Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/312



This great architect, and learned man, was born in 1632. Though he was of a weak bodily constitution in childhood, he possessed a most precocious mind, and early manifested a strong inclination for the paths of science and philosophy. At the age of thirteen, he invented an astronomical instrument, a pneumatic engine, and another instrument of use in gnomonics. When fourteen years old, he was entered as a gentleman commoner at Wadham College, Oxford; and during the period of his collegiate course, he associated with Hooke, (whom he assisted in his Micrographia) and other scientific men, whose meetings laid the foundation of the Royal Society. In 1653, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls' College; and by the age of twenty-four, he was known to the learned of Europe, for his various theories, inventions, and improvements, a list of which would be too long for insertion. In 1657 he was appointed to the professor's chair of astronomy at Gresham College, London, and three years after, to that of the Savilian professor at Oxford. On the establishment of the Royal Society, he contributed largely to the success and reputation of that learned body.

WREN'S SELF-COMMAND.

Wren possessed great self-command, as appears from the following anecdote of him and his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, whom the Parliament had im