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46 French influence fought for the honours of this city. Handel, as indifferent as Scarlatti to the victory of either of these parties, tried to write in the style of both. He interested himself also in the Italian popular songs and noted down the rustic melodies of the Calabrian Pifferari. For the Arcadians of Naples he wrote his beautiful serenata, Acis and Galatea. Finally he had the good fortune to please the Viceroy of Naples—the Cardinal Grimani. He was a Venetian and his family owned the theatre of San Grisostomo at Venice. Grimani wrote for Handel the libretto of the opera Agrippina, of which Handel probably composed part of the music at Naples. A similar collaboration assured it of being produced at Venice without trouble.

He left Naples in the springtime, and returned to Rome, where he met, at the Palace of the Cardinal Ottoboni, Bishop Agostino Steffani, who by a curious combination of attributes was at the same time Kapellmeister at the Court of Hanover, and charged with secret missions by different German