VOLUME XII SLICE VIII Haller, Albrecht to Harmonium (continued 6)

HANDEL, GEORGE FREDERICK (1685-1759), English musical composer, German by origin, was born at Halle in Lower Saxony, on the 23rd of February 1685. His name was Handel, but, like most 18th-century musicians Life. who travelled, he compromised with its pronunciation by foreigners, and when in Italy spelt it Hendel, and in England (where he became naturalized) accepted the version Handel, which is therefore correct for English writers, while Händel remains the correct version in Germany. His father was a barber-surgeon, who disapproved of music, and wished George Frederick to become a lawyer. A friend smuggled a clavichord into the attic, and on this instrument, which is inaudible behind a closed door, the little boy practised secretly. Before he was eight his father went to visit a son by a former marriage who was a valet-de-chambre to the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The little boy begged in vain to go also, and at last ran after the carriage on foot so far that he had to be taken. He made acquaintance with the court musicians and contrived to practise on the organ when he could be overheard by the duke, who, immediately recognizing his talent, spoke seriously to the father, who had to yield to his arguments. On returning to Halle Handel became a pupil of Zachau, the cathedral organist, who gave him a thorough training as a composer and as a performer on keyed instruments, the oboe and the violin. Six very good trios for two oboes and bass, which Handel wrote at the age of ten, are extant; and when he himself was shown them by an English admirer who had discovered them, he was much amused and remarked, “I wrote like the devil in those days, and chiefly for the oboe, which was my favourite instrument.” His master also of course made him write an enormous amount of vocal music, and he had to produce a motet every week. By the time he was twelve Zachau thought he could teach him no more, and accordingly the boy was sent to Berlin, where he made a great impression at the court.

His father, however, thought fit to decline the proposal of the elector of Brandenburg, afterwards King Frederick I. of Prussia, to send the boy to Italy in order afterwards to attach him to the court at Berlin. German court musicians, as late as the time of Mozart, had hardly enough freedom to satisfy a man of independent character, and the elder Händel had not yet given up hope of his son’s becoming a lawyer. Young Handel, therefore, returned to Halle and resumed his work with Zachau. In 1697 his father died, but the boy showed great filial piety in finishing the ordinary course of his education, both general and musical, and even entering the university of Halle in 1702 as a law student. But in that year he succeeded to the post of organist at the cathedral, and after his “probation” year in that capacity he departed to Hamburg, where the only German opera worthy of the name was flourishing under the direction of its founder, Reinhold Keiser. Here he became friends with Matheson, a prolific composer and writer on music. On one occasion they set out together to go to Lübeck, where a successor was to be appointed to the post left vacant by the great organist Buxtehude, who was retiring on account of his extreme age. Handel and Matheson made much music on this occasion, but did not compete, because they found that the successful candidate was required to accept the hand of the elderly daughter of the retiring organist.

Another adventure might have had still more serious consequences. At a performance of Matheson’s opera Cleopatra at Hamburg, Handel refused to give up the conductor’s seat to the composer when the latter returned to his usual post at the harpsichord after singing the part of Antony on the stage. The dispute led to a duel outside the theatre, and, but for a large button on Handel’s coat which intercepted Matheson’s sword, there would have been no Messiah or Israel in Egypt. But the young men remained friends, and Matheson’s writings are full of the most valuable facts for Handel’s biography. He relates in his Ehrenpforte that his friend at that time used to compose “interminable cantatas” of no great merit; but of these no traces now remain, unless we assume that a Passion according to St John, the manuscript of which is in the royal library at Berlin, is among the works alluded to. But its authenticity, while strongly upheld by Chrysander, has recently been as strongly assailed on internal evidence.

On the 8th of January 1705, Handel’s first opera, Almira, was performed at Hamburg with great success, and was followed a few weeks later by another work, entitled Nero. Nero is lost, but Almira, with its mixture of Italian and German language and form, remains as a valuable example of the tendencies of the time and of Handel’s eclectic methods. It contains many themes used by Handel in well-known later works; but the current statement that the famous aria in Rinaldo, “Lascia ch’io pianga,” comes from a saraband in Almira, is based upon nothing more definite than the inevitable resemblance between the simplest possible forms of saraband-rhythm.

In 1706 Handel left Hamburg for Italy, where he remained for three years, rapidly acquiring the smooth Italian vocal style which hereafter always characterized his work. He had before this refused offers from noble patrons to send him there, but had now saved enough money, not only to support his mother at home, but to travel as his own master. He divided his time in Italy between Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice; and many anecdotes are preserved of his meetings with Corelli, Lotti, Alessandro Scarlatti and Domenico Scarlatti, whose wonderful harpsichord technique still has a direct bearing on some of the most modern features of pianoforte style. Handel soon became famous as Il Sassone (“the Saxon”), and it is said that Domenico on first hearing him play incognito exclaimed, “It is either the devil or the Saxon!” Then there is a story of Corelli’s coming to grief over a passage in Handel’s overture to Il Trionfo del tempo, in which the violins went up to A in altissimo. Handel impatiently snatched the violin to show Corelli how the passage ought to be played, and Corelli, who had never written or played beyond the third position in his life (this passage being in the seventh), said gently, “My dear Saxon, this music is in the French style, which I do not understand.” In Italy Handel produced two operas, Rodrigo and Agrippina, the latter a very important work, of which the splendid overture was remodelled forty-four years afterwards as that of his last original oratorio, Jephtha. He also produced two oratorios, La Resurrezione, and Il Trionfo del tempo. This, forty-six years afterwards, formed the basis of his last work. The Triumph of Time and Truth, which contains no original matter. All Handel’s early works contain material that he used often with very little alteration later on, and, though the famous “Lascia ch’io pianga” does not occur in Almira, it occurs note for note in Agrippina and the two Italian oratorios. On the other hand the cantata Aci, Galattea e Polifemo has nothing in common with Acis and Galatea. Besides these larger works there are several choral and solo cantatas of which the earliest, such as the great Dixit Dominus, show in their extravagant vocal difficulty how radical was the change which Handel’s Italian experience so rapidly effected in his methods.

Handel’s success in Italy established his fame and led to his receiving at Venice in 1709 the offer of the post of Kapellmeister to the elector of Hanover, transmitted to him by Baron Kielmansegge, his patron and staunch friend of later years. Handel at the time contemplated a visit to England, and he accepted this offer on condition of leave of absence being granted to him for that purpose. To England accordingly Handel journeyed after a short stay at Hanover, arriving in London towards the close of 1710. He came as a composer of Italian opera, and earned his first success at the Haymarket with Rinaldo, composed, to the consternation of the hurried librettist, in a fortnight, and first performed on the 24th of February 1711. In this opera the aria “Lascia ch’io pianga” found its final home. The work was produced with the utmost magnificence, and Addison’s delightful reviews of it in the Spectator poked fun at it from an unmusical point of view in a way that sometimes curiously foreshadows the criticisms that Gluck might have made on such things at a later period. The success was so great, especially for Walsh the publisher, that Handel proposed that Walsh should compose the next opera, and that he should publish it. He returned to Hanover at the close of the opera season, and composed a good deal of vocal chamber music for the princess Caroline, the step-daughter of the elector, besides the instrumental works known to us as the oboe concertos. In 1712 Handel returned to London and spent a year with Andrews, a rich musical amateur, in Barn Elms, Surrey. Three more years were spent in Burlington, in the neighbourhood of London. He evidently was but little inclined to return to Hanover, in spite of his duties to the court there. Two Italian operas and the Utrecht Te Deum written by the command of Queen Anne are the principal works of this period. It was somewhat awkward for the composer when his deserted master came to London in 1714 as George I. of England. For some time Handel did not venture to appear at court, and it was only at the intercession of Baron Kielmansegge that his pardon was obtained. By his advice Handel wrote the Water Music which was performed at a royal water party on the Thames, and it so pleased the king that he at once received the composer into his good graces and granted him a salary of £400 a year. Later Handel became music master to the little princesses and was given an additional £200 by the princess Caroline. In 1716 he followed the king to Germany, where he wrote a second German Passion to the popular poem of Brockes, a text which, divested of its worst features, forms the basis of several of the arias in Bach’s Passion according to St John. This was Handel’s last work to a German text.

On his return to England he entered the service of the duke of Chandos as conductor of his concerts, receiving a thousand pounds for his first oratorio Esther. The music which Handel wrote for performance at “Cannons,” the duke of Chandos’s residence at Edgware, is comprised in the first version of Esther, Acis and Galatea, and the twelve Chandos Anthems, which are compositions approximately in the same form as Bach’s church cantatas but without any systematic use of chorale tunes. The fashionable Londoner would travel 9 miles in those days to the little chapel of Whitchurch to hear Handel’s music, and all that now remains of the magnificent scene of these visits is the church, which is the parish church of Edgware. In 1720 Handel appeared again in a public capacity as impresario of the Italian opera at the Haymarket theatre, which he managed for the institution called the Royal Academy of Music. Senesino, a famous singer, to engage whom Handel especially journeyed to Dresden, was the mainstay of the enterprise, which opened with a highly successful performance of Handel’s opera Radamisto. To this time belongs the famous rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, a melodious Italian composer whom many thought to be the greater of the two. The controversy has been perpetuated in John Byrom’s lines:

“Some say, compared to Buononcini That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny; Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle. Strange all this difference should be Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.”

