We know little about the amount of Wren’s general reading, but he was certainly a student of Elyot’s _Governour_. Some years ago I was the means of placing in the R.I.B.A. Library the 1546 edition of this once famous but now almost forgotten book. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it bears the autographs on the title-page of Sir Christopher’s father, Dean Christopher Wren, and of Sir Christopher himself. The other writings scribbled on the margins are the work of much earlier owners of the volume, which was nearly a century old when the Dean acquired it. There is some little evidence that the architect studied the book with care. Sir Thomas Elyot was concerned to set out the whole behaviour of a knightly gentleman, and among other things gives some warnings against the use of oaths. When Sir Christopher was building St. Paul’s Cathedral he was distressed by the profanity of the workmen, and posted up a notice directed against bad language. It is possible that he consulted the _Governour_ before drafting this notice, for the page references in the index under the heading “othes” has been corrected from 170 to 160, and this was possibly done by Wren when he sought for what Elyot had to say about oaths. CHAPTER XIV “THE ARCHITECT OF ADVENTURE” In trying to estimate with any precision what is Wren’s position in the history of British Architecture, the immediate and obvious comparison is with Inigo Jones. I refer to Wren in my Preface as our architect of greatest achievement, because I hesitate to use the simpler words--our greatest architect. In my own mind the latter is a true description, but the enthusiasts for Inigo Jones would dispute it. None, however, can cavil at the statement that Wren achieved more than any other English architect, whatever nice distinctions may be drawn as to the relative greatness of his art and that of Inigo Jones. The two men are not strictly comparable, and represent in their work and outlook two different currents in the history of architecture. Inigo Jones was essentially academic and, in his relationship to the traditional methods of building which he found, the forerunner of the modern professional architect. He had trained himself by much foreign travel and by close study of the facts of building before he embarked on his career. Wren, on the other hand, was essentially an amateur, if the word be understood in its most favourable sense and not in the least contemptuously. Inigo Jones was not an inventor. He took the Palladio tradition as his model and adhered to it with faithfulness. Wren does not seem to have had any particular hero amongst the great Italian architects. He kept throughout his career a free mind, open to the suggestions of his own inventiveness, ready to accept existing conditions, rather than academic rules, as the guides to his treatment of a problem, and eager to try new structural ideas.