gaily led it to its ruin. He led the life of a gay libertine, and all the artists around him rivalled him in his follies. Alone Handel held aloof from the follies, working hard, and spending only what was barely necessary.[84] After the success of these two operas he resigned his post as second violin and clavecinist to the orchestra, but continued to give lessons, and his reputation as a composer kept pace with that of his teaching. Keiser was uneasy. Handel’s increasing reputation aroused his amour-propre. Nothing was more stupid, however, than his jealousy. He was Director of the Opera, and it was in his interest to give those pieces which were written by popular composers, and to maintain relationships with successful composers, but jealousy knows no reason. He reset Almira and Nero to music in order to put Handel out of joint,[85] and as he had not the opportunity of publishing his opera in toto he hastily printed the most taking solos from each.[86] But, however quickly he went, his downfall followed faster. Before the volume of his opera airs appeared he had to fly. This was in the end of 1706.[87] Handel and he were destined never to meet again.

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Keiser having brought disaster to the Hamburg Opera, there was nothing left to keep Handel in that city. The direction of the theatre had fallen into the hands of a Philistine, who, to make money, played musical farces. He certainly commissioned Handel for the opera Florindo und Daphne, but he mutilated the work on its presentation “for fear,” so he said in the Preface of the libretto, “that the music might tire the hearers”; and lest the public should find the work too serious, he intersected it with a farce in low German, Die lustige Hochzeit (The Joyous Wedding). One can well understand that Handel was little interested in his piece so disfigured, and that he did not himself attend the production, but quitted Hamburg. It was about the autumn of 1706 that he made the journey to Italy.[88] It was not, however, that Italy particularly attracted him. Strange to say—it is not unique in the history of art—this man, who was later on to be caught by the fascination of Italy, and secure an European musical triumph in the beautiful Italian style, had then a very strong repugnance for the foreign art. When Almira was being given, he made the acquaintance of the Italian prince, Giovanni Gastone dei Medici, brother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[89] He was astonished that Handel interested himself so little in the Italian musicians, and bought him a collection of their best works, offering to take him to Florence to hear them performed. But Handel refused, saying that he could find nothing in these works which deserved the Prince’s eulogies, and that angels would be necessary to sing them in order to make such mediocre things sound even agreeable.[90] This disdain of Italy was not peculiar to Handel. It characterised his generation, and above all, the cult of German musicians who lived at Hamburg. Before then, and later on, the fascination of Italy took hold of Germany. Even Hasler, Schütz, Hasse, Gluck, and Mozart made long and earnest pilgrimages to that country, but on the other hand J. S. Bach, Keiser, Mattheson, and Telemann never went there. The Hamburg musicians truly wished to assimilate the Italian art, but they never wished to place themselves under the thraldom of the Italian school. They had the laudable ambition of creating a German style independent of foreign influences. Handel shared these great hopes, sustained for a time by the theatre at Hamburg, but the sudden collapse of this theatre made him see little ground on which to build up the taste of the musical public in Germany, and against his own inclinations, he turned his eyes towards that habitual refuge of German artists: Italy, which the older ones so affected to disdain, that country where music expanded itself in the sun, where it was not cheated out of its right of existence as with the Hamburg Pietists. It flourished in all the Italian cities, and in all classes of Italian society with the transports of love. And all around it was an efflorescence of the other arts, a superior civilization, a life smiling and radiant, of which Handel had some foretaste in his dealings with the Italian nobles who passed through Hamburg.

He departed. His leaving was so brusque that his friends knew nothing of it. He did not even say good-bye to Mattheson.

The period at which he arrived in Italy was not the most fortunate. The war for the Spanish Succession was in full swing, and Handel met at Venice, in the winter of 1706, Prince Eugène and his staff-major, who were resting after their victorious campaign in Lombardy. He did not stay there, but went right on to Florence, where he remained till the end of the year.[91]

Doubtless he bore these offers of protection in mind which the Prince Gastone dei Medici had made him. Was such protection as useful to Handel as he had hoped? One may be allowed to doubt it. In truth the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand, was a musician. He played the clavier well;[92] he had caused an opera house to be built in his villa at Pratolino; he chose the libretti, advised the composers, corresponded with Alessandro Scarlatti, but he had never a very reliable taste. He found Scarlatti’s style too learned. He begged him to write some easier music, and, as far as possible, lighter.[93] He himself did not continue the fastidiousness of the Medici, his ancestors. He somewhat stinted his outlay on music. He decided not to appoint Scarlatti his chapel-master, and when this great artist asked for money at a period of embarrassment he responded “that he would pray for him.”[94] One can scarcely believe that he was less economical in his dealings with Handel, who had less reputation than Scarlatti. He seems to have