AS a boy, from 12 years old or so, I always worshipped Handel. Beethoven was a _terra incognita_ to me till I went up to Cambridge; I knew and liked a few of his waltzes but did not so much as know that he had written any sonatas or symphonies. At Cambridge Sykes tried to teach me Beethoven but I disliked his music and would go away as soon as Sykes began with any of his sonatas. After a long while I began to like some of the slow movements and then some entire sonatas, several of which I could play once fairly well without notes. I used also to play Bach and Mendelssohn’s _Songs without Words_ and thought them lovely, but I always liked Handel best. Little by little, however, I was talked over into placing Bach and Beethoven on a par as the greatest and I said I did not know which was the best man. I cannot tell now whether I really liked Beethoven or found myself carried away by the strength of the Beethoven current which surrounded me; at any rate I spent a great deal of time on him, for some ten or a dozen years. One night, when I was about 30, I was at an evening party at Mrs. Longden’s and met an old West End clergyman of the name of Smalley (Rector, I think, of Bayswater). I said I did not know which was greatest Handel, Bach or Beethoven. He said: “I am surprised at that; I should have thought you would have known.” “Which,” said I, “is the greatest?” “Handel.” I knew he was right and have never wavered since. I suppose I was really of this opinion already, but it was not till I got a little touch from outside that I knew it. From that moment Beethoven began to go back, and now I feel towards him much as I did when I first heard his work, except, of course, that I see a gnosis in him of which as a young man I knew nothing. But I do not greatly care about gnosis, I want agape; and Beethoven’s agape is not the healthy robust tenderness of Handel, it is a sickly maudlin thing in comparison. Anyhow I do not like him. I like Mozart and Haydn better, but not so much better as I should like to like them. Handel and Domenico Scarlatti Handel and Domenico Scarlatti were contemporaries almost to a year, both as regards birth and death. They knew each other very well in Italy and Scarlatti never mentioned Handel’s name without crossing himself, but I have not heard that Handel crossed himself at the mention of Scarlatti’s name. I know very little of Scarlatti’s music and have not even that little well enough in my head to write about it; I retain only a residuary impression that it is often very charming and links Haydn with Bach, moreover that it is distinctly un-Handelian.