already devoured. For why; a journey to Tartarus and conquest of gloomy Dis would hardly, in the natural state of society, be undertaken on a biscuit and a glass of lemonade. And when England was yet fresh from her grand revolution, and John Bull still cordially enjoyed his yule logs and Christmas feasts, “glorious John Dryden” was not ashamed to write thus of the heroes,—
“And when the rage of hunger was appeased.”
Then a man was not ashamed of being not only a man in mind, but every inch a man. And Handel surely did not neglect to labour after he had feasted. Beautiful are the upward tending, slender stemmed plants! Not less beautiful and longer lived, those of stronger root, more powerful trunk, more spreading branches! Let each be true to his law; concord, not monotony, is music. We thank thee, Nature, for Handel, we thank thee for Mozart! Yet one story from the Life of Handel ere we pass on. It must interest all who have observed the same phenomenon of a person exquisitely alive to the music of verse, stupified and bewildered by other music.
“Pope often met Handel at the Earl of Burlington’s. One day after Handel had played some of the finest things he ever composed, Mr. Pope declared that they gave him no sort of pleasure; that his ears were of that untoward make, and reprobate cast, as to receive his music, which he was persuaded was the best that could be, with as much indifference as the airs of a common ballad. A person of his excellent understanding, it is hard to suspect of affectation. And yet it is as hard to conceive how an ear, so perfectly attentive to all the delicacies of rhythm and poetical numbers, should be totally insensible to the charm of musical sounds. An attentiveness, too, which was as discernible in his manner of reading, as it is in his method of writing.”—Life of Handel.
The principal facts of that apparition which bore the name of Mozart, are well known. His precocious development was far more precocious than that of any other artist on record. (And here let us observe another correspondence between music and
