closed for eighteen months. His career as
manager was an unlucky one, till his own
oratorio, Esther, being produced by a speculator,
he was stimulated to produce it himself,
at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket,
and did so " By His Majesty's command." It
was to be " performed by a great number of
voices and instruments. N.B. There will be
no acting on the stage, but the house will be
fitted up in a decent manner for the audience."
The success was complete, and from
the year in which it was obtained—the year
seventeen hundred and thirty-two, when
Handel had attained the age of forty-seven—
the real establishment of oratorios in England
dates.

The success of Esther caused Handel to
write at once another work in the same vein;
at the close of the operatic season before
Easter, he accordingly produced his Deborah.
In Esther he had used the chorus more than
had been customary among the Italians; in
Deborah he developed still further the use of
the band and chorus, and for the combinations
he effected was accused of violence and
noise. Many of his friends said that he tore
their ears to pieces; the king's notion of
Handel's taste was expressed when, at a
concert, while the trumpets were sounding, a
storm raged outside, and a tremendous clap
of thunder broke over the palace. "How
sublime!" said the king to Lord Pembroke,
" What an accompaniment! How this would
have delighted Handel!"

Almost his next work was the oratorio
Athalia, performed at the Public Act of the
University of Oxford. Because of its success,
Oxford offered the composer the diploma
of Doctor of Music, but he refused it; for,
as he explained the matter to a friend, " Vat
de dyfil I trow my money away for dat which
de blockhead wish ? I no want."

This sort of sturdy temper, sweetened with
but very little patience, helped to embroil
Handel more and more in opera polemics.
The nobility turned against him on some
question about singers. He defied the nobility,
and opened an opera-house at the theatre
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to do battle with that
which they took from him. For five years
after the production of Athalia he produced
no more oratorios, but he wrote operas, and
carried on the battle with the rival opera-
house until he was nearly ruined. King
George the Second held by Handel, though
the court deserted him. " What, my lord,"
said some one to Lord Chesterfield, who saw
him coming out of Handel's theatre in the
middle of the performance, " is there not an
oratorio?" " Yes," he replied, " they are
now performing; but I thought it best to
retire, lest I should disturb the king in his
privacies."

At last there was another complete break
down of the Italian opera; and Handel, in
July, seventeen hundred and thirty-eight,
began to write the oratorio of Saul. He
finished it in a week less than three months,
and three days after having finished Saul he
began Israel in Egypt, which he finished in
twenty-seven days. His age then, was fifty-
three. At the beginning of the next year, he
took the unoccupied opera-house for the
performance of oratorios twice a week, and
produced Israel in Egypt, and announced its
second performance as the last, promising
alterations and additions. After the second
performance, which was a week subsequent
to the first, the newspapers were dumb about
the work. It was performed for a third time
in the week following, and announced for the
week after that; but, on the morning of the
day proposed for the fourth performance the
following notice appeared:

This day, the last new oratorio, called Saul, and not
Israel in Egypt, as by mistake was advertised in
yesterday's bills and papers.

In the following year, Handel risked a
performance of this oratorio,—for that day
only. Then it was laid aside for sixteen
years, and, to sum up the whole result, Israel
in Egypt failed, and was performed only nine
times in the life-time of its author. Its score
was unedited when its author died; not even
one of its songs was published.

Two years and a half after Israel in Egypt
had been produced and had failed, Handel
after much suffering of cross and opposition
from the court party in London, had almost
made up his mind to part from England and
the English; but a short visit among the
Irish gave him heart again. He had been
often invited to Dublin, both by the Duke
of Devonshire, who was the Lord Lieutenant,
and by several musical societies. Having
written the Messiah, he doubtless was not
disposed to risk its contact with the taste of
London, and so—putting himself into
communication with the best of the Dublin
societies by which he had been invited—he
resolved to cross the channel, and, in due
time, produce his new oratorio at the Music
Hall in Fishamble Street, for the benefit of
distressed prisoners for debt. It was produced
there, on the nineteenth of April in
the year seventeen hundred and forty-two;
fifty-seven then being the age of the composer;
the newspaper next day said, it
" was allowed by the greatest judges to be
the finest composition of music that was ever
heard." It was repeated frequently, and
received always so well, that the advertisements,
announcing it on each occasion, begged ladies
to " lay aside their hoops "—as if they would
do so!— "for one evening, however ornamental;
the hall will then contain a hundred
persons more with full ease."

After this, the Messiah was well received
in London, and Handel performed oratorios
every year, composing new ones with
various success. His Judas Maccabæus,
written in thirty-two days was suggested by