[119] Concerning Steffani, see page 51 and following. It seems quite compatible with this meeting with Handel at Rome in 1709 to relate the story made by Handel of a concert at Ottoboni's, where Steffani supplied the improvisation of one of the chief singers with a consummate art. Chrysander places this story at the time of the second Italian journey of Handel in 1729, but that is impossible, for Steffani died in February, 1728. [120] That is to say on December 26, 1709. That is the date which the recent researches of Mr. Ademollo and Mr. Streatfeild have established in accordance with the indications of the contemporary histories of Handel by Mattheson, Marpurg, and Burney, of the date inscribed on the _libretto_ itself. This contradicts the statement of Chrysander adopted on his authority by most of the musical writers of our own time, stating that _Agrippina_ was played at Venice in the Carnival of 1708. [121] There was so much probability of this that he tried his hand on the French vocal style by writing seven French songs, of which the manuscript was carefully revised by him, for the sheets contain evidences of a close revision in pencil. How changed things would have been there if he had really come and settled in the interregnum between Lully and Rameau. He had that quality which none of the French musicians possessed--a superabundance of music, and he had not that which they had got--lucid intelligence and a penetration into the true need of the musical drama and its possibilities. (It was at that time that Lecerf de la Viéville wrote his _Comparaison de la musique française et de la musique italienne_, of which certain pages forestall the musical creed of Gluck.) If Handel had come to France, I am convinced that that reform would have been brought about sixty years sooner, and with a wealth of music which Gluck never possessed. [122] It is the language which he used in his correspondence, even with his own family, and his style, always very correct, had the fine courtesy of the court of Louis XIV. [123] _Esther, Athalie, Theodore, Vierge d'Martyre._ [124] Even in 1734 Séré de Rieux wrote of Handel: "His composition, infinitely clever and gracious, seems to approach nearer to our taste than any other in Europe" (p. 29 of _Enfants de Latone_, poems dedicated to the King). Handel particularly pleased the French because his Italianism was always restrained by reason, and French musicians loved to think that logic was totally French. "Son caractère fort, nouveau, brillant, égal, Du sens judicieux suit la constante trace, Et ne s'arme jamais d'une insolente audace." _Ibid._ (pp. 102-3.) [125] See the book abounding in picturesque documents by Georg Fischer, _Musik in Hannover_, Second Edition, 1903. [126] In 1676, Leibnitz was then thirty years old. He received the title of Councillor and President of the Library at the Castle.