of impact.

Duplessis's portrait of Gluck almost takes the man out of paint to put
him in flesh and blood. He looks down with wide-open eyes, swelling
nostrils, firm mouth, and massive chin. The noble brow, dome-like
and expanded, relieves the massiveness of his face; and the whole
countenance and figure express the repose of a powerful and passionate
nature schooled into balance and symmetry: altogether the presentment
of a great man, who felt that he could move the world and had found the
_pou sto_. Of a large and robust type of physical beauty, Nature seems
to have endowed him on every hand with splendid gifts. Such a man as
this could say with calm simplicity to Marie Antoinette, who inquired
one night about his new opera of "Armida," then nearly finished:
"_Madame, il est bientôt fini, et vraiment ce sera superbe._"

One night Handel listened to a new opera from a young and unknown
composer, the "Caduta de' Giganti," one of Gluck's very earliest works,
written when he was yet corrupted with all the vices of the Italian
method. "Mein Gott! he is an idiot," said Handel; "he knows no more of
counterpoint then mein cook." Handel did not see with prophetic eyes. He
never met Gluck afterward, and we do not know his later opinion of the
composer of "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Iphigenia in Tauris." But Gluck
had ever the profoundest admiration for the author of the "Messiah."
There was something in these two strikingly similar, as their music was
alike characterized by massive simplicity and strength, not rough-hewn,
but shaped into austere beauty.

Before we relate the great episode of our composer's life, let us take
a backward glance at his youth. He was the son of a forester in the
service of Prince Lobkowitz born at Weidenwang in the Upper Palatinate,