It must be remembered that at this time Handel had not yet asserted his greatness as a choral writer; the fashionable ideas of music and musicianship were based entirely upon success in Italian opera, and the contest between the rival composers was waged on the basis of works which have fallen into almost as complete an oblivion in Handel’s case as in Buononcini’s. None of Handel’s forty-odd Italian operas can be said to survive, except in some two or three detached arias out of each opera; arias which reveal their essential qualities far better in isolation than when performed in groups of between twenty and thirty on the stage, as interruptions to the action of a classical drama to which nobody paid the slightest attention. But even within these limits Handel’s artistic resources were too great to leave the issue in doubt; and when Handel wrote the third act of an opera Muzio Scevola, of which Buononcini and Ariosti1 wrote the other two, his triumph was decisive, especially as Buononcini soon got into discredit by failing to defend himself against the charge of producing as a prize-madrigal of his own a composition which proved to be by Lotti. At all events Buononcini left London, and Handel for the next ten years was without a rival in his ventures as an operatic composer. He was not, however, without a rival as an impresario; and the hostile competition of a rival company which obtained the services of the great Farinelli and also induced Senesino to desert him, led to his bankruptcy in 1737, and to an attack of paralysis caused by anxiety and overwork. The rival company also had to be dissolved from want of support, so that Handel’s misfortunes must not be attributed to any failure to maintain his position in the musical world. Handel’s artistic conscience was that of the most easy-going opportunist, or he would never have continued till 1741 to work in a field that gave so little scope for his genius. But the public seemed to want operas, and, if opera had no scope for his genius, at all events he could supply better operas with greater rapidity and ease than any three other living composers working together. And this he naturally continued to do so long as it seemed to be the best way to keep up his reputation. But with all this artistic opportunism he was not a man of tact, and there are numerous stories of the type of his holding the great primadonna donna Cuzzoni at arm’s-length out of a window and threatening to drop her unless she consented to sing a song which she had declared unsuitable to her style.

Already before his last opera, Deidamia, produced in 1741, Handel had been making a growing impression with his oratorios. In these, freed from the restrictions of the stage, he was able to give scope to his genius for choral writing, and so to develop, or rather revive, that art of chorus singing which is the normal outlet for English musical talent. In 1726 Handel had become a naturalized Englishman, and in 1733 he began his public career as a composer of English texts by producing the second and larger version of Esther at the King’s theatre. This was followed early in the same year by Deborah, in which the share of the chorus is much greater. In July he produced Athalia at Oxford, the first work in which his characteristic double choruses appear. The share of the chorus increases in Saul (1738); and Israel in Egypt (also 1738) is practically entirely a choral work, the solo movements, in spite of their fame, being as perfunctory in character as they are few in number. It was not unnatural that the public, who still considered Italian opera the highest, because the most modern form of musical art, obliged Handel at subsequent performances of this gigantic work to insert more solos.

The Messiah was produced at Dublin on the 13th of April 1742. Samson (which Handel preferred to the Messiah) appeared at Covent Garden on the 2nd of March 1744; Belshazzar at the King’s theatre, 27th of March 1745; the Occasional Oratorio (chiefly a compilation of the earlier oratorios, but with a few important new numbers), on the 14th of February 1746 at Covent Garden, where all his later oratorios were produced; Judas Maccabaeus on the 1st of April 1747; Joshua on the 9th of March 1748; Alexander Balus on the 23rd of March 1748; Solomon on the 17th of March 1749; Susanna, spring of 1749; Theodora, a great favourite of Handel’s, who was much disappointed by its cold reception, on the 16th of March 1750; Jephtha (strictly speaking, his last work) on the 26th of February 1752, and The Triumph of Time and Truth (transcribed from Il Trionfo del tempo with the addition of many later favourite numbers), 1757. Other important works, indistinguishable in artistic form from oratorios, but on secular subjects, are Alexander’s Feast, 1736; Ode for St Cecilia’s Day (words by Dryden); L’Allegro, il pensieroso ed il moderato (the words of the third part by Jennens), 1740; Semele, 1744; Hercules, 1745; and The Choice of Hercules, 1751.

By degrees the enmity against Handel died away, though he had many troubles. In 1745 he had again become bankrupt; for, although he had no rival as a composer of choral music it was possible for his enemies to give balls and banquets on the nights of his oratorio performances. As with his first bankruptcy, so in his later years, he showed scrupulous sense of honour in discharging his debts, and he continued to work hard to the end of his life. He had not only completely recovered his financial position by the year 1750, but he must have made a good deal of money, for he then presented an organ to the Foundling Hospital, and opened it with a performance of the Messiah on the 15th of May. In 1751 his sight began to trouble him; and the autograph of Jephtha, published in facsimile by the Händelgesellschaft, shows pathetic traces of this in his handwriting,2 and so affords a most valuable evidence of his methods of composition, all the accompaniments, recitatives, and less essential portions of the work being evidently filled in long after the rest. He underwent unsuccessful operations, one of them by the same surgeon who had operated on Bach’s eyes. There is evidence that he was able to see at intervals during his last years, but his sight practically never returned after May 1752. He continued superintending performances of his works and writing new arias for them, or inserting revised old ones, and he attended a performance of the Messiah a week before his death, which took place, according to the Public Advertiser of the 16th of April, not on Good Friday, the 13th of April, according to his own pious wish and according to common report, but on the 14th of April 1759. He was buried in Westminster Abbey; and his monument is by L. F. Roubilliac, the same sculptor who modelled the marble statue erected in 1739 in Vauxhall Gardens, where his works had been frequently performed.

Handel was a man of high character and intelligence, and his interest was not confined to his own art exclusively. He liked the society of politicians and literary men, and he was also a collector of pictures and articles of vertu. His power of work was enormous, and the Händelgesellschaft’s edition of his complete works fills one hundred volumes, forming a total bulk almost equal to the works of Bach and Beethoven together.

(F. H.; D. F. T.)

No one has more successfully popularized the greatest artistic ideals than Handel; no artist is more disconcerting to critics who imagine that a great man’s mental development is easy to follow. Not even Wagner effected a greater Handel as composer. transformation in the possibilities of dramatic music than Handel effected in oratorio, yet we have seen that Handel was the very opposite of a reformer. He was not even conservative, and he hardly took the pains to ascertain what an art-form was, so long as something externally like it would convey his idea. But he never failed to convey his idea, and, if the hybrid forms in which he conveyed it had no historic influence and no typical character, they were none the less accurate in each individual case. The same aptness and the same absence of method are conspicuous in his style. The popular idea that Handel’s style is easily recognizable comes from the fact that he overshadows all his predecessors and contemporaries, except Bach, and so makes us regard typical 18th-century Italian and English style as Handelian, instead of regarding Handel’s style as typical Italian 18th-century. Nothing in music requires more minute expert knowledge than the sifting of the real peculiarities of Handel’s style from the mass of contemporary formulae which in his inspired pages he absorbed, and which in his uninspired pages absorbed him.

His easy mastery was acquired, like Mozart’s, in childhood. The later sonatas for two oboes and bass which he wrote in his eleventh year are, except in their diffuseness and an occasional slip in grammar, indistinguishable from his later works, and they show a boyish inventiveness worthy of Mozart’s work at the same age. Such early choral works, as the Dixit Dominus (1707), show the ill-regulated power of his choral writing before he assimilated Italian influences. Its practical difficulties are at least as extravagant as Bach’s, while they are not accounted for by any corresponding originality and necessity of idea; but the grandeur of the scheme and nobility of thought is already that for which Handel so often in later years found the simplest and easiest adequate means of expression that music has ever attained. His eminently practical genius soon formed his vocal style, and long before the period of his great oratorios, such works as The Birthday Ode for Queen Anne (1713) and the Utrecht Te Deum show not a trace of German extravagance. The only drawback to his practical genius was that it led him to bury perhaps half of his finest melodies, and nearly all the secular features of interest in his treatment of instruments and of the aria forms, in that deplorable limbo of vanity, the 18th-century Italian opera. It is not true, as has been alleged against him, that his operas are in no way superior to those of his contemporaries; but neither is it true that he stirred a finger to improve the condition of dramatic musical art. He was no slave to singers, as is amply testified by many anecdotes. Nor was he bound by the operatic conventions of the time. In Teseo he not only wrote an opera in five acts when custom prescribed three, but also broke a much more plausible rule in arranging that each character should have two arias in succession. He also showed a feeling for expression and style which led him to write arias of types which singers might not expect. But he never made any innovation which had the slightest bearing upon the stage-craft of opera, for he never concerned himself with any artistic question beyond the matter in hand; and the matter in hand was not to make dramatic music, or to make the story interesting or intelligible, but simply to provide a concert of between some twenty and thirty Italian arias and duets, wherein singers could display their abilities and spectators find distraction from the monotony of so large a dose of the aria form (which was then the only possibility for solo vocal music) in the gorgeousness of the dresses and scenery.

When the question arose how a musical entertainment of this kind could be managed in Lent without protests from the bishop of London, Handelian oratorio came into being as a matter of course. But though Handel was an opportunist he was not shallow. His artistic sense seized upon the natural possibilities which arose as soon as the music was transferred from the stage to the concert platform; and his first English oratorio, Esther (1720), beautifully shows the transition. The subject is as nearly secular as any that can be extracted from the Bible, and the treatment was based on Racine’s Esther, which was much discussed at the time. Handel’s oratorio was reproduced in an enlarged version in 1732 at the King’s theatre: the princess royal wished for scenery and action, but the bishop of London protested. And the choruses, of which in the first version there are already no less than ten, are on the one hand operatic and unecclesiastical in expression, until the last, where polyphonic work on a large scale first appears; but on the other hand they are all much too long to be sung by heart, as is necessary in operas. In fact, the turning-point in Handel’s development is the emancipation of the chorus from theatrical limitations. This had as great effect upon his few but important secular English works as upon his other oratorios. Acis and Galatea, Semele and Hercules, are in fact secular oratorios; the choral music in them is not ecclesiastical, but it is large, independent and polyphonic.

