us, Handel is compared by the poet (whose name is not given) to Orpheus and
indeed exalted above him. "Orpheus," says the Cardinal, "could move rocks
and trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than
Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words
and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring
suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well
have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a
well-known account of a similar improvisation by the poet Zappi and the
composer Alessandro Scarlatti.

Handel was by this time fully accepted as one of the leading musicians in
Italy, for in June he composed a pastoral, _Aci, Galatea e Polifemo_, for
the marriage of the Duke of Alvito at Naples on July 19. It was in July
1708 that the Austrian Viceroy of Naples, Count Daun, was succeeded by
Cardinal Grimani, who, towards the end of the year, persuaded Alessandro
Scarlatti to return to the service of the royal chapel. As a good friend to
Scarlatti, the Cardinal was sure to interest himself in Handel, and it was
probably through him that Handel was commissioned to write an opera for
Venice, as the Grimani were a great Venetian family and owned the principal
opera-house there. How long Handel stayed at Naples we do not know; all
that Mainwaring tells us is that he was taken up by a Spanish princess,
but, as Naples had belonged to Spain for a hundred and fifty years, Spanish
princesses can have been no rarities there, and it is impossible to
identify this lady.

From July 1708 until December 1709 we lose sight of Handel entirely. On
December 26, the first night of the carnival season, his opera _Agrippina_
was produced at Venice. The libretto was by Cardinal Grimani, who had
already written other dramas for music, all produced, like Handel's, at the
Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice. Venice was the first city which