23(J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[August, 



ing the reparation of St. Paul's cathedral, tlie rp-instatcnient of Windsor 

 castle, the huildiiiR a new palace at (;refn«icli,aiid other important works, 

 appointed him coadjutor to Sir John Uenham. 



Evelyn, with Sir liobert Moray, and other of Mren's most intimate 

 friends and admirers, were uiion terms of the greatest inlimacy with the 

 king. The former in his diary* ridicules the pretensions of Denliam to the 

 character of an architect, on consultins him, by ihe king's desire, as to the 

 best site for the new palace at Ureenw ich, altlioU(;h he was assisted in his 

 office by Webb, the pnpil and son-in-law of Inigo .Jones. 



When Wren had held his situation of joint surveyor general for about 

 two years, Ihe fortresses of Tangier and Tripoli having been surrendered 

 by the king of Portugal as part of a marriage portion to his daughter, queen 

 of Charles 11, Wren was appointed to survey and repair them ; but, pre- 

 ferring civil architecture at home to niililarj engineering abroad, he re- 

 spectfully declined the ofl'er, which held out the promise of present reward 

 »ud future favours, particularly Ihe reversion of the entire ollice of surveyor- 

 general upon the deaili of Sir John Deiiham. He therefore continued his 

 designs for the reparation of St. I'aul's, the reinstatement of W indsor 

 castle, and other works, commanded by the king. He was also commis- 

 sioned by the university to prepare designs for a new theatre, for the per- 

 formance of their public acts, and exhibited a model of it to the Royal So- 

 ciety. This theatre, well known for its admirable roof and scientific con- 

 struction, was Ihe first public building erected by Wren, who was called 

 by Dr. Sprat the Knglish Vitruvius. It was finished in the summer of 

 1669, and opened by a solemn act of the university ; its munificent founder 

 and benefactor, archbishop Sheldon, who was thi n chancellor of the uni- 

 versity, presented its architect with his highest commendaiioos and a 

 Buperb gold cup. He also apjointed him, jointly with the vice-chancellor, 

 perpetual cuiaior of the fabric. The commencement of this edifice, the 

 Sheldonian theatre, was commemorated by an elegant Pindaric ode, ad, 

 dressed and presented to Wren by his friend Corbet Owen, of Christ 

 Church, entitled Carmen Pindarlcum in Tluatrum Slietdoniainim, et ejus 

 Archilectuin. 



Wren's architectural employments increased with his fame, and he was 

 required professionally in the sister university of Cambridge, to prepare 

 designs for the new chapel of Pembroke college, of which his uncle, the 

 bishop of Ely, had been president and a great benefactor. The first stone 

 of this chapel was laid by Dr. Frank, the master of the college, accom- 

 panied by the dean, archdeacon, and prebendaries of Ely, Dr. Pearson of 

 Trinity, and other heads of colleges, in the name of bishop Wren, who 

 built and finished it at his own expense. 



After making due arrangements for a temporary absence from his im- 

 portant avocations in England, he prepared for his long meditated visit to 

 Paris and other continental cities of architectural celebrity. When in 

 Pans, he wri'es to his friend the Hev. Dr. Bateman, " he was so careful 

 not to lose the impressions of these structures he had surveyed, that he 

 should bring away all France on paper." Of his skill in drawing there is 

 abundant proof in the porlfulios of his relics preserved in the library of 

 All Souls college, Oxford, of which more may be said hereafter. To all 

 his other knowledge. Wren added that rare quality of knowing himself. 

 Although aware that he knew more of the theory of architecture than any 

 other man in the country, he felt his deficiency as an artist. His mathe- 

 matical and constructive knowledge was undoubted; but, as a fine art, 

 architecture had not been cultivated in England, except by Wren's great 

 predecessor, Inigo Jones; he therefore determined to read his Vitruvius 

 amidst the luins of the glorious edifices on which this nias'er of our art 

 had founded his precepts. According to this determination, he wro'e to 

 Dr. Bathurst, who was then consulting him about additions to his college, 

 that as he was about to visit Paris he would consult IMons. JMansard or 

 Signer Bernini. On reaching Paris, he was presented to the most eminent 

 men of the brilliant court of Louis XIV., to whom he took letters of intro- 

 duction from his illustrious friends in England. Architecture and its as- 

 sistant arts flourished abundantly under the miinilicence of the French 

 monarch and his sagacious ministers. Mazarine and Colbert. Paris, at that 

 time, was the resort of all the distinguished ariists and learned men of the 

 continent, who formed a sort of congress, in which a man of Wren's dis- 

 tinguished abilities and reputation could not be unacreptable. The archi- 

 tecture of the I'^ reach metropolis became an object of his peculiar solici- 

 tude, and he made himself acquainted with all that was remarkable in me- 

 chanics and philosophy. The ablest professors sought his acquaintance, 

 and exhibited the newest discoveries to their English visitor; but architec- 

 ture and its relative arts was bis principal object. Among his own coun- 



* Evelyn*8 Diary, Vol. I. page 341. 