We must remember, then, that Handel’s scheme of oratorio is operatic in its origin and has no historic connexion with such principles as might have been generalized from the practice of the German Passion music of the time; and it is sufficiently astonishing that the chorus should have so readily assumed its proper place in a scheme which the public certainly regarded as a sort of Lenten biblical opera. And, although the chorus owes its freedom of development to the disappearance of theatrical necessities, it becomes no less powerful as a means of dramatic expression (as opposed to dramatic action) than as a purely musical resource. Already in Athalia the “Hallelujah” chorus at the end of the first act is a marvel of dramatic truth. It is sung by Israelites almost in despair beneath usurping tyranny; and accordingly it is a severe double fugue in a minor key, expressive of devout courage at a moment of depression. On purely musical grounds it is no less powerful in throwing into the highest possible relief the ecstatic solemnity of the psalm with which the second act opens. Now this sombre “Hallelujah” chorus is a very convenient illustration of Handel’s originality, and the point in which his creative power really lies. It was not originally written for its situation in Athalia, but it was chosen for it. It was originally the last chorus of the second version of the anthem, As pants the Hart, from the autograph of which it is missing because Handel cut out the last pages in order to insert them into the manuscript of Athalia. The inspiration in Athalia thus lies not in the creation of the chorus itself, but in the choice of it.

In choral music Handel made no more innovation than he made in arias. His sense of fitness in expression was of little use to him in opera, because opera could not become dramatic until musical form became capable of developing and blending emotions in all degrees of climax in a way that may be described as pictorial and not merely decorative (see Music; Sonata-Forms; and Instrumentation). But in oratorio there was not the least necessity for reforming any art-forms. The ordinary choral resources of the time had perfect expressive possibilities where there were no actors to keep waiting, and where no dresses and scenery need distract the attention of the listener. When lastly, ordinary decorum dictated an attitude of reverent attention towards the subject of the oratorio, then the man of genius could find such a scope for his real sense of dramatic fitness as would make his work immortal.

In estimating Handel’s greatness we must think away all orthodox musical and progressive prejudices, and learn to apply the lessons critics of architecture and some critics of literature seem to know by nature. Originality, in music as in other arts, lies in the whole, and in a sense of the true meaning of every part. When Handel wrote a normal double fugue in a minor key on the word “Hallelujah” he showed that he at all events knew what a vigorous and dignified thing an 18th-century double fugue could be. In putting it at the end of a melancholy psalm he showed his sense of the value of the minor mode. When he put it in its situation in Athalia he showed as perfect a sense of dramatic and musical fitness as could well be found in art. Now it is obvious that in works like oratorios (which are dramatic schemes vigorously but loosely organized by the putting together of some twenty or thirty complete pieces of music) the proper conception of originality will be very different from that which animates the composer of modern lyric, operatic or symphonic music. When we add to this the characteristics of a method like Handel’s, in which musical technique has become a masterly automatism, it becomes evident that our conception of originality must be at least as broad as that which we would apply in the criticism of architecture. The disadvantages of the want of such a conception have been aggravated by the dearth of general knowledge of the structure of musical art; a knowledge which shows that the parallel we have suggested between music and architecture, as regards the nature of originality, is no mere figure of speech.

In every art there is an antithesis between form and matter, which becomes reconciled only when the work of art is perfect in its execution. And, whatever this perfection, the antithesis must always remain in the mind of the artist and critic to this extent, that some part of the material seems to be the special subject of technical rule rather than another. In the plastic and literary arts one type of this antithesis is more or less permanently maintained in the relation between subject and treatment. The mere fact that these arts express themselves by representing things that have some previous independent existence, helps us to look for originality rather in the things that make for perfection of treatment than in novelty of subject. But in music we have no permanent means of deciding which of many aspects we shall call the subject and which the treatment. In the 16th century the a priori form existed mainly in the practice of basing almost every melodic detail of the work on phrases of Gregorian chant or popular song, treated for the most part in terms of very definitely regulated polyphonic design, and on harmonic principles regulated in almost every detail by the relation between the melodic aspects of the church modes and the necessity for occasional alterations of the strict mode to secure finality at the close. In modern music such a relation between form and matter, prescribing as it does for every aspect at every moment both of the shape and the texture of the music, would exclude the element of invention altogether. In 16th-century music it by no means had that effect. An inventive 16th-century composer is as clearly distinguishable from a dull one as a good architect from a bad. The originality of the composer resides, in 16th-century music as in all art, in his whole work; but naturally his conception of property and ideas will not extend to themes or isolated passages. That man is entitled to an idea who can show what it means, or who can make it mean what he likes. Let him wear the giant’s robe if it fits him. And it is merely a local difference in point of view which makes us think that there is property in themes and no property in forms. Nowadays we happen to regard the shape of a whole composition as its form, and its theme as its matter. And, as artistic organization becomes more complex and heterogeneous, the need of the broadest and most forcible possible outline of design is more pressingly felt; so that in what we choose to call form we are willing to sacrifice all conception of originality for the sake of general intelligibility, while we insist upon complete originality in those thematic details which we are pleased to call matter. But, if this explains, it does not excuse our setting up a criterion for musical originality which can be accepted by no intelligent critics of other arts, and which is completely upset by the study of any music earlier than the beginning of the 19th century.

The difficulty many writers have found in explaining the subject of Handel’s “plagiarisms” is not entirely accounted for by mere lack of these considerations; but the grossest confusion of ideas as to the difference between cases in point prevails to this day, and many discussions which have been raised in regard to the ethical aspect of the question are frankly absurd.3 It has been argued, for instance, that great injustice was done to Buononcini over his unfortunate affair with the prize madrigal, while his great rival was allowed the credit of Israel in Egypt, which contains a considerable number of entire choruses (besides hosts of themes) by earlier Italian and German writers. But the very idea of Handelian oratorio is that of some three hours of music, religious or secular, arranged, like opera, in the form of a colossal entertainment, and with high dramatic and emotional interest imparted to it, if not by the telling of a story, at all events by the nature and development of the subject. It seems, moreover, to be entirely overlooked that the age was an age of pasticcios. Nothing was more common than the organization of some such solemn entertainment by the skilful grouping of favourite pieces. Handel himself never revived one of his oratorios without inserting in it favourite pieces from his other works as well as several new numbers; and the story is well known that the turning point in Gluck’s career was his perception of the true possibilities of dramatic music from the failure of a pasticcio in which he had reset some rather definitely expressive music to situations for which it was not originally designed. The success of an oratorio was due to the appropriateness of its contrasts, together of course with the mastery of its detail, whether that detail were new or old; and there are many gradations between a réchauffé of an early work like The Triumph of Time and Truth, or a pasticcio with a few original numbers like the Occasional Oratorio, and such works as Samson, which was entirely new except that the “Dead March” first written for it was immediately replaced by the more famous one imported from Saul. That the idea of the pasticcio was extremely familiar to the age is shown by the practice of announcing an oratorio as “new and original,” a term which would obviously be meaningless if it were as much a matter of course as it is at the present day, and which, if used at all, must obviously so apply to the whole work without forbidding the composer from gratifying the public with the reproduction of one or two favourite arias. But of course the question of originality becomes more serious when the imported numbers are not the composer’s own. And here it is very noticeable that Handel derived no credit, either with his own public or with us, from whole movements that are not of his own designing. In Israel in Egypt, the choruses “Egypt was glad when they departed,” “And I will exalt Him,” “Thou sentest forth Thy Wrath” and “The Earth swallowed them,” are without exception the most colourless and unattractive pieces of severe counterpoint to be found among Handel’s works; and it is very difficult to fathom his motive in copying them from obscure pieces by Erba and Kaspar Kerl, unless it be that he wished to train his audiences to a better understanding of a polyphonic style. He certainly felt that the greatest possibilities of music lay in the higher choral polyphony, and so in Israel in Egypt he designed a work consisting almost entirely of choruses, and may have wished in these instances for severe contrapuntal movements which he had not time to write, though he could have done them far better himself. Be this as it may, these choruses have certainly added nothing to the popularity of a work of which the public from the outset complained that there was not enough solo music; and what effect they have is merely to throw Handel’s own style into relief. To draw any parallel between the theft of such unattractive details in the grand and intensely Handelian scheme of Israel in Egypt and Buononcini’s alleged theft of a prize madrigal is merely ridiculous. Handel himself, if he had any suspicion that contemporaries did not take a sane architect’s view of the originality of large musical schemes,4 probably gave himself no more trouble about their scruples on this matter than about other forms of musical banality.

