papers of Addison should be brought in as aids during the contest.  Careful as he was to conciliate opposing prejudices, he was yet first in the field, and this motto to the first of his series of Milton papers, Yield place to him, Writers of Greece and Rome, is as the first trumpet note of the one herald on a field from which only a quick ear can yet distinguish among stir of all that is near, the distant tramp of an advancing host.

[Footnote 2:  [so irksom as]]

[Footnote 3:  say]

[Footnote 4:  Aristotle, Poetics, III.  Sec.  I, after a full discussion of Tragedy, begins by saying,

with respect to that species of Poetry which imitates by Narration ... it is obvious, that the Fable ought to be dramatically constructed, like that of Tragedy, and that it should have for its Subject one entire and perfect action, having a beginning, a middle, and an end;

forming a complete whole, like an animal, and therein differing, Aristotle says, from History, which treats not of one Action, but of one Time, and of all the events, casually connected, which happened to one person or to many during that time.]

[Footnote 5:  Poetics, I. Sec. 9.

  Epic Poetry agrees so far with Tragic as it is an imitation of great
  characters and actions.

Aristotle (from whose opinion, in this matter alone, his worshippers departed, right though he was) ranked a perfect tragedy above a perfect epic; for, he said,

  all the parts of the Epic poem are to be found in Tragedy, not all
  those of Tragedy in the Epic poem.]

[Footnote 6: 

  Nec reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri,
  Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab ovo,
  Semper ad eventum festinat, et in medias res,
  Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit—­

De Arte Poet.  II. 146-9.]

[Footnote 7:  with great Art]

[Footnote 8:  the Story]

[Footnote 9:  Poetics, V. Sec. 3.  In arguing the superiority of Tragic to Epic Poetry, Aristotle says,

there is less Unity in all Epic imitation; as appears from this—­that any Epic Poem will furnish matter for several Tragedies ...  The Iliad, for example, and the Odyssey, contain many such subordinate parts, each of which has a certain Magnitude and Unity of its own; yet is the construction of those Poems as perfect, and as nearly approaching to the imitation of a single action, as possible.]

[Footnote 10:  labours also]

[Footnote 11:  Circumstances]

[Footnote 12:  Simplicity.]

[Footnote 13:  Dryden’s Spanish Friar has been praised also by Johnson for the happy coincidence and coalition of the tragic and comic plots, and Sir Walter Scott said of it, in his edition of Dryden’s Works, that