Handel was struck in 1737 when he was 53
years old, but happily recovered. I forget Madame Patey's exact age,
but it was somewhere about this.
Handel and Shakespeare
Jones and I had been listening to Gaetano Meo's girls playing Handel
and were talking about him and Shakespeare, and how those two men can
alike stir us more than any one else can. Neither were self-
conscious in production, but when the thing had come out Shakespeare
looks at it and wonders, whereas Handel takes it as a matter of
course.
A Yankee Handelian
I only ever met one American who seemed to like and understand
Handel. How far he did so in reality I do not know, but inter alia
he said that Handel "struck ile with the Messiah," and that "it
panned out well, the Messiah did."
Waste
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.
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