The History of Music by Burney, the cleverest and most refined musical critic of the age, shows in the very freshness of its musical scholarship how completely unscholarly were the musical ideas of the time. Burney was incapable of regarding choral music as other than a highly improving academic exercise in which he himself was proficient; and for him Handel is the great opera-writer whose choral music will reward the study of the curious. If Handel had attempted to explain his methods to the musicians of his age, he would probably have found himself alone in his opinions as to the property of musical ideas. He did not trouble to explain, but he made no concealment of his sources. He left his whole musical library to his copyist, and it was from this that the sources of his work were discovered. And when the whole series of plagiarisms is studied, the fact forces itself upon us that nothing except themes and forms which are common property in all 18th-century music, has yet been discovered as the source of any work of Handel’s which is not felt as part of a larger design. Operatic arias were never felt as parts of a whole. The opera was a concert on the stage, and it stood or fell, not by a dramatic propriety which it notoriously neglected to consider at all, but by the popularity of its arias. There is no aria in Handel’s operas which is traceable to another composer. Even in the oratorios there is no solo number in which more than the themes are pilfered, for in oratorios the solo work still appealed to the popular criterion of novelty and individual attractiveness. And when we leave the question of copying of whole movements and come to that of the adaptation of passages, and still more of themes, Handel shows himself to be simply on a line with Mozart. Jahn compares the opening of Mozart’s Requiem with that of the first chorus in Handel’s Funeral Anthem. Mozart recreates at least as much from Handel’s already perfect framework as Handel ever idealized from the inorganic fragments of earlier writers. The double counterpoint of the Kyrie in Mozart’s Requiem is still more indisputably identical with that of the last chorus of Handel’s Joseph, and if the themes are common property their combination certainly is not. But the true plagiarist is the man who does not know the meaning of the ideas he copies, and the true creator is he in whose hands they remain or become true ideas. The theme “He led them forth like sheep” in the chorus “But as for his people” is one of the most beautiful in Handel’s works, and the bare statement that it comes from a serenata by Stradella seems at first rather shocking. But, to any one who knew Stradella’s treatment of it first, Handel’s would come as a revelation actually greater than if he had never heard the theme before. Stradella makes nothing more of it, and therefore presumably sees nothing more in it than an agreeable and essentially frivolous little tune which lends itself to comic dramatic purpose by a wearisome repetition throughout eight pages of patchy aria and instrumental ritornello at an ever-increasing pace. What Handel sees in it is what he makes of it, one of the most solemn and poetic things in music. Again, it may be very shocking to discover that the famous opening of the “Hailstone chorus” comes from the patchy and facetious overture to this same serenata, with which it is identical for ten bars all in the tonic chord (representing, according to Stradella, someone knocking at a door). And it is no doubt yet more shocking that the chorus “He spake the word, and there came all manner of flies” contains no idea of Handel’s own except the realistic swarming violin-passages, the general structure, and the vocal colouring; whereas the rhythmic and melodic figures of the voice parts come from an equally patchy sinfonia concertata in Stradella’s work. The real interest of these things ought not to be denied either by the misstatement that the materials adapted are mere common property, nor by the calumny that Handel was uninventive.

The effects of Handel’s original inspiration upon foreign material are really the best indication of the range of his style. The comic meaning of the broken rhythm of Stradella’s overture becomes indeed Handel’s inspiration in the light of the gigantic tone-picture of the “Hailstone chorus.” In the theme of “He led them forth like sheep” we have already cited a particular case where Handel perceived great solemnity in a theme originally intended to be frivolous. The converse process is equally instructive. In the short Carillon choruses in Saul where the Israelitish women welcome David after his victory over Goliath, Handel uses a delightful instrumental tune which stands at the beginning of a Te Deum by Urio, from which he borrowed an enormous amount of material in Saul, L’Allegro, the Dettingen Te Deum and other works. Urio’s idea is first to make a jubilant and melodious noise from the lower register of the strings, and then to bring out a flourish of high trumpets as a contrast. He has no other use for his beautiful tune, which indeed would not bear more elaborate treatment than he gives it. The ritornello falls into statement and counterstatement, and the counterstatement secures one repetition of the tune, after which no more is heard of it. It has none of the solemnity of church music, and its value as a contrast to the flourish of trumpets depends, not upon itself, but upon its position in the orchestra. Handel did not see in it a fine opening for a great ecclesiastical work, but he saw in it an admirable expression of popular jubilation, and he understood how to bring out its character with the liveliest sense of climax and dramatic interest by taking it at its own value as a popular tune. So he uses it as an instrumental interlude accompanied with a jingle of carillons, while the daughters of Israel sing to a square-cut tune those praises of David which aroused the jealousy of Saul. But now turn to the opening of the Dettingen Te Deum and see what splendid use is made of the other side of Urio’s idea, the contrast between a jubilant noise in the lowest part of the scale and the blaze of trumpets at an extreme height. In the fourth bar of the Dettingen Te Deum we find the same florid trumpet figures as we find in the fifth bar of Urio’s, but at the first moment they are on oboes. The first four bars beat a tattoo on the tonic and dominant, with the whole orchestra, including trumpets and drums, in the lowest possible position and in a stirring rhythm with a boldness and simplicity characteristic only of a stroke of genius. Then the oboes appear with Urio’s trumpet flourishes; the momentary contrast is at least as brilliant as Urio’s; and as the oboes are immediately followed by the same figures on the trumpets themselves the contrast gains incalculably in subtlety and climax. Moreover, these flourishes are more melodious than the broad and massive opening, instead of being, as in Urio’s scheme, incomparably less so. Lastly, Handel’s primitive opening rhythmic figures inevitably underlie every subsequent inner part and bass that occurs at every half close and full close throughout the movement, especially where the trumpets are used. And thus every detail of his scheme is rendered alive with a rhythmic significance which the elementary nature of the theme prevents from ever becoming obtrusive.

No other great composer has ever so overcrowded his life with occasional and mechanical work as Handel, and in no other artist are the qualities that make the difference between inspired and uninspired pages more difficult to analyse. The libretti of his oratorios are full of absurdities, except when they are derived in every detail from Scripture, as in the Messiah and Israel in Egypt, or from the classics of English literature, as in Samson and L’Allegro. These absurdities, and the obvious fact that in every oratorio Handel writes many more numbers than are desirable for one performance, and that he was continually in later performances adding, transferring and cutting out solo numbers and often choruses as well—all this may seem at first sight to militate seriously against the view that Handel’s originality and greatness consists in his grasp of the works as wholes, but in reality it strengthens that view. These things militate against the perfection of the whole, but they would have been absolutely fatal to a work of which the whole is not (as in all true art) greater than the sum of its parts. That they are felt as absurdities and defects already shows that Handel created in English oratorio a true art-form on the largest possible scale.

There never has been a time when Handel has been overrated, except in so far as other composers have been neglected. But no composer has suffered so much from pious misinterpretation and the popular admiration of misleading externals. It is not the place here to dilate upon the burial of Handel’s art beneath the “mammoth” performances of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace; nor can we give more than a passing reference to the effects of “additional accompaniments” in the style of an altogether later age, started most unfortunately by Mozart (whose share in the work has been very much misinterpreted and corrupted) and continued in the middle of the 19th century by musicians of every degree of intelligence and refinement, until all sense of unity of style has been lost and does not seem likely to be recovered as a general element in the popular appreciation of Handel for some time to come. But in spite of this, Handel will never cease to be revered and loved as one of the greatest of composers, if we value the criteria of architectonic power, a perfect sense of style, and the power to rise to the most sublime height of musical climax by the simplest means.

Handel’s important works have all been mentioned above with their dates, and a separate detailed list does not seem necessary. He was an extremely rapid worker, and his later works are dated almost day by day as they proceed. From this we learn that the Messiah was sketched and scored within twenty-one days, and that even Jephtha, with an interruption of nearly four months besides several other delays caused by Handel’s failing sight, was begun and finished within seven months, representing hardly five weeks’ actual writing. Handel’s extant works may be roughly summarized from the edition of the Händelgesellschaft as 41 Italian operas, 2 Italian oratorios, 2 German Passions, 18 English oratorios, 4 English secular oratorios, 4 English secular cantatas, and a few other small works, English and Italian, of the type of oratorio or incidental dramatic music; 3 Latin settings of the Te Deum; the (English) Dettingen Te Deum and Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate; 4 coronation anthems; 3 volumes of English anthems (Chandos Anthems); 1 volume of Latin church music; 3 volumes of Italian vocal chamber-music; 1 volume of clavier works; 37 instrumental duets and trios (sonatas), and 4 volumes of orchestral music and organ concertos (about 40 works). Precise figures are impossible as there is no means of drawing the line between pasticcios and original works. The instrumental pieces especially are used again and again as overtures to operas and oratorios and anthems.

The complete edition of the German Händelgesellschaft suffers from being the work of one man who would not recognize that his task was beyond any single man’s power. The best arrangements of the vocal scores are undoubtedly those published by Novello that are not based on “additional accompaniments.” None is absolutely trustworthy, and those of the editor of the German Händelgesellschaft are sad proofs of the uselessness of expert library-scholarship without a sound musical training. Yet Chrysander’s services in the restoration of Handel are beyond praise. We need only mention his discovery of authentic trombone parts in Israel in Egypt as one among many of his priceless contributions to musical history and aesthetics.

(D. F. T.)

1 Chrysander says Mattei instead of Ariosti.

2 By a dramatic coincidence Handel’s blindness interrupted him during the writing of the chorus, “How dark, oh Lord, are Thy decrees, ... all our joys to sorrow turning ... as the night succeeds the day.”

3 The “moral” question has been raised afresh in reviews of Mr Sedley Taylor’s admirable volume of analysed illustrations (The Indebtedness of Handel to works of other Composers, Cambridge, 1906). The latest argument is that Handel shows moral obliquity in borrowing “regrettably” from sources no one could know at the time. This reasoning makes it mysterious that a man of such moral obliquity should ever have written a note of his own music in England when he could have stolen the complete choral works of Bach and most of the hundred operas of Alessandro Scarlatti with the certainty that the sources would not be printed for a century after his death, even if his own name did not then check curiosity among antiquarians. Of course Handel’s plagiarisms would have damaged his reputation if contemporaries had known of them. His polyphonic scholarship was more “antiquated” in the 18th century than it is in the 20th.

