_Mainwaring_ (P. 35). "For, determined to make Handel pay dear for his priority, he stifled his rage for the present, only to wait an opportunity to give it full vent. As they were coming out of the orchestra, he made a push at him with a sword, which, being aimed full at his heart, would for ever have removed him from the office he had usurped, but for the friendly _Score_ which he accidentally carried in his bosom; and through which to have forced it, would have demanded all the might of Ajax himself. Had this happened in the early ages, not a mortal but would have been persuaded that Apollo himself had interposed to preserve him, in the form of a music-book. From the circumstances which are related of this affair, it has more the appearance of an assassination than of a rencounter; if the latter, one of Handel's years might well be wanting the courage, or the skill, to defend himself; if the former, supposing him capable of making a defence, he could not be prepared for it. How many great men, in the very dawning of their glory have been planted, like him, on the very verge of destruction! as if Fortune, jealous of Nature, made a show of sacrificing her noblest productions only to remind her of that supremacy to which she aspires. Whatever might be the merits of the quarrel at first,"---- _Mattheson._ "Here I must again interrupt the subtle reasoner, in order to show him his confusion, which is even greater and ruder than the preceding one, since that contained only above a dozen falsehoods, while we have here double the number. The cause of the quarrel was, indeed, quite different from what is here related. It was already mentioned long since, with all possible modesty, in the 'Ehrenpforte,' p. 94 and 193; but there was then no occasion, as there is now, to remind the reader that a cool box on the ear is no assassination, but rather a necessary warning to prepare for defence. This settles the first statement. The incorrectly-informed author relates a fable rather than a true event. Never, so long as can be remembered, have two harpsichords been played together in the orchestra of the opera in Hamburg at the same time; and as there has always been but one, a dispute about it, as narrated, could not possibly have occurred. Now, as to this dispute is attributed the origin of the fight, the remainder of the invention falls with it to the ground. There we have the second blunder. Subsequently erroneous statements are so frequent that it is scarcely possible to count them. Handel, in the beginning, played only the second violin in the orchestra; and he was, as may easily be conceived, not a more accomplished performer on that instrument than any other member of the orchestra. There we have the third falsehood, which is besides a boasting untruth. The fray occurred on the 5th of December, 1704. Handel, whom the biographer insists, as much as is in his power, on making younger the older he grows, was nearly twenty-one years of