
may seem ridiculous, but to his audiences of 1741 these reversions to an
earlier style would certainly have been most unwelcome.
_Deidamia_ was Handel's last work for the stage; the glorious achievements
of his youth and maturity had come to a hopeless end. His own public had
unjustly neglected him, posterity consigned his operas to oblivion.
At some period during the summer of 1741 Handel received an invitation from
the fourth Duke of Devonshire, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to go over
to Dublin and give concerts there for the benefit of the local hospitals.
It is very probable that Mrs. Pendarves may have helped to secure this
engagement for Handel. She had spent a year and a half in Ireland in
1731-32, and her letters give a lively account of society in Dublin.
Matthew Dubourg, an excellent violinist, was at the head of the Viceroy's
band, and musical entertainments were frequent, for to judge from Mrs.
Pendarves' descriptions the Irish bishops and deans lived almost as
magnificently as the cardinals in Rome. Mrs. Pendarves was naturally a very
popular guest in Dublin society; she was a remarkably fine harpsichord
player for an amateur, and was constantly in demand as a performer at
private parties. There was no one in London or Dublin who had a more
intelligent understanding of Handel's music, and her enthusiasm for his
works was unbounded. She kept constantly in touch with Dublin life when in
England, for she corresponded with Dean Swift, and, what was more important
still, she had in 1730 made the acquaintance of Dr. Delany, an Irish
clergyman, whom she was to marry in 1743.
Handel did not leave London until the first week of November. During
the summer he had been occupied with the composition of a new oratorio,
_Messiah_, the words for which had been chosen and arranged by Jennens,
apparently with a good deal of assistance from his chaplain, the Rev. Mr.
Pooley. Whether _Messiah_ was composed with a view to production in Dublin
is not known; it was begun on August 22 and finished on September 14. A
fortnight later he had completed the first act of _Samson_. On the way to
Holyhead he stopped at Chester, where he was obliged to stay several days
on account of contrary winds which prevented his embarking. He seized
the opportunity to try over some of the choruses of _Messiah_ with local
church-singers, and Burney, who was at school at Chester, gives an amusing
account of the little rehearsal, at which Handel was roused to grotesque
fury by the inability of the bass, a printer by trade, to read "And with
His stripes" at sight. On November 18 he arrived in Dublin, and opened his
season at Neal's new music-hall in Fishamble Street on December 23 with a
performance of _L'Allegro_, interspersed with concertos. A few days later
he wrote a long letter to Jennens describing the unprecedented success
which he had enjoyed. Dublin received him with open arms, and he thoroughly
enjoyed his triumph, the more so as he felt himself to be in unusually good
health.
A series of concerts followed, at which various oratorios and other works
were performed. On April 8, 1742, there was a rehearsal of _Messiah_, open
to those who had taken tickets for the first performance, which took place
on Tuesday, April 13. The choir was provided by the singers from the two
cathedrals, some of whom took the male solo parts as well; the female
soloists were Mrs. Cibber and Signora Avolio. Over seven hundred persons
were present, and about £400 was divided between the three charities, the
Relief of Prisoners, Mercer's Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary.
_Saul_ was performed on May 25, and a second performance of _Messiah_ took
place on June 3. Handel left Ireland on August 13. In another letter to
Jennens he says that his plans for the winter are undecided; for "this time
twelve-month" (i.e. September 1743) he intended to continue his oratorios
in Ireland. For some reason or other this second visit to Ireland never
took place.
It was not until February 17, 1743, that Handel came before the London
public again with _Samson_, which, unlike most of his oratorios, had
an immediate success. He had by this time dropped the Italian singers
altogether, and depended mainly on Mrs. Cibber and John Beard, a tenor who
had more sense of artistic style than power of voice. Mr. Flower says that
his voice was more powerful than sweet; Horace Walpole, who heard him, said
that he had only one note in it, and Mrs. Pendarves, whose judgment was
probably more trustworthy, said that he had no voice at all. The first
London performance of _Messiah_ was given on March 23, but it had no more
than two subsequent repetitions this season. There were many reasons why it
should have fallen flat. Jennens himself was extremely dissatisfied with
it. _Israel_ had been a failure too, and it is extremely probable that
musical people, accustomed to the Italian opera, were estranged by a
setting of Bible words in prose instead of a libretto in verse laid out on
more or less dramatic lines.