4 Much light would be thrown on the subject if some one sufficiently ignorant of architecture were to make researches into Sir Christopher Wren’s indebtedness to Italian architects!

HANDFASTING (A.S. handfæstnung, pledging one’s hand), primarily the O. Eng. synonym for betrothal (q.v.), and later a peculiar form of temporary marriage at one time common in Scotland, the only necessary ceremony being the verbal pledge of the couple while holding hands. The pair thus handfasted were, in accordance with Scotch law, entitled to live together for a year and a day. If then they so wished, the temporary marriage could be made permanent: if not, they could go their several ways without reproach, the child, if any, being supported by the party who objected to further cohabitation.

HANDICAP (from the expression hand in cap, referring to drawing lots), a disadvantageous condition imposed upon the superior competitor in sports and games, or an advantage allowed the inferior, in order to equalize the chances of both. The character of the handicap depends upon the nature of the sport. Thus in horse-racing the better horse must carry the heavier weight. In foot races the inferior runners are allowed to start at certain distances in advance of the best (or “scratch”) man, according to their previous records. In distance competitions (weights, fly-casting, jumping, &c.) the inferior contestants add certain distances to their scores. In time contests (yachting, canoe-racing, &c.) the weaker or smaller competitors subtract certain periods of time from that actually made, reckoned by the mile. In stroke contests (e.g. golf) a certain number of strokes are subtracted from or added to the scores, according to the strength of the players. In chess and draughts the stronger competitor may play without one or more pieces. In court games (tennis, lawn-tennis, racquets, &c.) and in billiards certain points, or percentage of points, are accorded the weaker players.

Handicapping was applied to horse-racing as early as 1680, though the word was not used in this connexion much before the middle of the 18th century. A “Post and Handy-Cap Match” is described in Pond’s Racing Calendar for 1754. A reference to something similar in Germany and Scandinavia, called Freimarkt, may be found in Germania, vol. xix.

Competitions in which handicaps are given are called handicap-events or handicaps. There are many systems which depend upon the whim of the individual competitors. Thus a tennis player may offer to play against his inferior with a selzer-bottle instead of a racquet; or a golfer to play with only one club; or a chess-player to make his moves without seeing the board.

The name “handicap” was taken from an ancient English game, to which Pepys, in his Diary under the date of the 18th of September 1660, thus refers: “Here some of us fell to handicap, a sport that I never knew before, which was very good.” This game, which became obsolete in the 19th century, was described as early as the 14th in Piers the Plowman under the name of “New Faire.” It was originally played by three persons, one of whom proposed to “challenge,” or exchange, some piece of property belonging to another for something of his own. The challenge being accepted an umpire was chosen, and all three put up a sum of money as a forfeit. The two players then placed their right hands in a cap, or in their pockets, in which there was loose money, while the umpire proceeded to describe the two objects of exchange, and to declare what sum of money the owner of the inferior article should pay as a bonus to the other. This declaration was made as rapidly as possible and ended with the invitation, “Draw, gentlemen!” Each player then withdrew and held out his hand, which he opened. If both hands contained money the exchange was effected according to the conditions laid down by the umpire, who then took the forfeit money for himself. If neither hand contained money the exchange was declined and the umpire took the forfeit money. If only one player signified his acceptance of the exchange by holding money in his hand, he was entitled to the forfeit-money, though the exchange was not made.

Handicap was also the name of an old game at cards, now obsolete. It resembled the game of Loo, and probably derived its name from the ancient sport described above.

HANDSEL, the O. Eng. term for earnest money; especially in Scotland the first money taken at a market or fair. The termination sel is the modern “sell.” “Hand” indicates, not a bargain by shaking hands, but the actual putting of the money into the hand. Handsels were also presents or earnests of goodwill in the North; thus Handsel Monday, the first Monday in the year, an occasion for universal tipping, is the equivalent of the English Boxing day.

HANDSWORTH. (1) An urban district in the Handsworth parliamentary division of Staffordshire, England, suburban to Birmingham on the north-west. Pop. (1891), 32,756; (1901) 52,921. (See Birmingham.) (2) An urban district in the Hallamshire parliamentary division of Yorkshire, 4 m. S.E. of Sheffield. Pop. (1901), 13,404. In this neighbourhood are extensive collieries and quarries.

HANDWRITING. Under Palaeography and Writing, the history of handwriting is dealt with. Questions of handwriting come before legal tribunals mainly in connexion with the law of evidence. In Roman law, the authenticity of documents was proved first by the attesting witnesses; in the second place, if they were dead, by comparison of handwritings. It was necessary, however, that the document to be used for purposes of comparison either should have been executed with the formalities of a public document, or should have its genuineness proved by three attesting witnesses. The determination was apparently, in the latter case, left to experts, who were sworn to give an impartial opinion (Code 4, 21. 20). Proof by comparison of handwritings, with a reference if necessary to three experts as to the handwriting which is to be used for the purposes of comparison, is provided for in the French Code of Civil Procedure (arts. 193 et seq.); and in Quebec (Code Proc. Civ. arts. 392 et seq.) and St Lucia (Code Civ. Proc. arts. 286 et seq.), the French system has been adopted with modifications. Comparison by witnesses of disputed writings with any writing proved to the satisfaction of the judge to be genuine is accepted in England and Ireland in all legal proceedings whether criminal or civil, including proceedings before arbitrators (Denman Act, 28 & 29 Vict. c. 18, 55. 1, 8); and such writings and the evidence of witnesses respecting the same may be submitted to the court and jury as evidence of the genuineness or otherwise of the writing in dispute. It is admitted in Scotland (where the term comparatio literarum is in use) and in most of the American states, subject to the same conditions. In England, prior to the Common Law Procedure Act of 1854 (now superseded by the act of 1866), documents irrelevant to the matter in issue were not admissible for the sole purpose of comparison, and this rule has been adopted, and is still adhered to, in some of the states in America. In England, as in the United States, and in most legal systems, the primary and best evidence of handwriting is that of the writer himself. Witnesses who saw him write the writing in question, or who are familiar with his handwriting either from having seen him write or from having corresponded with him, or otherwise, may be called. In cases of disputed handwriting the court will accept the evidence of experts in handwriting, i.e. persons who have an adequate knowledge of handwriting, whether acquired in the way of their business or not, such as solicitors or bank cashiers (R. v. Silverlock, 1894, 2 Q.B. 766). In such cases the witness is required to compare the admitted handwriting of the person whose writing is in question with the disputed document, and to state in detail the similarities or differences as to the formation of words and letters, on which he bases his opinion as to the genuineness or otherwise of the disputed document. By the use of the magnifying glass, or, as in the Parnell case, by enlarged photographs of the letters alleged to have been written by Mr Parnell, the court and jury are much assisted to appreciate the grounds on which the conclusions of the expert are founded. Evidence of this kind, being based on opinion and theory, needs to be very carefully weighed, and the dangers of implicit reliance on it have been illustrated in many cases (e.g. the Beck case in 1904; and see Seaman v. Netherclift, 1876, 1 C.P.D. 540). Evidence by comparison of handwriting comes in principally either in default, or in corroboration, of the other modes of proof.

Where attestation is necessary to the validity of a document, e.g. wills and bills of sale, the execution must be proved by one or more of the attesting witnesses, unless they are dead or cannot be produced, when it is sufficient to prove the signature of one of them to the attesting clause (28 & 29 Vict. c. 18, s. 7). Signatures to certain public and official documents need not in general be proved (see e.g. Evidence Act, 1845, ss. 1, 2).

See Taylor, Law of Evidence (10th ed., London, 1906); Erskine Principles of the Law of Scotland (20th ed., Edinburgh, 1903); Bouvier, Law Dicty. (Boston and London, 1897); Harris, Identification (Albany, 1892); Hagan, Disputed Handwriting (New York, 1894); also the article Identification.

(A. W. R.)

HANG-CHOW-FU, a city of China, in the province of Cheh-Kiang, 2 m. N.W. of the Tsien-tang-Kiang, at the southern terminus of the Grand canal, by which it communicates with Peking. It lies about 100 m. S.W. of Shanghai, in 30° 20′ 20″ N., 120° 7′ 27″ E. Towards the west is the Si-hu or Western Lake, a beautiful sheet of water, with its banks and islands studded with villas, monuments and gardens, and its surface traversed by gaily-painted pleasure boats. Exclusive of extensive and flourishing suburbs, the city has a circuit, of 12 m.; its streets are well paved and clean; and it possesses a large number of arches, public monuments, temples, hospitals and colleges. It has long ranked as one of the great centres of Chinese commerce and Chinese learning. In 1869 the silk manufactures alone were said to give employment to 60,000 persons within its walls, and it has an extensive production of gold and silver work and tinsel paper. On one of the islands in the lake is the great Wên-lan-ko or pavilion of literary assemblies, and it is said that at the examinations for the second degree, twice every three years, from 10,000 to 15,000 candidates come together. In the north-east corner of the city is the Nestorian church which was noted by Marco Polo, the façade being “elaborately carved and the gates covered with elegantly wrought iron.” There is a Roman Catholic mission in Hangchow, and the Church Missionary Society, the American Presbyterians, and the Baptists have stations. The local dialect differs from the Mandarin mainly in pronunciation. The population, which is remarkable for gaiety of clothing, was formerly reckoned at 2,000,000, but is now variously estimated at 300,000, 400,000 or 800,000. Hang-chow-fu was declared open to foreign trade in 1896, in pursuance of the Japanese treaty of Shimonoseki. It is connected with Shanghai by inland canal, which is navigable for boats drawing up to 4 ft. of water, and which might be greatly improved by dredging. The cities of Shanghai, Hangchow and Suchow form the three points of a triangle, each being connected with the other by canal, and trade is now open by steam between all three under the inland navigation rules. These canals pass through the richest and most populous districts of China, and in particular lead into the great silk-producing districts. They have for many centuries been the highway of commerce, and afford a cheap and economical means of transport. Hangchow lies at the head of the large estuary of that name, which is, however, too shallow for navigation by steamers. The estuary or bay is funnel-shaped, and its configuration produces at spring tides a “bore” or tidal wave, which at its maximum reaches a height of 15 to 20 ft. The value of trade passing through the customs in 1899 was £1,729,000; in 1904 these figures had risen to £2,543,831.

