In the flush of Philips's first success, Addison was emboldened to present his long withheld "Cato" upon the stage. The political circumstances made the first night one of the most memorable in the history of the theatre, and gave the play what was then the enormous initial run of a month. Voltaire praised; and, with the exception of the doughty Dennis, English critics seemed agreed that here at last was an English tragedy in full accord with classical precedents and the rules of reason. The play continued a favorite on the stage into the nineteenth century, and even after the retirement of Kemble, who found in Cato one of his great parts. It would be vain to search for dramatic merits to account for this great success. The play combines love intrigues, as absurd as those usual in contemporary plays, with lucid declamation and aphoristic moralizing. Aphorism and declamation have, indeed, rarely been absent from the tragedy of any period or nation, but they were especially delightful to the taste of the Augustan era. Addison was only continuing the success of Rowe's "Tamerlane," reducing its rant to a more reasonable pattern. The reforming classicists, like the theatre-pleasing Rowe, hit on the two themes which pleased the public, the distressed female and the patriotic moralizer. The success of "The Distrest Mother" and "Cato" was the beginning of the long triumph of French influence over English tragedy, yet the victory was never more than half won. There was no capitulation, and the battle continued through the century both among the critics and on the stage. Rowe's plays maintained at least a feeble English tradition, and Shakespeare's won increasing admiration. If critical opinion was for a time warm in support of French classicism, the theatre still clung to Elizabethan practices. Later, when imitations of the French models had established themselves in some degree upon the stage, criticism turned to condemnation of the unities and renewed its laudations of Shakespeare. The lines of battle were often obscured. Between Rowe's refinements of Elizabethan plays and Addison's imitation of the French there is little difference; and later, in spite of the din of critical essays and prefaces, the representatives of "Shakespeare's school" and of "correct taste" have a great similarity.