" The pagan choruses are full of riotous excitement, though there
is not one of them to match "Ye tutelar gods" in "Belshazzar." But
there is little in "Belshazzar" to match the pathos of "Return, O God
of hosts," or "Ye sons of Israel, now lament." The latter is a notable
example of Handel's art. There is not a new phrase in it: nothing,
indeed, could be commoner than the bar at the first occurrence of
"Amongst the dead great Samson lies," and yet the effect is amazing;
and though the "for ever" is as old as Purcell, here it is newly
used--used as if it had never been used before--to utter a depth of
emotion that passes beyond the pathetic to the sublime. This very
vastness of feeling, this power of stepping outside himself and giving
a voice to the general emotions of humanity, prevents us recognising
the personal note in Handel as we recognise it in Mozart. But
occasionally the personal note may be met. The recitative "My genial
spirits fail," with those dreary long-drawn harmonies, and the
orchestral passage pressing wearily downwards at "And lay me gently
down with them that rest," seems almost like Handel's own voice in a
moment of sad depression. It serves, at anyrate, to remind us that the
all-conquering Mr.
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