known as the founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. He studied law,
chemistry, and natural philosophy. Besides an edition of the manuscript
works of certain English chemists, he wrote _Bennevennu_,--the description
of a Roman road mentioned in the Itinerary of Antoninus,--and a _History
of the Order of the Garter_. His _Diary_ was published nearly a century
after his death, but is by no means equal in value to those of Evelyn and
Pepys.

_John Aubrey_, 1627-1697: a man of curious mind, Aubrey investigated the
supernatural topics of the day, and presented them to the world in his
_Miscellanies_. Among these subjects it is interesting to notice "blows
invisible," and "knockings," which have been resuscitated in the present
day. He was a "perambulator," and, in the words of one of his critics,
"picked up information on the highway, and scattered it everywhere as
authentic." His most valuable contribution to history is found in his
_Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the 17th and 18th Centuries, with
Lives of Eminent Men_. The searcher for authentic material must carefully
scrutinize Aubrey's _facts_; but, with much that is doubtful, valuable
information may be obtained from his pages.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DRAMA OF THE RESTORATION.

The License of the Age. Dryden. Wycherley. Congreve. Vanbrugh.
Farquhar. Etherege. Tragedy. Otway. Rowe. Lee. Southern.

THE LICENSE OF THE AGE.

There is no portion of the literature of this period which so fully
represents and explains the social history of the age as the drama. With
the restoration of Charles it returned to England, after a time in which
the chief faults had been too great rigor in morals. The theatres had been
closed, all amusements checked, and even poetry and the fine arts placed
under a ban. In the reign of Charles I., Prynne had written his _Histrio
Mastix_, or Scourge of the Stage, in which he not only denounced all stage
plays, but music and dancing; and also declaimed against hunting, festival
days, the celebration of Christmas, and Maypoles. For this he was indicted
in the Star Chamber for libel, and was sentenced to stand in the pillory,
to lose his ears, to pay the king a fine of L5000, and to be imprisoned
for life. For his attack there was much excuse in the license of the
former period; but when puritanism, in its turn, was brought under the
three spears, the drama was to come back tenfold more injurious and more
immoral than be