that any literal translation of Greek plays was totally out of the question on the modern stage, and that they must be re-written. Nevertheless he remarks, as Racine had done, that in the new versions, those parts had always been the most effective which were borrowed directly from the originals. This led him to censure severely the love-intrigues introduced in the French tragedies, which he described as "une coquetterie continuelle," "pour complaire au goût le plus fade et le plus faux qui ait jamais corrompu la littérature." Yet he holds firmly to the general type established, though he only admits a furious and criminal passion as a proper tragic subject. As might be expected, he regards Addison's Cato as the most perfect of English tragedies, and censures in the strongest terms the uncouthness of Shakspere, while he speaks enthusiastically of that untutored genius, which, because it was such, founded no school, and provoked no worthy imitators. In this age of Shaksperian enthusiasm the remarks of the great critic are not likely to find much favour.
122. It seems that as the eighteenth century waned, the English attempts at reproducing Frenchified Greek dramas on the stage were gradually discontinued, and Shakspere resumed his sway, together with the genteel comedy of Goldsmith and Sheridan. But the literary study of Euripides himself succeeded. Thus between 1770–90 we have the great Oxford edition of Musgrave, and also the only two complete poetical versions of the poet published in English—Potter's, the more poetical, and Woodhull's, the more learned and minute, inasmuch as he included all the fragments then collected.
the new against the old, and said many insolent and unjust things about the Greek masters as compared with the French. But I prefer to cite his more solid judgments in the text. The best book in which to study the views of the "moderns" is La Harpe's book on literature, in which he boldly states that the chief merit of Sophocles is to have inspired Racine, and that Euripides may be excused because he suggested a Medea to Corneille. The Encyclopædists began the reaction now established in public opinion.
