We have preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was so well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to vast theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental accompaniment; and then we have given up simplicity of plot and dialogue, and all truth of situation.[284] La Motte nearly fifty years before had attacked the pseudo-classic drama.

He had inveighed against the unities, against long monologues, against the device of confidants, and against verse.

His assault, in which he had the powerful aid of Fontenelle, was part of that battle between Moderns and Ancients with which the literary activity of the century had opened.

The brilliant success of the tragedies of Voltaire had restored the lustre of the conventional drama, though Voltaire infused an element of the romantic under the severity of the old forms.

But the drama had become even less like Sophocles and Euripides in _Zaire_ than in _Phedre_ or _Iphigenie_.