Hang-chow-fu is the Kinsai of Marco Polo, who describes it as the finest and noblest city in the world, and speaks enthusiastically of the number and splendour of its mansions and the wealth and luxuriance of its inhabitants. According to this authority it had a circuit of 100 m., and no fewer than 12,000 bridges and 3000 baths. The name Kinsai, which appears in Wassaf as Khanzai, in Ibn Batuta as Khansa, in Odoric of Pordenone as Camsay, and elsewhere as Campsay and Cassay, is really a corruption of the Chinese King-sze, capital, the same word which is still applied to Peking. From the 10th to the 13th century (960-1272) the city, whose real name was then Ling-nan, was the capital of southern China and the seat of the Sung dynasty, which was dethroned by the Mongolians shortly before Marco Polo’s visit. Up to 1861, when it was laid in ruins by the T’aip’ings, Hangchow continued to maintain its position as one of the most flourishing cities in the empire.

HANGING, one of the modes of execution under Roman law (ad furcam domnatio), and in England and some other countries the usual form of capital punishment. It was derived by the Anglo-Saxons from their German ancestors (Tacitus, Germ. 12). Under William the Conqueror this mode of punishment is said to have been disused in favour of mutilation: but Henry I. decreed that all thieves taken should be hanged (i.e. summarily without trial), and by the time of Henry II. hanging was fully established as a punishment for homicide; the “right of pit and gallows” was ordinarily included in the royal grants of jurisdiction to lords of manors and to ecclesiastical1 and municipal corporations. In the middle ages every town, abbey, and nearly all the more important manorial lords had the right of hanging. The clergy had rights, too, in respect to the gallows. Thus William the Conqueror invested the abbot of Battle Abbey with authority to save the life of any criminal. From the end of the 12th century the jurisdiction of the royal courts gradually became exclusive; as early as 1212 the king’s justices sentenced offenders to be hanged (Seld. Soc. Publ. vol. i.; Select Pleas of the Crown, p. 111), and in the Gloucester eyre of 1221 instances of this sentence are numerous (Maitland, pl. 72, 101, 228). In 1241 a nobleman’s son, William Marise, was hanged for piracy. In the reign of Edward I. the abbot of Peterborough set up a gallows at Collingham, Notts, and hanged a thief. In 1279 two hundred and eighty Jews were hanged for clipping coin. The mayor and the porter of the South Gate of Exeter were hanged for their neglect in leaving the city gate open at night, thereby aiding the escape of a murderer. Hanging in time superseded all other forms of capital punishment for felony. It was substituted in 1790 for burning as a punishment of female traitors and in 1814 for beheading as a punishment for male traitors. The older and more primitive modes of carrying out the sentence were by hanging from the bough of a tree (“the father to the bough, the son to the plough”) or from a gallows. Formerly in the worst cases of murder it was customary after execution to hang the criminal’s body in chains near the scene of his crime. This was known as “gibbeting,” and, though by no means rare in the earliest times, was, according to Blackstone, no part of the legal sentence. Holinshed is the authority for the statement that sometimes culprits were gibbeted alive, but this is doubtful. It was not until 1752 that gibbeting was recognized by statute. The act (25 Geo. II. c. 37) empowered the judges to direct that the dead body of a murderer should be hung in chains, in the manner practised for the most atrocious offences, or given over to surgeons to be dissected and anatomized, and forbade burial except after dissection (see Foster, Crown Law, 107, Earl Ferrers’ case, 1760). The hanging in chains was usually on the spot where the murder took place. Pirates were gibbeted on the sea shore or river bank. The act of 1752 was repealed in 1828, but the alternatives of dissection or hanging in chains were re-enacted and continued in use until abolished as to dissection by the Anatomy Act in 1832, and as to hanging in chains in 1834. The last murderer hung in chains seems to have been James Cook, executed at Leicester on the 10th of August 1832. The irons used on that occasion are preserved in Leicester prison. Instead of chains, gibbet irons, a framework to hold the limbs together, were sometimes used. At the town hall, Rye, Sussex, are preserved the irons used in 1742 for one John Breeds who murdered the mayor.

The earlier modes of hanging were gradually disused, and the present system of hanging by use of the drop is said to have been inaugurated at the execution of the fourth Earl Ferrers in 1760. The form of scaffold now in use2 has under the gallows a drop constructed on the principle of the trap-doors on a theatrical stage, upon which the convict is placed under the gallows, a white cap is placed over his head, and when the halter has been properly adjusted the drop is withdrawn by a mechanical contrivance worked by a lever, much like those in use on railways for moving points and signals. The convict falls into a pit, the length of the fall being regulated by his height and weight. Death results not from real hanging and strangulation, but from a fracture of the cervical vertebrae. Compression of the windpipe by the rope and the obstruction of the circulation aid in the fatal result. Recently the noose has had imbedded in its fibre a metal eyelet which is adjusted tightly beneath the ear and considerably expedites death. The convict is left hanging until life is extinct.

It was long considered essential that executions, like trials, should be public, and be carried out in a manner calculated to impress evil-doers. Partly to this idea, partly to notions of revenge and temporal punishment of sin, is probably due the rigour of the administration of the English law. But the methods of execution were unseemly, as delineated in Hogarth’s print of the execution of the idle apprentice, and were ineffectual in reducing the bulk of crime, which was augmented by the inefficiency of the police and the uncertainty and severity of the law, which rendered persons tempted to commit crime either reckless or confident of escape. The scandals attending public executions led to an attempt to alter the law in 1841, although many protests had been made long before, among them those of the novelist Fielding. But perhaps the most forcible and effectual was that of Charles Dickens in his letters to The Times written after mixing in the crowd gathered to witness the execution of the Mannings at Horsemonger Lane gaol in 1849. After his experiences he came to the conclusion that public executions attracted the depraved and those affected by morbid curiosity; and that the spectacle had neither the solemnity nor the salutary effect which should attend the execution of public justice. His views were strongly resisted in some quarters; and it was not until 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 24) that they were accepted. The last public hanging in England was that of Michael Barrett for murder by causing an explosion at Clerkenwell prison with the object of releasing persons confined there for treason and felony (Ann. Reg., 1868, p. 63). Under the act of 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 24), which was adapted from similar legislation already in force in the Australian colonies convicted murderers are hanged within the walls of a prison. The sentence of the court is that the convict “be hanged by the neck until he is dead.” The execution of the sentence devolves on the sheriff of the county (Sheriffs Act 1887, s. 13). As a general rule the sentence is carried out in England and Ireland at 8 A.M. on a week-day (not being Monday), in the week following the third Sunday after sentence was passed. In old times prisoners were often hanged on the day after sentence was passed; and under the act of 1752 this was made the rule in cases of murder. A public notice of the date and hour of execution must be posted on the prison walls not less than twelve hours before the execution and must remain until the inquest is over. The persons required to be present are the sheriff, the gaoler, chaplain and surgeon of the prison, and such other officers of the prison as the sheriff requires; justices of the peace for the jurisdiction to which the prison belongs, and such of the relatives, or such other persons as the sheriff or visiting justices allow, may also attend. It is usual to allow the attendance of some representatives of the press. The death of the prisoner is certified by the prison surgeon, and a declaration that judgment of death has been executed is signed by the sheriff. An inquest is then held on the body by the coroner for the jurisdiction and a jury from which prison officers are excluded. The certificate and declaration, and a duplicate of the coroner’s inquiry also, are sent to the home office, or in Ireland to the lord-lieutenant, and the body of the prisoner is interred in quicklime within the prison walls if space is available. It is also the practice to toll the bell of the parish or other neighbouring church, for fifteen minutes before and fifteen minutes after the execution. The hoisting of the black flag at the moment of execution was abolished in 1902. The regulations as to execution are printed in the Statutory Rules and Orders, Revised ed. 1904, vol. x. (tits. Prison E. and Prison I). The act of 1868 applies only to executions for murder; but since the passing of the act there have been no executions for any other crime within the United Kingdom. (See further Capital Punishment.)

In Scotland execution by hanging is carried out in the same manner as in England and Ireland, but under the supervision of the magistrates of the burgh in which it is decreed to take place, and in lieu of the inquest required in England and Ireland an inquiry is held at the instance of the procurator-fiscal before a sheriff or sheriff substitute (act of 1868, s. 13). The procedure at the execution is governed by the act of 1868 and the Scottish Prison Rules, rr. 465-469 (Stat. Rules and Orders, Revised ed. 1904, tit. Prison S).

British Dominions beyond the Seas.—Throughout the King’s dominions hanging is the regular method of executing sentence of death. In India the Penal Code superseded the modes of punishment under Mahommedan law, and s. 368 of the Criminal Procedure Code of 1898 provides that sentence of death is to be executed by hanging by the neck.

