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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECFS JOURNAL. 



235 



He left Westminster school and was entered a gentleman commoner of 

 Wadham College, Oxford, at the early age of fourteen. Although so 

 young, he obtained the notice and friendship of the greatest men then re- 

 sident in that university. The great mathematician, Oughtred, then a Fel- 

 low of Wadham, records his talents in liis " Clavis Mathematicus," and 

 Dr. John Will»ins, the then warden of his college, introduced him as a pro- 

 digy of science, to the Elector Palatine Prince Charles, who was on a visit 

 to that distinguished seat and seminary of learning. He had previously 

 known this illustrious Prince when on a visit to his father's house, the 

 Deanery at Windsor, and took this opportunity of presenting some scientific 

 inventions by the desire of Dr. Wilkins, and recorded them in a letter* lo 

 His Serene Highness. As a scholar, he was commandi'd by Sir Charles 

 Scarborough to translate Oughtred's " Geometrical Dialling" into Latin, for 

 the use of ttie learned men of Europe ; and this when he was only in his 

 ]5lh year. In the same year he invented and received a patent for an in- 

 strument for writing with two pens; and it is recorded as a singular coin- 

 cidence that Sir William Petty, the founder of the noble family of Lans- 

 downe, invented a similar machine in France, and obtained a patent in 

 England in tlie same year wilh his youthful cotemporary. He was at the 

 same period engaged by Dr. Sir Charles Scarborough as his demonstrating 

 assistant in his lectures on anatomy, of which appointment he was so 

 proud, that he communicated it to his father in a letter of elegant Latin. 

 He also signalised himself as an astronomer, a scholar, and a poet, by a 

 series of Latin metrical stanzas, proposing a reformation of the ancient 

 fables of the signs of the zodiac; an algebraical treatise on the Julian 

 period ; and a Latin treatise on spherical trigonometry. 



Few men of any time have exhibited a more expansive mind than Wren: 

 like Michael Angelo, nothing seemed too great, too diflicult, or too minute 

 for its investigation. At one time sweeping the heavens with " Galdeo's 

 tube," tracing the motions of planets and comets through empyreal space ; 

 at another seeking the properties of insects and animalculae with the micro- 

 scopic lens; occupied in bis study by storing his vast mind by the treasures 

 of ancient lore ; giving to the learned his discourses in Latin, worthy of the 

 Augustan age; improving machinery for tillage, the mensuration of time, 

 registration of changes in the atmosphere, and other useful projects. In 

 fact, his mind was ne>er unemployed; he studied, as Horace directs, by 

 day and by night, and of no man could it be more truly said, nulla dies sine 

 tinea. 



Whilst Wren was pursuing his course of studies and inventions with in- 

 defatigable industry, giving to the world useful discoveries at an age when 

 others were studying their elements, a circumstance occurred that gave a 

 powerful direction to Wren's mind. In 1G48, Wren's IGlh year. Pope In- 

 nocent X. announced to the world, that St. Peters, the great cathedral of 

 Catholic Europe, was then completed, under the superintendence of the 

 illustrious Bernini. This great event was the en:,'rossing topic of the day, 

 and induced Wren, among others, lo the examination of its claims to cele- 

 brity, by comparing it with the great works of the ancients and their archi- 

 tectural lavv-giver, Vitruvius, which was then a sealed book but to the 

 learned. This new study enabled Wren, in after days, to complete our 

 Protestant cathedral of St. Paul by himself, whilst that of St. Peter's occu- 

 pied the talents of twenty architects, from Bramante to Bernini, including 

 Kafifaelle and the mighty Buonarotti, who raised, as he had promised, the 

 Pantlieon into the air. Nmeteen popes, from Julius II. to Innocent X., 

 aided by forced contributions from the whole Christian world, raised the 

 one ; a single people, in three short reigns, by one ai'chitecl, a single dio- 

 cesan Protestant bishop, from no funds but those voluntarily given by the 

 people, accomplished the other. 



M'reo's society and advice was sought by all the illustrious in birth and 

 mind. His reputation was not merely British, it was European. At one 

 time, he is sought by Helvicus to illustrate his chronological tables by au 

 algebraical calculation of the Julian period; at another, invited by the 

 illustrious Boyle to examine the hypothesis of Des Cartes on the pressure 

 of the atmosphere, which indisputably gives to Wren the invention of the 

 barometer; again. Dr. Willis desires his assistance in dissecting and pre- 

 paring a treatise on the anatomy of the brain. Immersed in the numerous 

 engagements consequent on being elected Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and 

 the preparation of an inaugural discourse on being appointed professor of 

 astronomy in Greshara College, he found time to solve Pascal's problem, 

 and to propound another, originally proposed by Kepler, and privately an- 

 swered by himself, aud was the only solution ever given to it. Hundreds 



* Elraei" Life of Wren, Appendix No , 2. 



