by accident in the chapel, and finding it was but a little child, who had been obliged too to cultivate his talent by stealth, in opposition to the wishes of his father, interfered, and removed all obstruction from the course of his destiny.
Like all the great musicians he was precocious. This necessarily results from the more than usually delicate organization they must possess, though, fortunately for the art, none but Mozart has burnt so early with that resplendence that prematurely exhausted his lamp of life. At nine years of age Handel composed in rule, and played admirably on more than one instrument. At fifteen he insisted on playing the first harpsichord at the Hamburg opera house, and again his guardian genius interfered in a manner equally picturesque and peculiar.
“The elder candidate was not unfit for the office, and insisted on the right of succession. Handel seemed to have no plea, but that of natural superiority, of which he was conscious, and from which he would not recede.”
Parties ran high; the one side unwilling that a boy should arrogate a place above a much older man, one who had a prior right to the place, the other maintaining that the opera-house could not afford to lose so great a composer as Handel gave promise of becoming, for a punctilio of this kind. Handel at last obtained the place.
“Determined to make Handel pay dear for his priority, his rival stifled his rage for the present, only to wait an opportunity of giving it full vent. One day, as they were coming out of the orchestra, he made a push at Handel with a sword, which being aimed full at his heart, would forever have removed him from the office he had usurped, but for the friendly score which he accidentally carried in his bosom, and through which to have forced the weapon would have demanded the might of Ajax himself. Had this happened in the early ages, not a mortal but would have been persuaded that Apollo himself had interfered to preserve him, in the shape of a music-book.”
