listening to the admirable complaint of his blind Samson. But in 1753, when the evil was incurable, Handel regained his self-possession. He played the organ again at the twelve performances of oratorios which he gave each year in Lent, and he kept up this custom until his death.
But with his vanished sight he had lost the best source of his inspiration. This man, who was neither an intellectual nor a mystic, one who loved above all things light and nature, beautiful pictures, and the spectacular view of things, who lived more through his eyes than most of the German musicians, was engulfed in deepest night. From 1752 to 1759 he was overtaken by the semiconsciousness which precedes death. He only wrote in 1758 a duet and chorus for Judas Maccabæus, "Zion now her head shall raise," and reviving in that the happy times of other days he took up a work of his youth, the Trionfo del Tempo[1] which he now gave in a new version in March, 1757: The Triumph of Time and Truth.[2]
On April 6, 1759, he again took the organ at a production of The Messiah. His powers failed him in the middle of a movement. He soon recovered himself and improvised (it is said) with his habitual grandeur. Returned home he took to bed. On April 11 he added a last codicil to his will,[3] bequeath-
- ↑ Written in 1708 at Rome.
- ↑ Handel had already regiven the Italian work with some rearrangements and editions in 1737. Thomas Morell adapted the poem to English, and extended the two acts into three.
- ↑ This will was written since 1750. Handel added codicils to it in August 1756, March and August, 1757, April, 1759, He nominated his niece, Johanna Friderica Flœrchen, of Gotha, nee Michaelsen, his sole executor. He made several gifts to his friends—to Christopher Smith, to John Rich, to Jennens, to Newburgh Hamilton, to Thomas Morell, and others. He did not forget any of his numerous servants. He left a fortune of about twenty-five thousand pounds, which he had made entirely in his last ten years; he possessed also a fine collection of musical instruments and a picture gallery in which were two Rembrandts.
