inking. In winter seven or eight
days"--"Ho! Ho!" cried Sir Kenelm's son. "This is not alchemy!" He drew out
another parchment and read again: "My Lord of Carlile's sack posset, how
it's made: Take a pottle of cream and boil in it a little whole cinnamon
and three or four flakes of mace. Boil it until it simpreth and bubbleth."

By this time, as you may well imagine, Sir Kenelm's son was wrought to an
excitement. It is likely that he inherited his father's palate and that the
juices of his appetite were stirred. Seizing an armful of the papers, he
leaped down the attic steps, three at a time. His lady mother thrust a
curled and papered head from her door and asked whether the chimney were
afire, but he did not heed her. The cook was waddling in her pattens. He
cried to her to throw wood upon the fire.

That night the Digby household was served a delicacy, red herrings broiled
in the fashion of my Lord d'Aubigny, "short and crisp and laid upon a
sallet." Also, there was a wheaten flommery as it was made in the West
Country--for the cook chose quite at random--and a slip-coat cheese as
Master Phillips proportioned it. Also, against the colic, which was
ravishing the country, the cook prepared a metheglin as Lady Stuart mixed
it--"nettles, fennel and grumel seeds, of each two ounces being small-cut
and mixed with honey and boiled together." It is on record that the Lady
Digby smiled for the first time since her lord had died, and when the
grinning cook bore in the platter, she beat upon the table with her spoon.

The following morning, Sir Kenelm's son posted to London bearing the
recipes, with a pistol in the pocket of his great coat against the crossing
of Hounslow Heath. He went to a printer at the Star in Little Britain whose
name was H. Brome.

Shortly the book appeared. It was the son who wrote the preface: "There
needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well
known, having been a Person of Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite
Curiosity in his Researches. Even that Incomparable Sir Kenelme Digbie
Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother,
(Et omen in Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work." The
sale of the book is not recorded. It is supposed that the Lady Middlesex,
so many of whose recipes had been used, directed that her chair be carried
to the shop where the book was for sale and that she bought largely of it.
The Countess of Dorset bo