William Law's _Serious Call_ had been published in 1729; the book makes
frequent allusions to the frivolity of Italian opera, and opera-going is
picked out as one of the chief characteristics of irreligious persons. In
1739 John Wesley first began to preach in the open air; in 1742 Edward
Young's _Night Thoughts_ achieved its extraordinary popularity. These three
events were all significant of the religious movement that was taking place
among the more cultured classes in England, and this movement undoubtedly
affected Handel's oratorio concerts. The ultra-religious were shocked
at the association of sacred subjects with the theatre; those who could
combine religion with culture, like Mrs. Delany, who was now approaching
the age of piety, were Handel's most earnest supporters. It is quite
probable that the section of society which preferred its culture unmixed
with religion resented the attitude of the second party even more than that
of the first, because the second party belonged to their own social class,
and this resentment may well have contributed to the ever-increasing
hostility shown by many social leaders toward Handel. And Handel's personal
oddities were becoming rapidly more acute, partly owing to increasing age,
and still more owing to recurrences of paralysis and associated mental
derangement. He had another attack in this very year--1743.
_Messiah_ and _Samson_ were composed at a more favourable moment, and show
little use of borrowed material, except that _Messiah_ incorporates some
of Handel's own chamber duets, the melodies of which were more suitably
illustrative of their original Italian words than of the sentences from
Scripture to which he adapted them. But his next important work, the _Te
Deum_ in celebration of the victory at Dettingen (June 27), begun in July
and performed on November 27, incorporates no less than nine movements from
the Latin _Te Deum_ by Urio already drawn upon for _Israel in Egypt_. Mrs.
Delany "was all raptures," and thought it "excessively fine."
It is curious that, whereas the Dettingen _Te Deum_ was largely based on
borrowed material, Semele, composed in the previous month of June, should
be, as far as is at present known, entirely original. The libretto had been
written by Congreve in 1707 for an opera, and it was only natural that
its theatrical sense and its literary grace and distinction should have
inspired Handel to one of his loveliest works. Handel was never quite at
home in the English language, but in his later years he seems to have
developed a feeling for English poetry, more especially for that of
approximately his own time. But _Semele_ did not attract the opera
audience; it became increasingly clear that the opera party would have
nothing to do with Handel, and were in fact deliberately doing all they
could to bring him to ruin. Mrs. Delany and a few other great ladies
remained faithful, but they were in a small minority. It was evidently the
younger generation who were in opposition; Mrs. Delany alludes to them as
"the Goths--the fine ladies, the _petits maîtres_ and the ignoramuses," and
seemed surprised that they allowed the oratorio to be performed without
making a disturbance. Mrs. Delany was settling down to being the wife of a
dean.
_Joseph_ (March 2, 1744) fared no better, and Handel himself "was mightily
out of humour about it" at the rehearsals. The summer was devoted to the
composition of _Belshazzar_, for which Jennens had supplied the libretto.
The collaboration was not altogether happy, for although Jennens had
considerable sense of the picturesque, and offered Handel opportunities for
what may be called spectacular music on the grand scale, his literary style
was pompous, rhetorical, and long-winded. Handel protested perpetually
against the length of the work, for the Handelian style of composition
naturally extended the prolixity of the words; Jennens greatly resented the
musician's criticism, and insisted on printing the poem in full.
When the winter came, Handel produced nothing of importance until January
5, when he brought out _Hercules_, a secular oratorio which he had composed
in the summer during intervals when _Belshazzar_ had to be laid aside owing
to Jennens' delays. _Belshazzar_ was given on March 27. _Semele, Joseph_,
and _Saul_ were revived, but, whatever oratorio was given, the theatre was
almost empty, and the season came to a premature end on April 23. Handel
was again suffering from some form of illness, and was unable to take any
part in the performances, although he was present at them. Lady Shaftesbury
describes "the great, though unhappy, Handel, dejected, wan and dark,
sitting by, not playing on, the harpsichord," and adds that "his light had
been spent in being overplied in music's cause." Hawkins states definitely
that Handel became blind in 1751, and this date has been generally
accepted; Lady Shaftesbury's letter suggests that he was already blind,
or partially so, as early as March 1745, unless the word "light" is to be
taken as meaning the light of his reason. This interpretation, in fact, is
confirmed by a later letter of Lord Shaftesbury in October, in which he
says: "Poor Handel looks something better. I hope he will entirely recover
in due time, though he has been a good deal disordered in the head."
