chorded shell" in the 'Song for Saint Cecilia's Day':


Less than a god, they thought, there could not dwell
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.