Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/112

 After the rejection of the ‘favourite design,’ Wren proceeded with several trial plans in Gothic form ‘rectified to a better manner of architecture.’ His genius was at first evidently very much unhinged by his recent disappointment and the mental struggle he had gone through. However, one of these was accepted, and he was ordered by a royal commission, dated May 1675, to proceed with it. The design was approved as being ‘very artificial, proper, and useful, and so ordered that it might be built and finished by parts.’ This authorisation was accompanied with the permission to make variations (Parentalia, p. 283) ‘rather ornamental than essential;’ but happily, as the whole was left to his management, he found himself able to make use of this permission without troubling himself about the qualification as to essentials.

There is no concealing the point that if this design, which the king's warrant authorised, had been carried out unaltered, St. Paul's would, externally at least, have proved a gigantic failure, and we must suppose that some cause such as we have endeavoured to assign (aggravated, perhaps, by domestic trouble owing to the illness of his wife, who died in the same year that this design was authorised) must have obscured Wren's usually fine judgment. But as the ground plan is not far different from that of the present church, showing sufficiently Wren's submission in respect of the usual cathedral form, it is likely that no serious opposition from his critics was to be apprehended, and they were probably quite incapable of judging of the external effect.

In this design we may perceive there was in Wren's mind a struggle between two ideas as respects the great central feature of the dome—namely, that of retaining the fine and well-studied internal proportions of the favourite design as more in harmony with its surroundings than greater height such as that of the present cupola would be, but that he felt at the same time the quality of great loftiness was demanded for the external appearance. This he proposed to attain by means of a lofty spire, not unlike that which he afterwards built as the steeple of St. Bride's Church, which is shown as surmounting the lantern of the cupola. Before long, however, he abandoned this attempt, and adopted the idea of general height as the leading principle, by which he ultimately arrived at the unrivalled exterior of his cathedral; and if for the interior he erred in giving an excess of loftiness to the dome, he did so, at any rate, in good company, for the proportion of height to internal diameter is still greater in Michael Angelo's dome of St. Peter's.

Now that he was fully authorised to proceed, Wren devoted all his energies, without any longer dwelling on his late disappointment, to maturing the design. A considerable time, even many months, must necessarily elapse even in preparing the foundations and in building the crypt, and this he made good use of. A great many studies are extant, some at Oxford, some in two portfolios preserved in the cathedral, containing principally working drawings, and others in private collections, which show the steps by which he arrived at the final result. An engraving of one of these is given in Longman's ‘Three Cathedrals,’ opposite p. 115. Several of these studies are in perspective. In ‘Parentalia’ (p. 292) are given Wren's views on the importance of using perspective sketches in designing architecture. Wren had no doubt a sufficiently clear general idea in his mind's eye of what the completed structure should be, but these studies show that the details of even such essential features as the profile of the dome and the western towers were not settled until the time approached when they would be required. It was his constant endeavour to adopt only the best ancient Greek and Roman architecture, ‘the principles of which’ (as he said shortly before he was superseded in his surveyorship) ‘throughout all my schemes of this colossal structure I have always religiously endeavoured to follow, and if I glory it is in the singular mercy of God, who has enabled me to begin and finish my great work so conformable to the ancient model’ (, p. 510). This he could justly say, for there is no important ecclesiastical structure—certainly none of the seventeenth century—at all approaching it in the purity of its classical treatment. The cathedral also is throughout an example of skilful and provident construction. Everywhere, too, the ornamental accessories, though liberally applied, are well kept in subordination to the parts purely architectural, and are almost invariably finely designed and well carved. Sketches have been preserved which show that Wren had a bold, free hand in designing ornament, and was a master of scale; but in the department of ornament he had the good fortune to secure the services of a consummate artist—namely, Grinling Gibbons [q. v.], whom Evelyn accidentally had discovered in an obscure situation (, Diary, ii. 554, January 1671). The unsurpassed oak and limewood carvings of the choir are his well-known work.

Twenty-two years after the