“This is a short account of the principal discoveries which Dr. Wren has presented or suggested to this assembly. I know very well, that some of them he did only start and design; and that they have been since carried on to perfection, by the industry of other hands. I purpose not to rob them of their share in the honour: Yet it is but reasonable, that the original invention should be ascribed to the true author, rather than the finishers. Nor do I fear that this will be thought too much, which I have said concerning him: For there is a peculiar reverence due to so much excellence covered with so much modesty. And it is not flattery but honesty, to give him his just praise; who is so far from usurping the fame of other men that he endeavours with all care to conceal his own.” A man could not ask a better epitaph than “so much excellence covered with so much modesty.” It may be that Sprat was carried away by his affection for Wren and overstated the case, but that amiable reason can hardly apply to all his contemporaries. Robert Boyle, who had witnessed some of Wren’s experiments, testified that his knowledge of Wren’s extraordinary sagacity made him very desirous to try what he proposed. The evidence of Sir Isaac Newton cannot be ignored. His Preface to the second edition of the _Principia_ groups Wren with Wallis and Huygens as “hujus ætatis geometrarum facile principes,” and gives to them the first credit for a true conception of the laws governing the impacts and reactions of two bodies in collision. Praise from Newton is praise indeed. Thomas Hearne carried it a little further. “I heard an eminent mathematician say that he could mention another equal in mathematics to Sir Isaac Newton, _though he had not published_ ... Sir Christopher Wren, who was, indeed, a very extraordinary man.” When Isaac Barrow succeeded to the Gresham Professorship of Geometry, he took occasion, in his inaugural oration, to refer to Wren in this fashion: “One there is, whose name common gratitude forbids me to pass over, whom I know not whether to admire for his divine genius or for the sweetness of his disposition ... it will suffice if I name the great and good Christopher Wren, of whom I will say no more since his merit attracts the eyes of the whole world” ... and so on, with the inevitable references to Wren’s modesty.