questions, and he was never driven to accept a
religious or any other explanation. It is true he went to church with
quite commendable regularity, and wished to die on Good Friday and so
meet Jesus Christ on the anniversary of the resurrection. But he was
nevertheless as completely a pagan as any old Greek; the persons of
the Trinity were to him very solid entities; if he wished to die on
Good Friday, depend upon it, he fully meant to enter heaven in his
finest scarlet coat with ample gold lace and a sword by his side, to
make a stately bow to the assembled company and then offer a few
apposite and doubtless pungent remarks on the proper method of tuning
harps. Of true devotional feeling, of the ecstatic devotional feeling
of Palestrina and of Bach, there is in no recorded saying of his a
trace, and there is not a trace of it in his music. When he was
writing the "Hallelujah Chorus" he imagined he saw God on His throne,
just as in writing "Semele" he probably imagined he saw Jupiter on his
throne; and the fact proves only with what intensity and power his
imagination was working, and how far removed he was from the genuine
devotional frame of mind. There is not the slightest difference in
style between his secular and his sacred music; he treats sacred and
secular subjects precisely alike. In music his intention was never to
reveal his own state of mind, but always to depict some object, some
scene. Now, never did he adhere with apparently greater resolution to
this plan, never therefore did he produce a more essentially secular
work, than in the "Messiah." One need only consider such numbers as
"All they that see Him" and "Behold the Lamb of God" to realise this;
though, indeed, there is not a number in the oratorio that does not
show it with sufficient clearness. But fully to understand Handel and
realise his greatness, it is not enough merely to know the spirit in
which he worked: one must know also his method of depicting things and
scenes. He was wholly an impressionist--in his youth from choice, as
when he wrote the music of "Rinaldo" faster than the librettist could
supply the words; in middle age and afterwards from necessity, as he
never had time to write save when circumstances freed him for a few
days from the active duties of an impresario. He tried to do, and
succeeded in doing, everything with a few powerful strokes, a few
splashes of colour. Of the careful elaboration of Bach, of Beethoven,
even of Mozart