152 



RECENT WILTSHIRE BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, 

 ARTICLES, &c. 



[N.B. — This list does not claim to be in any way exhaustive. The Editor 

 appeals to all authors and publishers of pamphlets, books, or views in any 

 way connected with the county to send him copies of their works, and to 

 editors of papers and members of the Society generally to send him copies 

 of articles, views, or portraits, appearing in the newspapers.] 



Sir Christopher Wren. By Lena Milman. London: 



Duckworth and Co. New York : Charles Scribners Sons. 1908. 



Cloth, 8in. X 5|in., pp. xvi. + 367. 70 illustrations. Price 7/6 net. 



" The precise date of Christopher Wren's birth is a matter of dispute 

 (says the authoress), but most authorities agree in setting aside his 

 baptismal entry (dated 1631) as inaccurate, and accepting October 20th, 

 1632, as the day on which a second son was born to Christopher Wren, 

 Hector of East Knoyle. Two years earlier in the Register another son's 

 birth is recorded, but since to both alike there was given their father's 

 name in baptism, it would seem certain that the elder died in infancy." 

 On the translation of his uncle, Matthew Wren, from the See of 

 Norwich to that of Ely, and his resignation of the Deanery of Windsor 

 and the Registrarship of the Garter, both these offices were conferred 

 upon his father, who continued to hold the Rectory of East Knoyle 

 together with that of Great Haseley in Oxfordshire. The career of 

 " that miracle of a youth," as John Evelyn calls him, at Westminster 

 School, at Wadham College, Oxford, as Fellow of All Souls, and 

 Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, at the age of 24, 

 and Savillian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford in 1661, is followed with 

 just sufficient detail to show the way in which he was regarded by his 

 contemporaries as a kind of universal genius in almost every branch of 

 knowledge, except architecture. This he seems never to have touched 

 until in 1662 the King, apparently on the recommendation of Evelyn, 

 appointed him " Assistant to the Surveyor-General," expressly in order 

 that he might carry out the two important works of repairing St. Paul's 

 and Windsor Castle. All this is told in the first sixty-eight pages of the 

 book, and then the authoress settles down to the main purpose of her work 

 — the sympathetic setting forth, with excellent illustrations, and most 

 understanding criticism, of all the main architectural works accomplished 

 by her hero, from his first work in the doorway in the north transept 



