[316] It is necessary to consider to some extent the _Arias buffi_. Some have denied Handel the gift of humour. They cannot know him well. He is full of humour, and often expresses it in his works. In his first opera, _Almira_, the _rôle_ of Tabarco is in the comic style of Keiser and of Telemann. It is the same feeling which gives certain traits a little _caricaturesque_ to the _rôle_ of St. Peter in the _Passion after Brockes_. The Polyphemus in _Acis and Galatea_ has a fine amplitude of rough buffoonery. But in _Agrippina_ Handel derived his subtle irony from Italy; and the light style with its minute touches and its jerky rhythms from Vinci and Pergolesi (to the letter) appear with Handel in _Teseo_ (1713). _Radamisto_, _Rodelinda_, _Alessandro_, _Tolomeo_, _Partenope_, _Orlando_, _Atalanta_ afford numerous examples. The scene where Alexander and Roxane are asleep (or pretend to be) is a little scene of musical comedy. _Serse_ and _Deidamia_ are like tragi-comedies, the action of which points to _opéra comique_. But his gift of humour takes another turn in his oratorios, where Handel not only creates complex and colossal types, such as _Delilah_ or _Haraphah_ in _Samson_, or as the two old men in _Susanna_, but where his Olympian laugh breaks out in the choruses of _L'Allegro_, shaking the sides of the audience with irresistible laughter. [317] See especially Hugo Goldschmidt: _Treatise on Vocal Ornaments_, Volume I, 1907; Max Seiffert: _Die Verzierung der Sologesänge in Haendels Messias_ (I.M.G., July-September, 1907, and Monthly Bulletin of I.M.G., February, 1908); Rudolf Wustmann: _Zwei Messias-probleme_ (Monthly Bulletin I.M.G., January, February, 1908). [318] M. Seiffert has given a description of the whole series of copies of Handel Operas and Oratorios in the Lennard collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. There are to be found there (in pencil) the indication of the ornaments and vocalises executed by the singers. According to M. Seiffert these indications were by Christopher Smith, the friend and factotum of Handel. According to Mr. Goldschmidt they were put in at the end of the eighteenth century. In any case they show a vocal tradition which affords a good opportunity of preserving for us the physiognomy of the musical ornaments of Handel's time. [319] This is especially true of the oratorios. In the operas, the ornamentation was much more elaborate and more irrelevant to the expression. [320] The first, by Mr. Seiffert; the second, by Mr. Goldschmidt. [321] _Teseo_, duet, _Addio, mio caro bene_; _Esther_, duet by Esther and Ahasuerus: "Who calls my parting soul?" [322] _Arminio_ (1737), duet from Act III. It is to be noticed that _Arminio_ opens also with a duet, a very exceptional thing. Other duets are in the Sicilian style, as, for instance, that in _Giulio Cesare_, or in the popular English style of the hornpipe, as that of Teofane and Otho in _Ottone_; _A'teneri affetti_.