Another friend of Handel's, William Harris, met him in London, in August,
when he seems at first not to have recognised Harris and to have behaved
with some oddity; "he talked much of his precarious state of health, yet he
looks well enough."
It has generally been stated that in 1745 Handel again became bankrupt, but
Barclay Squire pointed out that his name does not occur in the official
lists of bankrupts. It must be remembered that, however disastrous his
opera or oratorio seasons were, he had always his permanent pension of £600
a year to fall back on, and Hawkins states that this pension, originally
granted by Queen Anne and George I, was punctually paid throughout his
life.
From the end of August, London was in a panic over the Jacobite rebellion
under the Young Pretender, Charles Edward. The Opera remained closed on
account of the prejudice against the Papist Italian singers; at the other
theatres patriotism expressed itself in appropriate music. Purcell's
"Genius of England" was sung at one, Arne's recently composed "Rule,
Britannia" at another, and on November 14 a "Chorus Song, set by Mr. Handel
for the _Gentlemen Volunteers_ of the City of London," was sung by Mr. Lowe
at Drury Lane. The words suggest that the anonymous author was familiar
with the Epilogue to Purcell's _King Arthur_; Handel's music is neither in
his own style nor in Purcell's, but resembles the poorest sort of English
patriotic song of the early eighteenth century. Patriotic poetry was well
illustrated by an additional verse for "God Save the King" which was
printed in this same month:
_From France and Pretender
Great Britain defend her,
Foes let them fall;
From foreign slavery,
Priests and their knavery,
And Popish Reverie,
God save us all._
On December 6 the Pretender began his retreat from Derby, and panic was
allayed. Handel seized the opportunity to compose and bring out his
_Occasional Oratorio_, about half of which was taken from _Israel in
Egypt_; it contains a well-known quotation of "Rule, Britannia," and the
point of the quotation is made clearer when we know that it was one of the
patriotic songs sung at the theatres during the period of panic.
The Duke of Cumberland's defeat of the Pretender at Culloden on April
16, 1746, finally disposed of the Jacobites, and Handel made a further
contribution to the national rejoicings in "A Song on the Victory over the
Rebels," which was printed in the _London Magazine_ for July. The words
were by John Lockman; the first and last verses are as follows:
_From scourging rebellion and baffling proud France,
Crown'd with laurels behold British William advance:
His triumph to grace and distinguish the day,
The sun brighter shines and all nature's gay.
Ye warriors on whom we due honours bestow,
O think on the source whence our late evils flow;
Commanded by William, strike next at the Gaul,
And fix those in chains would Britain enthral._
In the same month Handel began the composition of a new oratorio in honour
of the Duke; this was _Judas Maccabaeus_, for which he had discovered a
new librettist, the Rev. Thomas Morell, formerly Fellow of King's College,
Cambridge. Morell has given a lively account of his collaboration with the
great man, whom he did not fear to criticise. Handel's retorts to him have
been reproduced as if they were outbursts of righteous indignation against
a snarling poetaster, but, in view of many other records of Handel's
rough tongue and genial humour (in which he seems often to have resembled
Brahms), we need not take them too seriously. It is quite clear that
Morell was more amused than offended, and the fact that they continued to
collaborate up to the end of Handel's career as a composer shows that they
must have remained on completely friendly terms.
Morell, to judge from the contemporary portrait of him, must have been a
rather comic little figure with a strong sense of humour. He was a scholar,
and something of a musician too. The academic primness of his verses has
endeared him to all lovers of Handel, and to no one more than Samuel
Butler; they are always admirably suited to their purpose, neat and
scholarly, concise and direct, with never a word too many. They run easily
for a singer, and it is not improbable that Morell was acquainted with the
works of that great model of all opera-poets, Metastasio, for his words,
like Metastasio's, acquire an unexpected beauty when they are sung.
Handel must have felt himself fully restored to health in the summer
of 1746, for _Judas_, which was written in five weeks, contains no
"borrowings," apart from a few numbers added some ten years later and
adapted from some of his early Italian opera songs. It was not performed
until April 1, 1747.