[87] For the space of two years no one knew what had become of him, for he had taken care to elude the restraint of his creditors. At the beginning of 1709 he quietly reappeared in Hamburg, took up again his post and his glory, without anyone dreaming of reproaching him, but then Handel was no longer at Hamburg. [88] Besides the operas, and his _Passion_, Handel wrote at Hamburg a large number of cantatas, songs, and clavier works. Mainwaring assures us that he had two cases full of them. Mattheson doubts the truth of this statement, but the ignorance which he shows on this subject only goes to prove his growing estrangement from Handel, for we have since found both in his clavier book, etc. (Volume XLVIII of the complete works), and in the Sonatas (Volume XXVII) a number of compositions which certainly date from the Hamburg period 1705 or 1706. [89] He was the last of the Medici. He came to the title in 1723, but after several years of brilliant rule he retired into solitude, sick in body and in spirit (see Reumont: _Toscana_, and Robiony: _Gli Ultimi dei Medici_). [90] Later on Handel said after he had been to Italy that he never had imagined that Italian music, which appears so ordinary and empty on paper, could make such a good effect in the theatre itself. [91] Mr. R. A. Streatfeild believes that he even stayed in Florence until October, 1706, for the Prince Gastone dei Medici, who ought to have presented him to the Grand Duke, left Florence in November, 1706. He also places in this first sojourn in Florence the production of Handel's _Roderigo_, of which all precise records in the archives of the Medicis and the papers of the time are lost. I am more inclined to follow the traditional opinion that _Roderigo_ dates from Handel's second stay in Florence, when he commenced to work in the Italian language and style. [92] Bartolommeo Christofori, inventor of the pianoforte, made several very interesting instruments for him. [93] April 2, 1706. [94] April 23, 1707. See Edward Dent: _Alessandro Scarlatti_. [95] Volume LI of the Complete Works. It was pretended at the time that this _Lucretia_ was written by one Lucretia, a singer at the court of Tuscany, who showed Handel for the first time the great beauty of the Italian song--and of the Italians. [96] The whole of Europe in the commencement of the eighteenth century had passed through a vogue of Pietism. Historians have scarcely paid sufficient attention to local influences. It was thus that they attributed the reawakening of the religious spirit in France entirely to the influence of Louis XIV. Analogous phenomena were produced in Italy, in Germany, and in England, at the same time. There were great moral forces awakening, which, one cannot exactly say why, suddenly broke out over the whole of the civilized world like a stroke of fever. [97] A _Dixit Dominus_ is dated April 4, 1707; a _Laudate Pueri_, July 8, 1707.