John Wilkins was born at Oxford in 1614, and educated in his early years under the care of a well-known dissenter, Mr. John Dod, who was his grandfather on the mother’s side. He afterwards entered at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and after taking his degree went abroad and became Chaplain to the Count Palatine. Joining the Parliamentary side when the Rebellion broke out, he was made Warden of Wadham in 1648, and Master of Trinity, Cambridge, in 1659, having in 1656 married Robina, sister of Oliver Cromwell, and widow of Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. On the Restoration, he was ejected from Trinity, but became Rector of St. Lawrence Jewry; and subsequently, through the help of a somewhat compromising patron, the Duke of Buckingham, he was promoted first to the Deanery of Ripon, and then to the Bishopric of Chester, in 1668. He died in 1672. His works were numerous. In 1638, there appeared “The Discovery of a New World: a Discourse to prove that there may be another habitable world in the Moon.” A second part of this treats of “The Possibility of a Passage to the Moon.” In 1640, appeared “A Discourse Concerning a new Planet: tending to prove that the Earth may be a Planet.” Others of his works were “Mercury, or the Secret Messenger” (1641); “Mathematical Magic” (1684); “The Principles of Natural Religion” (printed after his death); and an “Essay towards a Real Character and Philosophical Language.” This last is a scheme for a universal language, and was written for, and published under the auspices of, the Royal Society, of which Wilkins was a devoted member.
Personal
Mr. Francis Potter knew him very well, and was wont to say that he was a very ingeniose man, and had a very mechanicall head. He was much for trying experiments, and his head ran much upon the perpetuall motion…. He was no great read man; but one of much and deepe thinking, and of a working head; and a prudent man as well as ingeniose. He was one of Seth, lord bishop of Sarum’s most intimate friends. He was a lustie, strong growne, well sett, broad shouldered person, cheerfull, and hospitable.
Almost all that was preserved and kept up, of ingenuity and good learning, of good order and government, in the University of Oxford, was chiefly owing to his prudent conduct and encouragement.
This Dr. Wilkins was a person endowed with rare gifts, he was a noted theologist and preacher, a curious critic in several matters, an excellent mathematician and experimentist, and one as well seen in mechanisms and new philosophy (of which he was a great promoter) as any of his time.
He was naturally ambitious, but was the wisest clergyman I ever knew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good.
General
Dr. Wilkins, a man of a penetrating genius and enlarged understanding, seems to have been born for the improvement of every kind of knowledge to which he applied himself. He was a very able naturalist and mathematician, and an excellent divine. He disdained to tread in the beaten track of philosophy, as his forefathers had done; but struck into the new road pointed out by the great Lord Bacon.
I discovered an alliance between Bishop Wilkins’s art of flying, and his plan of universal language: the latter of which he no doubt calculated to prevent the want of an interpreter when he should arrive at the moon.
One of the most ingenious men of his age.
The subjects on which the bishop wrote do not attract us, and his knowledge is trebly superannuated. But his style deserves great praise. His sentences are short, pointed, and exact. He has little or nothing of the redundant languor of his contemporaries; and justice has never yet been done to him as a pioneer in English prose. The praise given to Tillotson belongs properly to Wilkins, for Tillotson lived a generation later, and learned to write English from his study of the Bishop of Chester, whom he enthusiastically admired. The curious reader will find much in the style of Wilkins to remind him of that of Bishop Berkeley.
His great learning and high position made him a connecting link between the new scientific movement that centred in the Royal Society and the Broad Church party that was growing up under the leadership of his friend and son-in-law, Tillotson…. He deserves a place among the minor prose writers of the period chiefly as the pioneer of that more concise, exact and pointed literary style, which is especially associated with the literary history of the Restoration period.
