2. =Butler and the Dramatists.=--There was, doubtless, much in the world round Milton and Bunyan to awake indignation. Samuel Butler was a man of genius, but his 'Hudibras,' which appeared in =1663=, shows but poorly by the side of 'Paradise Lost' and 'The Pilgrim's Progress.' This mock-heroic account of a Puritan knight is the work of a strong writer, who can find nothing better to do with the warriors and disputants who had lately controlled England than to laugh at them. The mass of Restoration poetry was far weaker than 'Hudibras,' whilst its dramatic writers vied with one another in the expression of licentious thought either in prose or in the regular heroic couplets which were, at this time, in vogue. It was, indeed, impossible to put much human passion into two neat lines which had to be made to rhyme; but at Court love-making had been substituted for passion, and the theatres, now re-opened, after they had been suppressed by the Puritans, were meant for the vicious Court and not for the people at large. 3. =Reason and Science.=--The satire of Butler, and the licentiousness of the dramatists, both sprang from a reaction against the severe morality of the Puritans; but it would have been a poor prospect for the generation following that of Puritan repression if the age had not produced any positive work of its own. Its work was to be found in the increase of respect for human reason. In the better minds amongst the clergy of the Restoration, the reasonable character of the Church of England was more than ever predominant. A few, such as Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and Stillingfleet, Dean of St. Paul's, were even anxious to find some way of comprehension by which Dissenters might be reconciled to the Church, whilst others, like Morley and Barrow, attached far more importance to arguments addressed to the understanding, than to that uniformity of ceremonial which had been so dear to the mind of Laud. Still more important was the spread of devotion to natural science. The Royal Society, founded for its promotion in =1660=, brought together men who thought more about air-pumps than about the mysteries of theology; and it was mainly the results of their inquiries which made any renewed triumph of Puritanism impossible. In 'The Pilgrim's Progress' the outer world was treated as a mere embarrassment to the pursuit of spiritual perfection. By the Fellows of the Royal Society it was treated as calling for reverent investigation, in order that, in the words of Bacon, nature might be brought into the service of man by his obedience to her laws.