You will like to know, that less than forty years after Bacon's death a society called The Royal Society was founded. This is a Society which interests itself in scientific study and research, and is the oldest of its kind in Great Britain. It was Bacon's fancy of Solomon's House which led men to found this Society. Bacon was the great man whose "true imagination"* set it on foot, and although many years have passed since then, the Royal Society still keeps its place in the forefront of Science. *Thomas Sprat, History of Royal Society, 1667. BOOKS TO READ The New Atlantis, edited by G. D. W. Bevan, modern spelling (for schools). The New Atlantis, edited by G. C. Moore Smith, in old spelling (for schools). Chapter LIV ABOUT SOME LYRIC POETS BEFORE either Ben Jonson or Bacon died, a second Stuart king sat on the throne of England. This was Charles I the son of James VI and I. The spacious days of Queen Elizabeth were over and gone, and the temper of the people was changing. Elizabeth had been a tyrant but the people of England had yielded to her tyranny. James, too, was a tyrant, but the people struggled with him, and in the struggle they grew stronger. In the days of Elizabeth the religion of England was still unsettled. James decided that the religion of England must be Episcopal, but as the reign of James went on, England became more and more Puritan and the breach between King and people grew wide, for James was no Puritan nor was Charles after him. As the temper of the people changed, the literature changed too. As England grew Puritan, the people began to look askance at the theater, for the Puritans had always been its enemies. Puritan ideas drew the great mass of thinking people. For one reason or another the plays that were written became by degrees poorer and poorer. They were coarse too, many of them so much so that we do not care to read them now. But people wrote such stories as the play-goers of those days liked, and from them we can judge how low the taste of England had fallen. However, there were people in England in those days who revolted against this taste, and in 1642, when the great struggle between King Parliament had begun, all theaters were closed by order of Parliament. So for a time the life of English drama paused.