His master, James I, having taken a philosophic interest in the
Stones, had desired him to make some pronouncement upon them. This
monarch's grandson, in his flight, is said to have stopped and essayed
to count the stones, with the usual result on the second trial. Pepys
a short time after went "single to Stonehenge, over the Plain and some
great hills even to fright us. Come thither and find them as
prodigious as any tales I ever heard of them, and worth going this
journey to see, God knows what their use was! they are hard to tell
but may yet be told."
About the middle of the eighteenth century the Druid temple legend
began to gain ground and many great men gave support to their
interpretation; it is not yet an exploded idea. Stukely, the
archaeological writer, gives a definite date--460 B.C.--as that of
their erection, and Dr. Johnson, writing to Mrs. Thrale, says:--"It
is, in my opinion, to be referred to the earliest habitations of the
island as a druidical monument of, at least, two thousand years,
probably the most ancient work of man upon the island.
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