The hopes which Handel had founded on England caused him fresh uneasiness. Times were hard. Since the winter of 1739, theatrical performances, and even concerts, were suspended for several months on account of the war, and the extreme cold. Handel, to keep himself warm, wrote in eight days the little Ode to St. Cecilia (November 29, 1739); in sixteen days L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, ed Il Moderato of Milton (January-February, 1740); in a month the Concerti Grossi, Opus 6.[238] But the success of these charming works, graven out with loving care, into which Handel had perhaps put more than into any other his own personal feelings, his poetic and humorous reproductions of nature,[239] was hardly sufficient yet to establish his affairs, at one time so embarrassed. Once more, as in the time of Deborah and Arianna, he was attacked by a coalition of fashionable people. One does not know how Handel had wounded them,[240] but they were resolved on his downfall. They avoided his concerts. They even paid men to pull down his placards in the streets. Handel, tired and disheartened, suddenly threw up the combat.[241] He decided to leave England, where he had lived for nearly thirty years, and where he had increased his fame so much. He announced his last concert for April 8, 1741.[242]
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It is a remarkable thing that often in the lives of the great men, just at the moment when all seems lost, or things are at their lowest ebb, they are nearest to the fulfilment of their destiny. Handel appeared vanquished. Just at that very hour he wrote a work which was destined to establish permanently his immortality.
He left London.[243] The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland invited him to Dublin to direct some concerts. Thus it was, so he said, “in order to offer this generous and polished nation something new” that he composed The Messiah on a poem by his friend Jennens.[244] They had already given many of his religious works in Dublin for charitable concerts.[245] Handel was received enthusiastically. The letter which he wrote on December 29 to Jennens bubbles over with joy. The time which he passed in Dublin was, together with his early years in Italy, the happiest in his life. From December 23, 1741, to April 7, 1742, he gave two series of six concerts, and always with the same success. Finally, on April 12, the first hearing of The Messiah took place in Dublin. The proceeds of the concert were devoted to charitable objects, and the success was very considerable.[246]
Eight days after having finished The Messiah (that is to say, before he had yet arrived in Ireland) Handel had commenced Samson, which was finished in five weeks, from the end of September to the end of October, 1741. However, he did not give it in Dublin. Doubtless he could not find the interpreters which he desired for this colossal drama, rich in choral scenes and in difficult rôles.[247] Perhaps also he reserved the work for the following season in Dublin, when he hoped to return, but the expected invitation which he awaited in London did not come, and it was in London that Samson reached its first hearing on February 18, 1743.
To this heroic oratorio, based on the sublime Samson Agonistes of Milton,[248] succeeded a light opera, which bore, nevertheless, the name of oratorio, the libretto of which was based on a poem by Congreve: Semele (June 3 to July 4, 1743). It afforded a relief for him between these two Herculean works. In the same month in which he finished Semele, Handel wrote his monumental Dettingen Te Deum, to celebrate the victory of the Duke of Cumberland over the French.[249] Joseph, written in August and September of the same year, on a very touching poem by James Miller, reveals a sweet yet melancholy fancy, a little insipid, on which, however, the strong portrait of Simeon projects itself forcibly.
1744 was one of Handel’s most glorious years from the creative point of view, but one of the most miserable in outward success. He wrote nearly simultaneously his two most tragic oratorios, the great Shakespearian drama of Belshazzar (July-October, 1744), the rich poem of which was furnished for him by his friend Jennens;[250] and the sublime tragedy of the ancient Hercules, a musical drama,[251] which marks the culmination of the Handelian musical drama, and indeed one might say of the whole musical theatre before Gluck.
Never was the hostility of the English public more roused against him. The same hateful cabal which had already thrice threatened to bring about his downfall again rose against him. They invited the fashionable world in London to their fêtes, specially organised on the days when the performances of his oratorios were to have taken place, with the object of robbing him of his audience. Bolingbroke and Smollett both speak of the plots of certain ladies to ruin Handel. Horace Walpole says that it was the fashion to go to the Italian Opera when Handel directed his oratorio concerts. Handel, whose force of energy and genius had weakened since his first failure of 1735, was involved afresh in bankruptcy at the beginning of 1745. His griefs and troubles, and the prodigious expenditure of force which he made, seemed again on the point of turning his brain. He fell into extreme bodily prostration and lowness of spirit, similar to that of 1737, and this lasted for the space of eight months, from March to October, 1745.[252] By a miracle he was able to rise out of this abyss, and by unforeseen events, where music was his only aid, he became more popular than he ever was before.
The Pretender, Charles Edward, landed in Scotland; the country rose up. An army of Highlanders marched on London. The city was in consternation. A great national movement arose in England, Handel associated himself with it. On November 14, 1745, he brought to light at Drury Lane his Song made for the Gentlemen Volunteers of the City of London,[253] and he wrote two oratorios, which were, so to speak, immense national hymns: the Occasional Oratorio,[254] where Handel called the English to rise up against invasion, and Judas Maccabæus[255] (July 9 to August 11, 1746), the Hymn of Victory, written after the rout of the rebels at Culloden Moor, and for the fête on the return of the conqueror, the ferocious Duke of Cumberland, to whom the poem was dedicated.
These two patriotic oratorios, where Handel’s heart beat with that of England, and of which the second, Judas Maccabæus, has retained even to our own day its great popularity, thanks to its broad style and the spirit which animates it,[256] brought more fortune to Handel than all the rest of his works together. After thirty-five years of continuous struggle, plot and counterplot, he had at last obtained a decisive victory. He became by the force of events the national musician of England.