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Sir Christopher Wren
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Wren, after enjoying the munificent salary of £200 a year during the progress of his work, was ignominiously dismissed from his office of Surveyor of Public Works on its completion.
Although then in his eighty-sixth year, he was still in the full possession of his faculties, and retiring to a house at Hampton Court, he devoted the remainder of his life to the study of the Bible and philosophy, now and then, however, indulging himself in a visit to St. Paul's, where he would sit for hours gazing up into the dome.
He died on the 25th February, 1723, in his ninety-first year, and was buried, as he had the first right to be, in the glorious building, the creation in its entirety of his brain alone, which will ever rank amongst the world's greatest masterpieces. This appropriate inscription to his memory is conspicuously engraved upon the choir screen:
"Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice" which translates to "If you seek a monument, look around you".
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