Pepys made his first acquaintance with Wilkins in 1665: he was now a man widely known in London society, especially among learned men and natural philosophers. Pepys describes his first visit to him, paid at his house, then probably the Vicarage of St Lawrence Jewry. "And so to Dr Merritt" (a Fellow of the Royal Society), "and fine discourse among them to my great joy, so sober and ingenious: he is now upon finishing his discourse of a Universal Character." At a dinner-party later he met Wilkins, when "I choosing to sit next Dr Wilkins, Sir George Ent, and others whome I value, there talked of several things; Dr Wilkins of the Universal Speech, of which he hath a book coming out, and did first inform me how man was certainly made for society, without which he would be a very mean creature." In 1668 the book was published, carried home by Pepys, and carefully perused. He enjoyed the account given by Wilkins of the ark, and his solutions of the difficulties raised even in his time. The solutions, Pepys says, "do please me mightily, and are much beyond whatever I heard of the subject." This is easy to believe. He must have been impressed by Wilkins' contention that "few were the several species of beasts and fowls which were to be in the Arke"; a consequence of the fundamental error of his system, the belief that nature was easily classified, and her classes few. In Pepys' last important reference to Wilkins, he tells us that he "heard talk that Dr Wilkins, my friend the Bishop of Chester, shall be removed to Winchester and be made Lord Treasurer: though this be foolish talk, I do gather he is a mighty rising man, as being a Latitudinarian, and the Duke of Buckingham his friend." Evelyn was a warm friend of Wilkins, and a frequent visitor at his lodgings in Wadham. In 1654 he came to Oxford with his wife and daughter, as London visitors do now for a weekend, or for Commemoration. He "supped at a magnificent entertainment in Wadham Hall, invited by my dear and excellent friend Dr Wilkins," and met "that miracle of a youth, Mr Christopher Wren." Two years later, on another visit, he "dined with that most obliging and universally curious person Dr Wilkins at Wadham College." There he saw many wonderful things--transparent apiaries, a statue that spoke through a tube, a way-wiser (_i.e._, a kind of pedometer), dials, perspectives, mathematical and magical curiosities, the property or invention of Wilkins or of "that prodigious young scholar Christopher Wren." Alas! there are none of these magical curiosities in the Warden's lodgings now; they were taken to London and lost in the Great Fire.