In Canada the sentence is executed within a prison under conditions very similar to those in England (Criminal Code, 1892; ss. 936-945). In Australia the execution takes place within the prison walls, at a time and place appointed by the governor of the state. See Queensland Code, 1899, s. 664; Western Australia Code, 1901, s. 663; in these states no inquest is held. In Western Australia the governor may cause an aboriginal native to be executed outside a prison. In New Zealand the only mode of execution is by hanging within a prison (Act of 1883).

United States.—-In all the states except New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, and Ohio (see Electrocution) persons sentenced to death are hanged. In Utah the criminal may elect to be shot instead.

The only countries, whose law is not of direct English origin, which inflict capital punishment by hanging are Japan, Austria, Hungary and Russia.

(W. F. C.)

1 See Pollock and Maitland vol. i. 563. The sole survival of these grants is the jurisdiction of the justices of the Soke of Peterborough to try for capital offences at their quarter sessions.

2 In most counties in Ireland the scaffold used (in 1852) to consist in an iron balcony permanently fixed outside the gaol wall. There was a small door in the wall commanding the balcony and opening out upon it. The bottom of the iron balcony or cage was so constructed that on the withdrawal of a pin or bolt which could be managed from within the gaol, the trap-door upon which the culprit stood dropped from under his feet. The upper end of the rope was fastened to a strong iron bar, which projected over the trap-door. There were usually two or three trap-doors on the same balcony, so that, if required, two or more men could be hanged simultaneously. (Trench, Realities of Irish Life (1869), 280.)

HANGÖ, a port and sea-bathing resort situated on the promontory of Hangöudd, to the extreme south-west of Finland. Hangö owes its commercial importance to the fact that it is practically the only winter ice-free port in Finland, and is thus of value both to the Finnish and the Russian sea-borne trade. When incorporated in 1874 it had only a few hundred inhabitants; in 1900 it had 2501 and it has now over six thousand (5986 in 1904). It is connected by railway with Helsingfors and Tammerfors, and is the centre of the Finnish butter export, which now amounts to over £1,000,000 yearly. There is a considerable import of coal, cotton, iron and breadstuffs, the chief exports being butter, fish, timber and wood pulp. During the period of emigration, owing to political troubles with Russia, over 12,000 Finns sailed from Hangö in a single year (1901), mostly for the United States and Canada. Hangö now takes front rank as a fashionable watering-place, especially for wealthy Russians, having a dry climate and a fine strand.

HANKA, WENCESLAUS (1791-1861), Bohemian philologist, was born at Horeniowes, a hamlet of eastern Bohemia, on the 10th of June 1791. He was sent in 1807 to school at Königgrätz, to escape the conscription, then to the university of Prague, where he founded a society for the cultivation of the Czech language. At Vienna, where he afterwards studied law, he established a Czech periodical; and in 1813 he made the acquaintance of Joseph Dobrowsky, the eminent philologist. On the 16th of September 1817 Hanka alleged that he had discovered some ancient Bohemian manuscript poems (the Königinhof MS.) of the 13th and 14th century in the church tower of the village of Kralodwor, or Königinhof. These were published in 1818, under the title Kralodworsky Rukopis, with a German translation by Swoboda. Great doubt, however, was felt as to their genuineness, and Dobrowsky, by pronouncing The Judgment of Libussa, another manuscript found by Hanka, an “obvious fraud,” confirmed the suspicion. Some years afterwards Dobrowsky saw fit to modify his decision, but by modern Czech scholars the MS. is regarded as a forgery. A translation into English, The Manuscript of the Queen’s Court, was made by Wratislaw in 1852. The originals were presented by the discoverer to the Bohemian museum at Prague, of which he was appointed librarian in 1818. In 1848 Hanka, who was an ardent Panslavist, took part in the Slavonic congress and other peaceful national demonstrations, being the founder of the political society Slovanska Lipa. He was elected to the imperial diet at Vienna, but declined to take his seat. In the winter of 1848 he became lecturer and in 1849 professor of Slavonic languages in the university of Prague, where he died on the 12th of January 1861.

His chief works and editions are the following: Hankowy Pjsne (Prague, 1815), a volume of poems; Starobyla Skladani (1817-1826), in 5 vols.—a collection of old Bohemian poems, chiefly from unpublished manuscripts; A Short History of the Slavonic Peoples (1818); A Bohemian Grammar (1822) and A Polish Grammar (1839)—these grammars were composed on a plan suggested by Dobrowsky; Igor (1821), an ancient Russian epic, with a translation into Bohemian; a part of the Gospels from the Reims manuscript in the Glagolitic character (1846); the old Bohemian Chronicles of Dalimil (1848) and the History of Charles IV., by Procop Lupáč (1848); Evangelium Ostromis (1853).

HANKOW (“Mouth of the Han”), the great commercial centre of the middle portion of the Chinese empire, and since 1858 one of the principal places opened to foreign trade. It is situated on the northern side of the Yangtsze-kiang at its junction with the Han river, about 600 m. W. of Shanghai in 30° 32′ 51″ N., 114° 19′ 55″ E., at a height of 150 ft. By the Chinese it is not considered a separate city, but as a suburb of the now decadent city of Hanyang; and it may almost be said to stand in a similar relation to Wu-chang the capital of the province of Hupeh, which lies immediately opposite on the southern bank of the Yangtsze-kiang. Hankow extends for about a mile along the main river and about two and a half along the Han. It is protected by a wall 18 ft. high, which was erected in 1863 and has a circuit of about 4 m. Within recent years the port has made rapid advance in wealth and importance. The opening up of the upper waters of the Yangtsze to steam navigation has made it a commercial entrepôt second only to Shanghai. It is the terminus of a railway between Peking and the Yangtsze, the northern half of the trunk line from Peking to Canton. There is daily communication by regular lines of steamers with Shanghai, and smaller steamers ply on the upper section of the river between Hankow and Ich’ang. The principal article of export continues to be black tea, of which staple Hankow has always been the central market. The bulk of the leaf tea, however, now goes to Russia by direct steamers to Odessa instead of to London as formerly, and a large quantity goes overland via Tientsin and Siberia in the form of brick tea. The quantity of brick tea thus exported in 1904 was upwards of 10 million ℔. The exports which come next in value are opium, wood-oil, hides, beans, cotton yarn and raw silk. The population of Hankow, together with the city of Wu-chang on the opposite bank, is estimated at 800,000, and the number of foreign residents is about 500. Large iron-works have been erected by the Chinese authorities at Hanyang, a couple of miles higher up the river, and at Wuchang there are two official cotton mills. The British concession, on which the business part of the foreign settlement is built, was obtained in 1861 by a lease in perpetuity from the Chinese authorities in favour of the crown. By 1863 a great embankment and a roadway were completed along the river, which may rise as much as 50 ft. or more above its ordinary levels, and not infrequently, as in 1849 and 1866, lays a large part of the town under water. On the former occasion little was left uncovered but the roofs of the houses. In 1864 a public assay office was established. Sub-leases for a term of years are granted by the crown to private individuals; local control, including the policing of the settlement, is managed by a municipal council elected under regulations promulgated by the British minister in China, acting by authority of the sovereign’s orders in council. Foreigners, i.e. non-British, are admitted to become lease-holders on their submitting to be bound by the municipal regulations. The concession, however, gives no territorial jurisdiction. All foreigners, of whatever nationality, are justiciable only before their own consular authorities by virtue of the extra-territorial clauses of their treaties with China. In 1895 a concession, on similar terms to that under which the British is held, was obtained by Germany, and this was followed by concessions to France and Russia. These three concessions all lie on the north bank of the river and immediately below the British. An extension of the British concession backwards was granted in 1898. The Roman Catholics, the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyans have all missions in the town; and there are two missionary hospitals. The total trade in 1904 was valued at £15,401,076 (£9,042,190 being exports and £6,358,886 imports) as compared with a total of £17,183,400 in 1891 and £11,628,000 in 1880.

HANLEY, a market town and parliamentary borough of Staffordshire, England, in the Potteries district, 148 m. N.W. from London, on the North Staffordshire railway. Pop. (1891) 54,946; (1901) 61,599. The parliamentary borough includes the adjoining town of Burslem. The town, which lies on high ground, has handsome municipal buildings, free library, technical and art museum, elementary, science and art schools, and a large park. Its manufactures include porcelain, encaustic tiles, and earthenware, and give employment to the greater part of the population, women and children being employed almost as largely as men. In the neighbourhood coal and iron are obtained. Hanley is of modern development. Its municipal constitution dates from 1857, the parliamentary borough from 1885, and the county borough from 1888. Shelton, Hope, Northwood and Wellington are populous ecclesiastical parishes included within its boundaries. That of Etruria, adjoining on the west, originated in the Ridge House pottery works of Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley, who founded them in 1769, naming them after the country of the Etruscans in Italy. Etruria Hall was the scene of Wedgwood’s experiments. The parliamentary borough of Hanley returns one member. The town was governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen, and 18 councillors until under the “Potteries federation” scheme (1908) it became part of the borough of Stoke-on-Trent (q.v.) in 1910.

