'My Lord,' the letter ends, 'if my first design had been perfect I had not troubled your Lordship with so much Tattle, but with something performed and done. But I am fain, in this letter, to do like some chymist who when Projection (his fugitive darling) hath left him threadbare, is forced to fall to vulgar Preparations to pay his Debts.' The King appointed Wren as assistant to Sir John Denham, the Surveyor-General of Works. Sir John had been appointed by Charles I., in reversion during the lifetime of Inigo Jones, surveyor at that time, and had succeeded, at Inigo Jones's death, to what was then but a barren honour. Evelyn, who had a dispute with Sir John about the placing of Greenwich Palace in that very year, says: 'I knew him to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb[89] (Inigo Jones's man) to assist him.' Of this Charles II. was probably aware, and anxious to supply his deficiency. That his choice should have fallen upon Wren, unless Evelyn's friendship suggested it, is remarkable, as, until then, Wren seems to have made no special study of architecture. No doubt the practical experience learned in the details of the assistant-surveyor's work was afterwards very serviceable to him. He appears to have had a most retentive memory as well as a very quick eye and power of apprehension. In spite, however, of these calls on his time he was assiduous at the Society's meetings. The death of Laurence Rooke, his friend and fellow-labourer, threw more work on his hands. Rooke was succeeded in the Geometry Professorship by Isaac Barrow, afterwards a well-known divine who, in his first Latin oration, eulogised the Savilian Professor as 'formerly a prodigy of a boy, now a miracle of a man, and a genius among mortals. Lest I should appear to speak falsehood, it will be enough for me to name to you the most ingenious and excellent Christopher Wren.'[90] It was a high compliment, but Barrow knew that his audience would heartily re-echo it. It is to be hoped that Barrow's lectures were somewhat shorter than his sermons, which, fine as they are, were not always listened to with patience. [_A LONG SERMON._] 'On one occasion, when he was long preaching in the Abbey on a holiday, the servants of the Church, who on those days showed the tombs and effigies in wax of the Kings and Queens to the common people, fearing to spend that time in hearing which they might more profitably employ in receiving, caused the organs to blow until they had blowed him down.'[91]