Mattheson aims more at impressing the reader with his own merits than with those of Handel. He says, for instance: "In describing an artist's life, it is not sufficient to represent the man only as an artist; the artist must rather be considered also as a man; for thus only can his merits be properly understood. However, no one is able to know or to do everything in his vocation. Thus, in music, one performer excels on the organ-pedals, while another surpasses him on the harpsichord. The first may be called coarse; the second, delicate. The first may be only appreciated by connoisseurs; the second, by everyone. A company of artists--if any such exists--is like a bunch of different keys. No one of these is to be extolled before the other but only in so far as it opens an important lock which encloses a treasure. One musician is not only a player, but also a singer; another never opens his mouth to sing--nay, not even to laugh. The former, besides being able to compose, to sing, to play, and to dance, acts a principal character on the stage; the latter, with his quantity of musical scores, has taken care not to appear upon the boards of the theatre. Indeed, he would have cut a funny figure had he done so. Here, some one who occupies himself with music, and also with various sciences, in a superior manner, works at the same time for kings and princes; there some one employs his gifts principally in the service and for the amusement of the subjects. From this it is clear that each in his particular line may deserve honour and laudation; not properly on account of his person, but on account of his achievements.... No mere _Musicus practicus ecclesiastico-dramaticus_, who took a high rank as a director of the orchestra, and a still higher rank as an organist, but who was neither a singer nor an actor, and least of all a mathematician--has ever, before Handel, attained to this, that without his help a special book of a considerable size on his life has been written, and supplied with instructive observations--still more, that his biography has been translated into another language by a brother-artist by no means of the common class. Competing successors do not feel hurt by these stimulating spurs!" In order to render the following annotations by Mattheson properly intelligible, the statements of Mainwaring to which they refer are inserted with them. The latter are copied exactly as they were originally written; while Mattheson's annotations are translated from the German. _Mainwaring_ (P. 1). "George Frederick Handel was born at Hall,[3] a city in the circle of Upper-Saxony, the 24th February, 1684,[4] by a second wife of his father, who was an eminent surgeon and physician of the same place, and above sixty when his son was born." _Mattheson._ "The author is wrong in calling Halle a town of Upper-Saxony. It lies in the Dukedom of Magdeburg, which belongs to Lower-Saxony. Handel was, therefore, no Upper-Saxon, but rather a Lower-Saxon."