trymen in Paris, he found an easy introduction to the Earl of St. Alban's, 

 then a distinguisheil patron of art and literature. M'ren employed himself 

 in surveying the most celebrated edifices in Paris and its magnificent su- 

 burbs. The Louvre was for a while his daily object, where no less than a 

 thousand hands were constantly employed upon the works; "some io 

 laying," he says, " mighty foundations, some in raising the storys, columns, 

 entablatures, &c. with vast stones, by great and useful engines; others in 

 carving, inlaying of marbles, plastering, painting, gilding, &c., which alto- 

 gether made, in his opinion, a school of architecture, the best probably at 

 that day in Europe." He adds that *' an academy of painters, sculptors, 

 and architects, with the chief artificers of the Louvre, meet every first and 

 last Saturday of the month. INIons. Colbert, superintendent, comes to the 

 Louvre every Wednesday, and, if business prevents not, Thursday. The 

 workmen are paid every Sunday duly." 



Wren was introduced to Bernini by the Abb^ Charles; IhS illustrious 

 Italian showed him his designs for the palace of the Louvre, and of the 

 statue of Louis XIV., which he was then executing. He visited the 

 splendid cabinet of the Duke of Orleans, and every thing that was rare and 

 curious in Paris. In a letter to a friend he writes, that " he must not at- 

 tempt to describe Paris, and the numerous observables there, in the com- 

 pass of a short letter. The king's houses I could not miss; Fontaiubieau 

 has a stately wilduess and vastness suitable to tlie desert it stands in. The 

 antique mass of the castle of St. Germain's, and the hanging gardens, are 

 delightfully surprising (I mean to any man of judgment), for the pleasures 

 below vanish away in the breath that is spent in ascending. The palace, 

 or, if you please, the cabinet of \'ersailles, called me twice to see it ; the 

 mixtures of brick and stone, blue tile and gdd, made it look like a rich 

 livery ; not an inch within but is crowded with little curiosities of orna- 

 ment. The women, as they make here the language and the fashions, and 

 meddle with politics and philosophy, so they sway also in architecture. 

 Works of filgrand and little trinkets are in great vogue ; but building ought 

 certainly to haie the attribute of eternal, and therefore the only thing inca- 

 pable of new fashions." On this opinion of Wren, Mr. Seward makes the 

 following remarks, which cannot be too much attended to by every archi- 

 tect and every architectural student of the day. *' Many of the buildings 

 which have remained to us from the ancients are universally allowed to be 

 perfect models of the art of architecture. In spite of the rewards offered 

 by sovereigns, and of that innate desire of man to do something more and 

 better than his pretlecessors have done, every attempt to add another order 

 of architecture to the five long since transmitted to us from the Greeks, has 

 been vain and fruitless, and has in general ellected'nolhing but a variatiou 

 ou the Corinthian older. The art of building, being an art of which the con- 

 stituent parts are utility and beauty, must have soon arrived at its point of 

 perfection. We have but little left to do but to arrange and compare. 

 M hat has the rage of inventing in architecture produced in our times? 

 May-pules instead of columns, capitals of no order, and adjuncts and de- 

 corations so whimsical, so minute, so split into small parts, tortured into 

 grotesque forms, that, as Lord Bacon observes of plots in gardens, 'you may 

 see as good sights often in tarts.' "* 



Wren was far more pleased with the Mazarine palace and its splendid 

 collection of antique statues, bust and other marbles, pictures, gems, and 

 other curious articles of ancient and modern art. Not a palace or a villa, 

 or any building worthy of note, escaped the attention of Wren, who sur- 

 veyed them with the investigation of a student rather than the casual vitit 

 of a passing traveller ; he made drawings, sketches, and memorandums of 

 every thing that tended to his great object, the improvement of his know- 

 ledge and taste in architecture, and spared neither labour nor money to fill 

 his portfolio. In the same letter from which these remarks arc taken, 

 M'reu emphatically adils, " Bernini's design of the Louvre I would have 

 given my skin for, but the old Italiau gave me but a few minutes* view ; 

 it was five little designs on paper, for which he hath received as many 

 thousand pistoles. I had only time to copy it in my fancy and memory, 

 and shall be able by discourse and a crayon, to give you a tolerable account 

 of it." Beautiful as was Bernini's design for the Louvre, it was rejected 

 by Louis XIV., in favour of Perrault's present fafade and its novelty of 

 coupled columns, which must have had some influence upon M ren's mind, 

 as he introduced a similar arrangement in his second and inferior design 

 for the western portico of St. Paul's cathedral. 



Among the eminent artists whom Wren met in the academies and socie- 

 ties in Paris, he mentions Bernini, Mansard, Vaux, Gobert, and Le Pautre, 

 at architects ; Le Brun, Bourdon, Poussin, Coypel, Picard, and others of 

 less note, as painters ; Anguiere, Sarazin, and Perrot, w horn he coninieod* 



* Seward's Anecdotes, Vol. II. 



