Bad luck still pursued him. Some gross national manifestations compelled "_la Salle_" and her French dancers to leave London.[228] Handel gave up the ballet opera. To leave at this moment, if he was to continue the struggle with the theatre, went badly against the grain, and was tantamount to declaring himself vanquished. At the opening of his theatrical enterprise he had saved, so it is said, £10,000. All this was absorbed, and already he was £10,000 more to the bad. His friends did not understand his obstinacy, which seemed about to involve him in complete ruin. "But," says Hawkins, "he was a man of intrepid spirit, and in no ways a slave to mere interest. He raised himself again for the battle rather than bow down to those whom he regarded as infinitely beneath him." If he could no longer be conqueror, still less would he hand the reins to his adversaries. He overcame them--but a little more would have vanquished himself in the same stroke. He persisted then in writing his operas,[229] of which the series spread out until 1741, marking work after work with a growing tendency towards the _opéra-comique_ and the style of romances[230] so dear to the people at the second half of the eighteenth century. But since 1735 he felt more than ever that the true musical drama for him was the oratorio. He returned victoriously with _Alexander's Feast_, which was composed on the _Ode to St. Cecilia_, by Dryden,[231] and given for the first time on February 19, 1736, at the Covent Garden Theatre. Who would have believed that this work, robust and sane throughout, was written in twenty days, that it was performed in the midst of his business worries, within an ace of ruin, and when he was threatened with that grave malady which was to throw the mind of Handel for evermore into gloom? * * * * *