"... Unfortunately I can offer you nothing besides my good [birthday] wishes, though I would willingly have done so. I always thought that the 'Elijah' would turn out all right, but it will not, and you must seek help elsewhere. At a distance I seemed to have thought out the subject quite nicely; but whenever I come to it at close quarters I cannot clearly distinguish the separate figures. Elijah is in the society of the angels; he is in good company, leave him there. It is unbecoming for men to drive away the angels. I have held to one point where the Lord Himself ought to or could speak to Elijah. It seemed to me that as Elijah appeared to Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew xvii.), so Christ might come to Elijah, transfigure him, and show him from afar the streams of peace, which flow over the heavenly Canaan. These three personages--Christ, Elijah, and the heavenly choir of angels--might suffice, with suitable dramatic alteration, to transform the earth into heaven, until the removal of Elijah. But you well know how sluggishly my poetical vein flows; how, here and there, with great effort I manage to gather a few crumbs together, but then I get no farther. Unless I am in the pulpit--where the Lord usually helps me joyfully to honour Him by my preaching--the creative power fails me utterly." [Footnote 15: "Briefwechsel," p. 149. Mendelssohn was born February 3, 1809.] For nearly seven years the subject of "Elijah" drops out of the Mendelssohn-Schubring correspondence, except two unimportant references. In a letter to Mendelssohn, dated January 17, 1840, Schubring says: "How about 'Elijah'? Have you quite put him aside?" And on November 10 of the same year: "You have told my brother that for the present you have given up composing oratorios. To this I have no objection; but I would like to see something else--sonatas, for instance, not short pieces." It seems to be quite evident that the subject of "Elijah" was lying more or less fallow in Mendelssohn's mind for six years (1839-1845). There are, it is true, two casual references to the oratorio. To Moscheles, Mendelssohn wrote: "A new oratorio, too, I have begun; but how it is to end, and what is to come in the middle, Heaven only knows." And to Klingemann: "I have thought anew seriously of 'Elijah.' Perhaps I shall attack him now." But it was not until the summer of 1845, when he received the invitation from Birmingham (see the next chapter), that Mendelssohn, to use his own words, "again began to plough up the soil." He was then glad to seek fresh help from Schubring in the technicalities of the "text," which he did in the following letter to his clerical friend:-- [MENDELSSOHN TO SCHUBRING.] "LEIPZIG, _December_ 16, 1845.[16]