He was perfectly satisfied with the visible
and audible world his energy and imagination created out of things;
about the why and wherefore of things he seems never to have troubled;
his soul asked no questions, and he was never driven to accept a
religious or any other explanation. It is true he went to church with
quite commendable regularity, and wished to die on Good Friday and so
meet Jesus Christ on the anniversary of the resurrection. But he was
nevertheless as completely a pagan as any old Greek; the persons of
the Trinity were to him very solid entities; if he wished to die on
Good Friday, depend upon it, he fully meant to enter heaven in his
finest scarlet coat with ample gold lace and a sword by his side, to
make a stately bow to the assembled company and then offer a few
apposite and doubtless pungent remarks on the proper method of tuning
harps. Of true devotional feeling, of the ecstatic devotional feeling
of Palestrina and of Bach, there is in no recorded saying of his a
trace, and there is not a trace of it in his music. When he was
writing the "Hallelujah Chorus" he imagined he saw God on His throne,
just as in writing "Semele" he probably imagined he saw Jupiter on his
throne; and the fact proves only with what intensity and power his
imagination was working, and how far removed he was from the genuine
devotional frame of mind.
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