Within the hollow of that shell
That spoke so sweetly and so well.

This was the second great event in his life, and henceforward Italy
and Handel were always present at the bottom of his mind as a kind
of double pedal to every thought, word, and deed. Almost the last
thing he ever asked me to do for him, within a few days of his
death, was to bring Solomon that he might refresh his memory as to
the harmonies of "With thee th' unsheltered moor I'd trace." He
often tried to like the music of Bach and Beethoven, but found
himself compelled to give them up--they bored him too much. Nor was
he more successful with the other great composers; Haydn, for
instance, was a sort of Horace, an agreeable, facile man of the
world, while Mozart, who must have loved Handel, for he wrote
additional accompaniments to the Messiah, failed to move him. It
was not that he disputed the greatness of these composers, but he
was out of sympathy with them, and never could forgive the last two
for having led music astray from the Handel tradition and paved the
road from Bach to Beethoven. Everything connected with Handel
interested him. He remembered old Mr. Brooke, Rector of Gamston,
North Notts, who had been present at the Handel Commemoration in
1784, and his great-aunt, Miss Susannah Apthorp, of Cambridge, had
known a lady who had sat upon Handel's knee. He often regretted
that these were his only links with "the greatest of all composers."

Besides his love for Handel he had a strong liking for drawing, and,
during the winter of 1853-4, his family again took him to Italy,
where, being now eighteen, he looked on the works of the old masters
with intelligence.