"When he had completed the great quadrangle and brought it to a tasteful and decorous aspect, for fear that the deformity of the Hall, which through extreme old age had become almost ruinous, should cast, as it were, a shadow over its splendour, he advanced £3000 for seven years out of his own purse, in order that a great hall might be erected answerable to the beauty of the new buildings. Lastly, as in the erection of these buildings he had been promoter rather than author, and had brought these results to pass more by labour and assiduity than by expenditure of his own money, he erected at a vast cost, the whole of which was defrayed by himself, a building in the second court adorned with beautiful columns, and elaborated with the most exquisite workmanship, so that he might connect his own name for ever with the extension of the College." Unfortunately, much of the original beauty of Neville's Court was spoilt by the alterations of Mr. Essex in 1755, "a local architect whose life," as Mr. J. G. Clark has truly said, "was spent in destroying that which ought to have been preserved." The building of the library which forms the western side of Neville's Court was due mainly to the energy of Dr. Isaac Barrow, who was master from 1673 to 1677. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren, who himself thus describes his scheme:-- "I haue given the appearance of arches as the order required, fair and lofty; but I haue layd the floor of the Library upon the impostes, which answer to the pillars in the cloister and levells of the old floores, and haue filled the arches with relieus stone, of which I haue seen the effect abroad in good building, and I assure you where porches are low with flat ceelings is infinitely more gracefull than lowe arches would be, and is much more open and pleasant, nor need the mason feare the performance because the arch discharges the weight, and I shall direct him in a firme manner of executing the designe. By this contrivance the windowes of the Library rise high and give place for the deskes against the walls.... The disposition of the shelves both along the walls and breaking out from the walls must needes proue very convenient and gracefull, and the best way for the students will be to haue a little square table in each celle with 2 chaires." [Illustration: Neville's Court Trinity College] The table and the chairs, as well as the book-shelves, were designed by Wren, who was also at pains to give full-sized sections of all the mouldings, because "we are scrupulous in small matters, and you must pardon us. Architects are as great pedants as criticks or heralds."