into the garret a spinet, which is a kind of piano. By placing cloth
upon the strings he so deadened the wires that no one downstairs could
hear the tones when the spinet was played. And day after day this
little lad would sit alone in his garret, learning more and more about
the wonders which his heart and his head told him were in the tiny
half-dumb spinet before him. Not the more cheerful rooms down-stairs
nor the games of his playmates drew him away from the music he loved,
the music which he felt in his heart, remember.

One would expect such determination to show itself in many ways. It
did. Handel does not disappoint us in this. All through his life he
had strong purposes and a strong will--concentration--which led him
forward. You know how he followed his father's coach once. Perhaps it
was disobedience,--but what a fine thing happened when he reached the
duke's palace and played the organ. From that day every one knew that
his life would be devoted to music. Sometimes at home, sometimes in
foreign lands, he was always working, thinking, learning. He is said,
in his boyhood, to have copied large quantities of music, and to have
composed something every week. This copying made him better acquainted
with other music, and the early habit of composition made it easy for
him to write his thoughts in after years. Indeed, so skilled did he
become, that he wrote one opera--"Rinaldo"--in fourteen days, and the
"Messiah" was written in twenty-four days.[63]

Yet parts of his great works he wrote and rewrote until they were
exactly as they should be. _It will do_ is a thought that never comes
into the head of a great artist. How do you imagine such a man was to
his friends? We are told that, "he was in character at once great and
simple." And again it has been said that, "his smile was like heaven."