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X.] always professing to follow the great old masters. These copies were not literary pieces like Milton's Samson, but pieces for the stage, which are now forgotten, but which are profoundly interesting in the literary history of the drama. Far the most important exponents of this movement are Addison, whose Cato was hailed by the French as the only really first-rate tragedy ever written in English, and Dryden, whose preface to his version of Troilus and Cressida expounds clearly his full recognition of Shakspere's genius, but his honest criticism of its uncouthness and its want of literary culture. To us this Troilus and Cressida is peculiarly interesting, because Dryden introduced into it the contest of the two brothers, professedly borrowed from the Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. I will relegate the lesser names to a note.

120. While these revivals of Euripides were taking place in England, the French had so stereotyped their tragedy according to the model of Racine, that they