EARLY LIFE OF WREN 143 



Wren is even better known to the public as an architect 

 than Inigo Jones, largely owing to the fact that he left behind 

 him many more buildings which can be seen to-day than did 

 his predecessor. But the admiration he has received, whether 

 founded on knowledge or not, is no more than his due, for he 

 was a truly remarkable man. He had achieved a European 

 reputation as a man of science before he was thirty, and 

 although, when he became officially connected with building for 

 the first time, he had apparently received no practical training 

 in architecture, he soon made up his deficiencies on the scaffold 

 itself, amid the ring of the trowel and the thud of the hammer. 



He came of good and cultured stock. His father, Dr 

 Christopher Wren, was Dean of Windsor ; his uncle, Matthew, 

 was Bishop of Ely. His father was a man of considerable 

 attainments in literature and science, and had a superficial 

 knowledge of architecture. Christopher, who was born in 1632, 

 was his only son, and received a good education. His natural 

 abilities enabled him to profit by his opportunities to such a 

 degree that at the age of thirteen he invented a new astronomical 

 instrument and a pneumatic engine, both of which he introduced 

 to his father in elegant Latin, the one in verse, the other in 

 prose. A year later he was entered as a gentleman -commoner 

 at Wadham College, Oxford, where he continued to distinguish 

 himself. It would be tedious to recount his juvenile essays in 

 astronomy, mathematics, gnomonics, and Latin, but so great a 

 reputation did he achieve that when Evelyn (who took a 

 genuine interest in anything remarkable) went to Oxford in 

 1654, he made a point of going to see "that miracle of a youth, 

 Mr Christopher Wren, nephew of the Bishop of Ely." 



The youth was then twenty-two, and was already a Master 

 of Arts and a Fellow of All Souls ; three years later he was 

 chosen Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College in London, 

 and subsequently, in 1661, Savilian professor of the same subject 

 in the University of Oxford. In the same year he was made 

 D.C.L. by both Oxford and Cambridge. During- these years 

 he was one of the most active of those " virtuous and learned 

 men of philosophical minds " who, along with Dr Wilkins, 

 Warden of Wadham, laid the foundations of the Royal Society. 

 A whole page of the " Parentalia" memoirs written by his son, 

 and the chief source of information concerning his life is 

 occupied with a catalogue of the New Theories, Inventions^ 



