[280] In the _Harmonicon_ of January, 1824, one finds Beethoven's opinion (quoted by Percy Robinson): "Handel is the greatest composer who has ever lived. I should like to kneel at his tomb." And in a letter from Beethoven to an English lady (published in the _Harmonicon_ of December, 1825): "I adore Handel." We know that after the 9th Symphony he had the plan of writing some grand oratorios in the style of Handel. [281] Schumann wrote to Pohl in 1855, that _Israel in Egypt_ was his "ideal of a choral work," and, wishing to write a work called _Luther_, he defined this music thus, of which he found the ideal realized by Handel: "A popular oratorio that both country and town-people can understand.... A work of simple inspiration, in which the effect depends entirely on the melody and the rhythm, without contrapuntal artifice." Liszt, _apropos_ of the Anthem _Zadock the Priest_, goes into ecstasies over "the genius of Handel, great as the world itself," and very rightly perceives in the author of the _Allegro_ and of _Israel_, a precursor of descriptive music. [282] See, in Chrysander's work, an article by Emil Krause, in the _Monatshefte für Musikwissenschaft_, 1904. [283] A Société G. F. Handel was founded in Paris in 1909, under the direction of two conductors full of zeal and intelligence, MM. F. Borrel and F. Raugal. It has already done much to awaken the love of Handel in France by giving the large works hitherto unknown in France, such as _Hercules_, the _Foundling Anthem_, and the model performances of the _Messiah_ at the Trocadero. [284] Lessing, in the Preface to his _Beiträge zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters_ (1750), gives as the principal characteristic of the German, "that he appreciates whatever is good, particularly where he finds it, and when he can turn it to his profit." [285] See the _Voyage en Italie_, May 18, 1787, letter to Herder. [286] French Songs (MSS. in Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge): copies in the Schoelcher Collection, in the library of the Paris Conservatoire. [287] See the Abbé Prévost: _Le Pour et le Contre_, 1733. [288] These are not traits special to Handel alone. The double stream--encyclopædic and learned on the one hand, popular or pseudo-popular on the other--was found in an even greater degree in London amongst the musicians of Handel's time. In the circle of the _Academy of Antient Musick_ there was quite a mania of archaic eclectism. One of these members, the composer Roseingrave, even went to the length of having the walls of his rooms and all his furniture covered with bars of music, extracted from the works of Palestrina. At the same period there was felt all over Europe a reaction of popular taste against that of the savants. It was the day of the little _lieder_ by Bononcini or by Keiser. Handel took sides with neither extravagances, but chose whatever was alive in both movements. [289] Letter from Lady Luxborough to the poet Shenstone in 1748--quoted by Chrysander.