al 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.

In 1665 Evelyn heard his friend preach before the Lord Mayor at St
Paul's on the text, "Obedience is better than sacrifice,"--a curious
text for him to choose, for it may be interpreted in more ways than one,
and might have been taken by an enemy as a summary of the preacher's own
career. Under the same entry Evelyn describes his friend as one "who
took great pains to preserve the Universities from the ignorant and
sacrilegious co