Mainwaring (P. 50). "At the age of eighteen he made [at Florence] the opera of Rodrigo, for which he was presented with 100 sequins and a service of plate."
Mattheson. "Actually an intentional miscalculation of eight years!"
Mainwaring (P. 52). "In three weeks he finished [at Venice] his 'Agrippina,' which was performed twenty-seven nights successively."
Mattheson. "In the year 1709, at his departure from Hamburg, Handel was 25 years old. He resided a year in Florence before he went to Venice, where he had his 'Agrippina' performed at the theatre of St. Gio Crisostomo, during the Carnival in 1710. Now, let him calculate who can, and convince himself whether this makes, from February 24th, 1684, eighteen years, as our biographer says, or whether it amounts to twenty-six."
Mainwaring (P. 74). "It was in the winter of the year 1710 when he arrived at London."
Mattheson. "In this year he performed his 'Agrippina' at Venice, and in 1709 he was still in Hamburg."[16]
Mainwaring (P. 74). "During this period scarce a mail arrived from Holland which did not bring some fresh accounts of victories or advantages gained by the English hero [Marlborough] over the armies of a monarch but lately the terror of Europe, though now the scorn of every Dutch burgomaster."
Mattheson. "What a Frenchman may say to this is his own concern. In Handel's biography it is lugged in; and such scurrilities reveal an ignoble heart."
Mainwaring (P. 88). "Our business is not to play the panegyrist but the historian."
Mattheson. "If you know that, blessed are you if you act upon it."