dead. Kenelm, his eldest
son, had fallen at St. Neot's, in 1648, fighting for the King. It was his
remaining son John who sanctioned the publication of his father's receipts.

* * * * *

Sir Kenelm Digby has been recognised as the type of the great amateur, but
always with a shaking of the head. Why this scorn of accomplished amateurs?
Rather may their tribe increase, let us pray. Our world languisheth now for
lack of them. He was fitted by nature to play the role superbly, to force
his circumstances, never over pliant, to serve not his material interests,
but his fame, his craving for universal knowledge and attainments. Says
Wood: "His person was handsome and gigantick, and nothing was wanting to
make him a compleat Cavalier. He had so graceful elocution and noble
address that had he been dropped out of the clouds into any part of the
world, he would have made himself respected; but the Jesuits who cared not
for him, spoke spitefully, and said it was true, but then he must not stay
there above six weeks. He had a great faculty, which proceeded from
abundance of wit and invention, of proposing and reporting matters to the
Virtuosi."

Women adored him; and he took great pains to please them--though in spite
of the importunities of Marie de Medicis, the long friendship with
Henrietta Maria, his early flirtation with the lovely Spaniard, his earnest
and impolitic championship of the notorious Lady Purbeck--Romish convert
and adventuress--Venetia, it seems, remained his only love. He was never
the mere gallant. He treated women as his intellectual equals, but as
equals who had to be splendidly entertained and amused. His conversation
was "ingeniose and innocent." Lloyd speaks of "the grace wherewith he could
relate _magnarum rerum minutias_, the little circumstances of great
matters." But men were at his feet as well; and on his tour among Italian
courts, one of the grandees said that, "having no children, he was very
willing his wife should bring him a Prince by Sir Kenelme, whom he imagined
the just measure of perfection."

A first-rate swordsman, yet was he "not apt in the least to give offence."
His strength was that of a giant. Bristol related that one day at Sherborne
he took up "a midling man," chair and all, with one arm. But there was
nothing of the swashbuckler about him, and his endless vitality was matched
by his courtesy. True, he hustled a Pope; but he addressed the Short
Par