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way of preface, I think I ought to say this paper was written a year ago, and was placed in the hands of the Folk-Lore Society some time before the publication of Dr. Ridgeway's Dramas and Dramatic Dances. The differences, therefore, between this paper and Dr. Ridgeway's great and important work are differences of which at the time of writing I was unconscious, and they are not covert criticisms. Nor am I prepared as yet to say whether I should venture in all points to maintain my opinions against his. The presumption in my own mind is that I shall find on consideration him to be right and myself to be in error; and the presumption is very strong with me, because I find myself following Dr. Ridgeway in much or most of his opposition to the views of Miss Harrison, Professor Murray, Mr. Cornford, and Dr. Farnell, However, for the present the littera scripta must remain.

Aristotle has said—ipse dixit—that tragedy originated with the leaders of the dithyramb. The dithyramb was, however, originally and essentially a form not of acting but of choral lyric. It was only in the late time of Aristotle the dithyramb had come to assume something of a dramatic character; and that character it had assumed because it had borrowed it from the drama, which had then reached its highest development. In earlier times than those of Aristotle there was in the dithyramb no acting. The dithyramb