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view entertained by some writers, that a man of genius possessing a general capacity, may become whatever he chooses, but is determined by his first acquired habit to be what he is*, quotes a Scotch metaphysician as having recently declared that " Locke or Newton might have been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton, had they given themselves early to the study of poetry ;" and believes that had these distinguished philosophers obstinately against nature, persisted in the attempt, the world have lost two great philosophers and have obtained two supernumerary poets. Whatever may have been the predisposition of Wren's genius, it appears that at the time of his intimacy with Sprat he paid court to the gentle Muses, as well as to Minerva operosa, that he sought the lofty regions of Apollo, as well as the dusky caverns of Vulcanus, and the fairer workshops of Dædalus.

IN a correspondence between these friends, Wren maintained that Horace cannot well be translated; to which the Divine replies, that he takes leave to dissent, for by the elegant translations of the epistle AD LOLLIUM, which he had sent him, he confuted himself. "You have well hit his genius," he writes, "your verse is numerous, your philosophy very instructive for life, your liberality in translation enough to make it seem to be an English original, and yet not so much but that the mind of the author is still religiously observed. So that if you have not adorned the fat droll, as you pleasantly call

* THE LITERARY CHARACTER, or the History of Men of Genius," by I. D'ISRAELI, D.C.L., F.S.A. Lon. 1839, 8vo. 3rd Ed. p. 26.

him, with feathers, yet you have with jewels, which is a more stately, though not so flaunting a bravery. Most other attempts on him, nay those of Ben Johnson himself, appear to me to have been very unfortunate, and his translators have seemed, not so much to have remembered that he was a friend to Augustus, as that he was libertino patre natus, so rudely and so clownishly have they rendered him." Such praise, from such a scholar, critic and poet as Sprat, the friend, adorer and biographer of Cowley, is strong evidence of Wren's poetic power. But to borrow a phrase from the distinguished collector of curiosities of literature, had these eminent men cultivated solely their poetical powers, the Royal Society would have lost a correct and eloquent Historian, and London a great Architect.

FROM this correspondence, it appears that Wren perfectly agreed with Sprat in approving this poet above others. "For ever since," he says, "I have had the good fortune to read him otherwise than as a school-boy, I have always respected him as one of the most accomplished men of that incomparable age. He was almost the first writer that brought poetry from the fables of their ridiculous religion, and from flattering women's beauties, to speak of human affairs, and to show mankind to themselves. The decency of his order and invention is admirable; all things so justly and admirably said, that even the hypercritical Matt. Clifford himself cannot find one word in him whereon to use his sponge. So natural he is, that every fancy seems to flow into his pen, without any contention

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PRE-EMINENCE OF HORACE AS A POET.

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of brain, and yet he was the slowest and severest of his time; the wit which he shows is just enough for the subjects he undertakes, and no more. This I esteem one of the surest and noblest of perfections that belong to a liberal pen; and I like very well what Jack Birkenhead has somewhere said-" that a great Wit's great work is to refuse." Moderation of fancy is a thing most commendable, and most difficult; it being hard for men of hot and violent minds, such as commonly most great writers have, to stop themselves in full speed, and to understand when they have done enough."

IN reference to complaints made against his favourite Roman poet, of his many downright and proverbial sentences, and for his roughness of style, he says if Horace's plain morals are not wit in modern times, they were in his age; and all that the much-applauded Greeks have left, are only a few such sayings, of which we meet so many hundred in Horace. As to his style, he says, if there be any unevenness in it, it is only such as that of his own Rome, to which its hilly site was advantageous. Nor are all things that are smooth worthy of praise, for then, he says, Quarles might be put in competition with Cowley; and if to be oiled were to be harmonious, he knows not why a coach wheel or a roasting-jack, might not make good music. The poetical Doctor at Oxford then commends himself to his poetico-mathematico friend in London and to his useful labours.

WREN'S operations at this time, were taking accurate

plans and sections of the dilapidated metropolitan Cathedral, investigating their causes, and suggesting remedies for their reinstatement. Following his predecessor's ideas, he proposed to add an Italian cupola instead of the ruined tower, and to make other parts assimilate with Inigo Jones's Corinthian portico, and by degrees to convert it into a Protestant Metropolitan Cathedral, in the Roman style of Church Architecture. The report as laid before the King and the commission is given at length in my Memoirs of Wren*.

WREN may now be considered to have taken up Architecture as a profession, having been commissioned by the University of Oxford to make a design for a building in which the public acts of the University should be celebrated, instead of in St. Mary's Church, and no longer desecrate a building set apart for the worship of God by secular practices. This was Wren's first building, and its construction shows the boldness of his mathematical skill. On the 29th April 1663, he submitted his model of the intended building to the Royal Society, by whom it was much commended, and his design and description was ordered to be entered among the approved transactions of the Society. This building, known as the Sheldonian Theatre, was erected at the sole charge of the learned, pious and liberal Archbishop whose name it bears. He not only erected this theatre, and the printing house, but left an endowment for its annual reparation, and expended, from the

*Pages 125, 130.

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time of his being created Bishop of London, to his death as Archbishop of Canterbury, a period of about sixteen years, as his account books show, upon public, pious and charitable purposes, above sixty-six thousand pounds.

JOHN EVELYN informs us in his diary, that Sir Christopher Wren informed him it cost five and twenty thousand pounds. He was also informed by the Archbishop that he never did nor ever would see it. The Architect was highly praised for this work by the most worthy of his cotemporaries, and by an elegant Pindaric Ode in Latin, on the Sheldonian Theatre and its Architect, which is given at length in Parentalia, and my Memoirs. This building was opened on the 9th July 1669, by celebrating the Act of the University, and other ceremonies, which are fully and graphically described by Evelyn, who was present at this dedication of the Oxford Temple of the Muses, in his diary under this date. The sedate Evelyn did not like the wit of Dr. South, the public Orator of the University, although he admits his oration to be elegant, "very long, and not without some malicious reflections on the Royal Society; the rest was in praise of the Archbishop and the ingenious Architect." Among these reflections is the following bitter sarcasm, "mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculosos-et se ipsos," they admire nothing but fleas, lice-and themselves. This joke from a Bishop, who said, that it pleased God to make him a wit, however pointed, had been shot

* In his controversy with Dr. William Sherlock on the Trinity.