HANNA, MARCUS ALONZO (1837-1904), American politician, was born at New Lisbon (now Lisbon) Columbiana county, Ohio, on the 24th of September 1837. In 1852 he removed with his father to Cleveland, where the latter established himself in the wholesale grocery business, and the son received his education in the public schools of that city, and at the Western Reserve University. Leaving college before the completion of his course, he became associated with his father in business, and on his father’s death (1862) became a member of the firm. In 1867 he entered into partnership with his father-in-law, Daniel P. Rhodes, in the coal and iron business. It was largely due to Hanna’s progressive methods that the business of the firm, which became M. A. Hanna & Company in 1877, was extended to include the ownership of a fleet of lake steam-ships constructed in their own shipyards, and the control and operation of valuable coal and iron mines. Subsequently he became largely interested in street railway properties in Cleveland and elsewhere, and in various banking institutions. In early life he had little time for politics, but after 1880 he became prominent in the affairs of the Republican party in Cleveland, and in 1884 and 1888 was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, in the latter year being associated with William McKinley in the management of the John Sherman canvass. It was not, however, until 1896, when he personally managed the canvass that resulted in securing the Republican presidential nomination for William McKinley at the St Louis Convention (at which he was a delegate), that he became known throughout the United States as a political manager of great adroitness, tact and resourcefulness. Subsequently he became chairman of the Republican National Committee, and managed with consummate skill the campaign of 1896 against William Jennings Bryan and “free-silver.” In March 1897 he was appointed, by Governor Asa S. Bushnell (1834-1904) United States senator from Ohio, to succeed John Sherman. In the senate, to which in January 1898 he was elected for the short term ending on the 3rd of March 1899 and for the succeeding full term, he took little part in the debates, but was recognized as one of the principal advisers of the McKinley administration, and his influence was large in consequence. Apart from politics he took a deep and active interest in the problems of capital and labour, was one of the organizers (1901) and the first president of the National Civic Federation, whose purpose was to solve social and industrial problems, and in December 1901 became chairman of a permanent board of conciliation and arbitration established by the Federation. After President Roosevelt’s policies became defined, Senator Hanna came to be regarded as the leader of the conservative branch of the Republican party and a possible presidential candidate in 1904. He died at Washington on the 15th of February 1904.

HANNAY, JAMES (1827-1873), Scottish critic, novelist and publicist, was born at Dumfries on the 17th of February 1827. He came of the Hannays of Sorbie, an ancient Galloway family. He entered the navy in 1840 and served till 1845, when he adopted literature as his profession. He acted as reporter on the Morning Chronicle and gradually obtained a connexion, writing for the quarterly and monthly journals. In 1857 Hannay contested the Dumfries burghs in the Conservative interest, but without success. He edited the Edinburgh Courant from 1860 till 1864, when he removed to London. From 1868 till his death on the 8th of January 1873 he was British consul at Barcelona. His letters to the Pall Mall Gazette “From an Englishman in Spain” were highly appreciated. Hannay’s best books are his two naval novels, Singleton Fontenoy (1850) and Eustace Conyers (1855); Satire and Satirists (1854); and Essays from the Quarterly Review (1861). Satire not only shows loving appreciation of the great satirists of the past, but is itself instinct with wit and fine satiric power. The book sparkles with epigrams and apposite classical allusions, and contains admirable critical estimates of Horace (Hannay’s favourite author), Juvenal, Erasmus, Sir David Lindsay, George Buchanan, Boileau, Butler, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Churchill, Burns, Byron and Moore.

Among his other works are Biscuits and Grog, Claret Cup, and Hearts are Trumps (1848); King Dobbs (1849); Sketches in Ultramarine (1853); an edition of the Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, to which he prefixed an essay on the poet’s life and genius (1852); Characters and Criticisms, consisting mainly of his contributions to the Edinburgh Courant (1865); A Course of English Literature (1866); Studies on Thackeray (1869); and a family history entitled Three Hundred Years of a Norman House (the Gurneys) (1867).

HANNEN, JAMES HANNEN, Baron (1821-1894), English judge, son of a London merchant, was born at Peckham in 1821. He was educated at St Paul’s school and at Heidelberg University, which was famous as a school of law. Called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1848, he joined the home circuit. At this time he also wrote for the press, and supplied special reports for the Morning Chronicle. Though not eloquent in speech, he was clear, accurate and painstaking, and soon advanced in his profession, passing many more brilliant competitors. He appeared for the claimant in the Shrewsbury peerage case in 1858, when the 3rd Earl Talbot was declared to be entitled to the earldom of Shrewsbury as the descendant of the 2nd earl; was principal agent for Great Britain on the mixed British and American commission for the settlement of outstanding claims, 1853-1855; and assisted in the prosecution of the Fenian prisoners at Manchester. In 1868 Hannen was appointed a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench. In many cases he took a strong position of his own, notably in that of Farrar v. Close (1869), which materially affected the legal status of trade unions and was regarded by unionists as a severe blow to their interests. Hannen became judge of the Probate and Divorce Court in 1872, and in 1875 he was appointed president of the probate and admiralty division of the High Court of Justice. Here he showed himself a worthy successor to Cresswell and Penzance. Many important causes came before him, but he will chiefly be remembered for the manner in which he presided over the Parnell special commission. His influence pervaded the whole proceedings, and it is understood that he personally penned a large part of the voluminous report. Hannen’s last public service was in connexion with the Bering Sea inquiry at Paris, when he acted as one of the British arbitrators. In January 1891 he was appointed a lord of appeal in ordinary (with the dignity of a life peerage), but in that capacity he had few opportunities for displaying his powers, and he retired at the close of the session of 1893. He died in London, after a prolonged illness, on the 29th of March 1894.

HANNIBAL (“mercy” or “favour of Baal”), Carthaginian general and statesman, son of Hamilcar Barca (q.v.), was born in 249 or 247 B.C. Destined by his father to succeed him in the work of vengeance against Rome, he was taken to Spain, and while yet a boy gave ample evidence of his military aptitude. Upon the death of his brother-in-law Hasdrubal (221) he was acclaimed commander-in-chief by the soldiers and confirmed in his appointment by the Carthaginian government. After two years spent in completing the conquest of Spain south of the Ebro, he set himself to begin what he felt to be his life’s task, the conquest and humiliation of Rome. Accordingly in 219 he seized some pretext for attacking the town of Saguntum (mod. Murviedro), which stood under the special protection of Rome, and disregarding the protests of Roman envoys, stormed it after an eight months’ siege. As the home government, in view of Hannibal’s great popularity, did not venture to repudiate this action, the declaration of war which he desired took place at the end of the year.

Of the large army of Libyan and Spanish mercenaries which he had at his disposal Hannibal selected the most trustworthy and devoted contingents, and with these determined to execute the daring plan of carrying the war into the heart of Italy by a rapid march through Spain and Gaul. Starting in the spring of 218 he easily fought his way through the northern tribes to the Pyrenees, and by conciliating the Gaulish chiefs on his passage contrived to reach the Rhone before the Romans could take any measures to bar his advance. After out-manœuvring the natives, who endeavoured to prevent his crossing, Hannibal evaded a Roman force sent to operate against him in Gaul; he proceeded up the valley of one of the tributaries of the Rhone (Isère or, more probably, Durance), and by autumn arrived at the foot of the Alps. His passage over the mountain-chain, at a point which cannot be determined with certainty, though the balance of the available evidence inclines to the Mt Genèvre pass, and fair cases can be made out for the Col d’Argentière and for Mt Cenis, was one of the most memorable achievements of any military force of ancient times. Though the opposition of the natives and the difficulties of ground and climate cost Hannibal half his army, his perilous march brought him directly into Roman territory and entirely frustrated the attempts of the enemy to fight out the main issue on foreign ground. His sudden appearance among the Gauls, moreover, enabled him to detach most of the tribes from their new allegiance to the Romans before the latter could take steps to check rebellion. After allowing his soldiers a brief rest to recover from their exertions Hannibal first secured his rear by subduing the hostile tribe of the Taurini (mod. Turin), and moving down the Po valley forced the Romans by virtue of his superior cavalry to evacuate the plain of Lombardy. In December of the same year he had an opportunity of showing his superior military skill when the Roman commander attacked him on the river Trebia (near Placentia); after wearing down the excellent Roman infantry he cut it to pieces by a surprise attack from an ambush in the flank. Having secured his position in north Italy by this victory, he quartered his troops for the winter on the Gauls, whose zeal in his cause thereupon began to abate. Accordingly in spring 217 Hannibal decided to find a more trustworthy base of operations farther south; he crossed the Apennines without opposition, but in the marshy lowlands of the Arno he lost a large part of his force through disease and himself became blind in one eye. Advancing through the uplands of Etruria he provoked the main Roman army to a hasty pursuit, and catching it in a defile on the shore of Lake Trasimenus destroyed it in the waters or on the adjoining slopes (see Trasimene). He had now disposed of the only field force which could check his advance upon Rome, but realizing that without siege engines he could not hope to take the capital, he preferred to utilize his victory by passing into central and southern Italy and exciting a general revolt against the sovereign power. Though closely watched by a force under Fabius Maximus Cunctator, he was able to carry his ravages far and wide through Italy: on one occasion he was entrapped in the lowlands of Campania, but set himself free by a stratagem which completely deluded his opponent. For the winter he found comfortable quarters in the Apulian plain, into which the enemy dared not descend. In the campaign of 217 Hannibal had failed to obtain a following among the Italians; in the following year he had an opportunity of turning the tide in his favour. A large Roman army advanced into Apulia in order to crush him, and accepted battle on the site of Cannae. Thanks mainly to brilliant cavalry tactics, Hannibal, with much inferior numbers, managed to surround and cut to pieces the whole of this force; moreover, the moral effect of this victory was such that all the south of Italy joined his cause. Had Hannibal now received proper material reinforcements from his countrymen at Carthage he might have made a direct attack upon Rome; for the present he had to content himself with subduing the fortresses which still held out against him, and the only other notable event of 216 was the defection of Capua, the second largest city of Italy, which Hannibal made his new base.