of such instances, in every branch of science, occur in his biography, from 

 an investigation into the motions of the satellites of Jupiter, and asSavillian 

 professor in Oxford to report on the constellation Taurus, to an earnest 

 solicitation of his friend John Evelyn,* on the education of his son, to 

 which Wren applied himself with as much sincerity and zeal as he did to 

 the questions of the most learned in Europe, and to the king's command to 

 make a globe of the moon. Sought for both in Oxford and in London, his 

 presence at one causing regrets for his absence at another ; filling with un- 

 exampled earnestness and zeal the astronomical chairs of the university 

 and the metropolis, descanting to them upon the starry heavens, and enter- 

 taining the members of the newly. formed Royal Society by microscopical 

 disquisitions upon the smallest insects, and with ever-recurring novelties 

 in mechanics, he still found time to cultivate the arts of design, and the 

 still more abstruse science of chemistry, which he studied with other learned 

 coleraporaries under the celebrated Rosicrucian philosopher, Peter Sthael, of 

 Strasburgh, who was invited to Oxford and courteously entertained by the 

 illustrious Robert IJoyle, one of the closest and perhaps the most distin- 

 guished of Wren's friends. 



At this period of Wren's life, his 28th year, which was marked by the 

 restoration of monarchy in the person of the profligate and ungrateful Charles 

 II., 1660, whilst he was filling the rich storehouse of his mind from every 

 available source, had it been directed to any distinct object, whether in 

 literature, philosophy, science, or art, he would have been eminent in either. 

 From the circumstance of there being at that time no architect in England, 

 but the neglected and almost forgotten Inigo Jones, he was consulted as a 

 man of general knowledge upon all the little architectural projects of the 

 day. Had Cromwell been a patron of the liberal arts. Wren, most likely, 

 would have been his architect and surveyor-general, for it is related that 

 Mr. Claypole, who married Oliver Cromwell's faiourite daughter, who 

 had more influence over her father than any other human being, was well 

 acquainted with Wren. Claypole, who was a mild, retiring man, fond of 

 mathematics and the studies of the closet, had a great love for the society 

 of the youthful philosopher, and frequently introduced him to his own do- 

 mestic circle, where the stern Protector occasionally paid visits to indulge 

 in converse with his favourite daughter. It happened at one of these visits 

 that Cromwell came into the room as they sat at dinner, and without any 

 ceremony, as was his usual way in his own family, he took his place. After 

 a little time, fixing his eyes on INIr. Wren, he said, " Your uncle has been 

 long confined in the Tower." " He has been so, sir," replied Wren ; " but 

 he bears his afiliotioas with great patience and resignation." 

 Cromwell — '• He may come out if he will." 



Wren — " Will your highness permit me to tell him this from your own 

 mouth ?" 



Cromwell — " Yes, you may." 



As soon as Wren could retire with propriety, he hastened with no litile 

 joy to the Tower, and informed his uncle of all the particulars of this inter- 

 view with Cromwell. After which the bishop replied, with warm indig- 

 nation, that it was not the first time he had received the like intimation 

 from that miscreant ; but he disdained the terms proposed for his enlarge- 

 ment, which were a mean acknowledgment of his favour, and an abject 

 submission to his detestable tyranny ; that he was determined to tarry the 

 Lord's leisure, and owe his deliverance, which was not far off", to him 

 only. 



That Cromwell did patronise Wren is clear, from a letter written by the 

 latter to his friend. Dr. John Wilkins, wherein he states that his diplogra- 

 phic instrument, for which he had recently received a patent, had been 

 *• commended to the then great, now greatest person in the nation," (Oliver 

 Cromwell.) 



In 1601, Wren may be said to have commenced his architectural career, 

 and to have fixed upon his future profession. He had completed his 

 academical honours by receiving from his university the well-won degree of 

 doctor of civil law. The king (Charles II.), who had acquired, both from 

 his father and his sojourn abroad, a great love for the arts, fiuding on his 

 return to the throne of his ancestors, how much the royal palaces, the cathe- 

 dral of St. Paul, and other sacred edifices, had been dilapidated and dese- 

 crated by the military hordes of the Commouweallh, had determined on 

 their restoration. Sir John Denhain, autlior of " Cowper's Hill," who is 

 more renowned for his poetry and polite learning than for any knowledge of 

 architecture, had been appointed, in reversion, to the office of surveyor-general 

 of his majesty's works, in reward for his loyal services, to which he had 

 now nominally succeeded by the death of Inigo Jones during the inter- 

 regnum. The fame of Wren had reached the ears of the king, who propos- 



* Auttior of ttie well-kaowa Parallel of Architecture. 



32* 



