[Born in Wiltshire, 1632. Died at Hampton Court, 1723. Aged 91.]
We think of Wren as the first of British architects; but he was
something more. As a mathematician, he was in his day second only to
Newton; and in general scientific knowledge, he had no superior.
Educated at Westminster. At thirteen, had already invented a new
astronomical instrument. At fourteen, entered Wadham College,
Oxford;--and, young as he was, formed one of the original members of a
club established for philosophical discussions and experiments; a club
out of which sprang the Royal Society. When twenty-five, Professor of
Astronomy at Gresham College, London. At the Restoration, Savilian
Professor of Astronomy at Oxford; his skill as an architect having been
meanwhile shown in the Sheldon Theatre at Oxford. The popular fame of
Wren rests on St. Paul’s Cathedral, which he began to rebuild nine years
after the great fire, taking thirty-five years to complete his
magnificent labour. Before, and during this lengthened period, he built
other edifices, and applied his vigorous and subtle mind to the most
abstruse branches of science. His mechanical discoveries are numerous.
He invented an instrument for ascertaining the amount of rain falling in
each year; he rendered the taking of astronomical observations more easy
and exact; he was the originator of the attempt to introduce fluids into
the veins of animals; and there is every reason to believe that to him,
and not to Prince Rupert, we owe the art of mezzotint engraving. Amongst
his architectural buildings are Trinity College Library, Cambridge, the
new part of Hampton Court Palace, Chelsea Hospital, a wing of Greenwich
Hospital, and the palace at Winchester. St. Paul’s, probably suggested
by St. Peter’s at Rome, although not of equal dimensions with its
supposed prototype, is a far nobler work of art, excelling it in plan,
in composition externally, in variety of effect internally, and in
scientific construction. Bow Church, Cheapside, St. Stephen’s, Walbrook,
and most of the other churches, in the City of London--where he chiefly
worked--with their exquisite and varied steeples, are the work of Wren,
whose ecclesiastical edifices greatly surpass in beauty all his other
buildings. In his time the Greek style had not been made known, and
though with the Roman acquainted only through books, and the Renaissance
buildings of Paris, his work in it is critically correct. His native
genius is stamped upon his buildings, and he is ever to be admired, if
not always imitated. Supplanted by Court intrigue in 1718, he spent his
old age as quietly as intrigue would let him at Hampton Court, absorbed,
and finding compensation, in his scientific studies, and visiting London
occasionally to see how the repairs at Westminster Abbey were going on.