Poor Clayton seems, here and there, to have really fancied that it was his mission to put down Handel, and stuck to him for some time in most pertinacious style. One is reminded of the writer who endeavoured to turn Wilhelm Meister into ridicule, and of the epigram which that attempt suggested to Goethe, ending:-- "Hat doch die Wallfisch seine Laus." [Sidenote: THREE ENRAGED MUSICIANS.] But Clayton was really a creator, and proposed nothing less than "to revive an art which was running to ruin by the utmost barbarism under an affectation of knowledge." One would have thought that this was going a little too far. Handel affecting knowledge--Handel a barbarian? Surely Steele in giving the sanction of his name to such assertions as these, puts himself in a lower position even than Voltaire uttering his celebrated dictum about the genius of Shakespeare; for after all, Voltaire was the first Frenchman to discover any beauties in Shakespeare at all, and it was in defending him against the stupid prejudices of Laharpe that he made use of the unfortunate expression with which he has so often been reproached, and which he put forward in the form of a concession to his adversary. Clayton and his second fiddles returned to the attack a few weeks afterwards (January 18th, 1712). "It is industriously insinuated," they complained, "that our intention is to destroy operas in general, but we beg of you (that is to say, the _Spectator_, as represented by Steele, who signs the number with his T) to insert this explanation of ourselves in your paper. Our purpose is only to improve our circumstances by improving the art which we profess" [the knaves are getting candid]. "We see it utterly destroyed at present, and as we were the persons who introduced operas, we think it a groundless imputation that we should set up against the Opera itself," &c., &c. What became of Clayton, Haym, and Dieupart, and their speculation, I do not know, nor do I think that any one can care. At all events, even with the assistance of Steele and the _Spectator_ they did not extinguish Handel. The most celebrated vocalist at the theatre in the Haymarket, from the arrival of Handel in England until after the formation of the Royal Academy of Music, in 1720, was Anastasia Robinson, a _contralto_, who was remarkable as much for her graceful acting as for her expressive singing. She made her first appearance in a _pasticcio_ called _Creso_, in 1714, and continued singing in the operas of Handel and other composers until 1724, when she contracted a private marriage with the Earl of Peterborough and retired from the stage. Lady Delany, an intimate friend of Lady Peterborough, communicated the following account of her marriage and the circumstances under which it was made, to Dr. Burney, who publishes it in his "History of Music." [Sidenote: ANASTASIA ROBINSON.]