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138 of Milton (1674), though its main figure reminds us of the Œdipus Coloneus of Sophocles, yet shows us in every page the author's predilection for Euripides. Nor is this preference shown in his play only. Critics have justly pointed to the description of the two brothers in Comus (vv. 297 sqq.) as borrowed from the herd's description of Orestes and Pylades in the Tauric Iphigenia (vv. 264 sqq.). I cannot find in any of the biographies that Milton was versed in French literature, or influenced by the new triumph of classical tragedy on the French stage; and, indeed, his Samson is a far more faithful and splendid imitation of the Greek models than anything ever done by modern poets. But this performance, if really independent of the French, is the more remarkable, because in his preface Milton evidently censures the school of Shakspere, and reverts to the Greeks as the true models of a drama suited to the sober and respectable classes of society.

119. This great man, however, anticipated a remarkable movement. For with the Restoration, French theories and models began to be studied, and we find for nearly a century a perpetual insisting upon classical theories and an incessant copying of Greek models, often through Latin, still oftener through French, but