Kenelm Digby

“ The quotation from M. Felix is from the Leipsic edit., 1847, pp. 41, 42.
B. H. C.
Sir Kenelm Digby (Vol. vii., p. 85.) .—I am not at all convinced of the accuracy of the statement made by your correspondent Vandyke, "that Sir Kenelm Digby is (Vandyke believes always) represented with a sunflower by his side." There are various prints of Sir Kenelm Digby at the British Museum, which I have very recently examined, and I can find but one which bears the device alluded to and which is placed, not "by the side of Sir Kenelm Digby," but with other allegorical symbols, at the bottom of the print. ”

“ Mivers, “it has this advantage—that while it has sufficient association with honourable distinction to affect the mind of the namesake and rouse his emulation, it is not that of so stupendous a personage as to defy rivalry. Sir Kenelm Digby was certainly an accomplished and gallant gentleman; but what with his silly superstition about sympathetic powders, etc., any man nowadays might be clever in comparison without being a prodigy. Yes, let us decide on Kenelm.”
Sir Peter meditated. ”

“ Sir Kenelm, who was the author of several remarkable works, is described by Lord Clarendon as a man of 'very extraordinary person and presence, with a wonderful graceful behaviour and a flowing courtesy and civility.' He was knighted in 1623. Digby possessed a very fine library, which he formed during his residence in Paris, and he had many of the volumes bound there by Le Gascon and other eminent binders. ”

“ DIGBY, KENELM HENRY (1800–1880) , English writer, youngest son of William Digby, dean of Clonfert, was born at Clonfert, Ireland, in 1800. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and soon after taking his B.A. degree there in 1819 became a Roman Catholic. He spent most of his life, which was mainly devoted to literary pursuits, in London, where he died on the 22nd of March 1880. ”

“ There have been several branches of the Digbys both in England and Ireland, besides the extinct Earls of Bristol. During the seventeenth century the history of the family, as evinced in the lives of the celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby and the Earl of Bristol, is very remarkable.
See Leland's Itin., iv. fo. 19; Dugdale's Warwickshire, 2nd ed., vol. ii. 1012; and Pedigree of Digby of Tilton, Eye, Kettleby, Sisonby, North Luffenham, and Welby, in Nichols's Leicestershire, ii. pt. i. p. *261; for a more extended Pedigree see vol. iii. pt. i. p. 473, under Tilton ”

“ There are two schools of thought for the formation of character,—the Real and the Ideal. I would form the character in the Ideal school, in order to make it bolder and grander and lovelier when it takes its place in that every-day life which is called Real. And therefore I am not for placing the descendant of Sir Kenelm Digby, in the interval between school and college, with a man of the world, probably as cynical as Cousin Mivers and living in the stony thoroughfares of London. ”

“ In private schools the competition is narrowed, the energies stinted. The schoolmaster's wife interferes, and generally coddles the boys. There is not manliness enough in those academies; no fagging, and very little fighting. A clever boy turns out a prig; a boy of feebler intellect turns out a well-behaved young lady in trousers. Nothing muscular in the system. Decidedly the namesake and descendant of Kenelm Digby should not go to a private seminary."
"So far as I gather from your reasoning," said Sir Peter, with characteristic placidity, "Kenelm Chillingly is not to go to school at all." ”

“ A man of fervent piety—his "knees were horny with frequent praying," says Aubrey—he was, besides, a zealous student of alchemy and astrology, a friend of Dee, of Lilly, and Page xvi of Booker. Very likely Kenelm had been entrusted to Allen's care at Oxford on the recommendation of Sandy; for Allen, one of his intimates, was a serious occultist, who, according to his servant's account, "used to meet the spirits on the stairs like swarms of bees." ”

“ Just as the messenger arrived, Sir Kenelm Digby also arrived, not unnaturally curious to learn the issue of the preceding day’s adventure. This monstrous story Evans told to Lilly, who, I suppose, affected to believe it, and asked him how such an issue chanced to attend on his experiment. Because, the knave replied, in performing the invocation rites, he had carelessly omitted the necessary suffumigation, and at this omission the spirit had taken offence. It is evident that the spirits insist on being treated with due regard to etiquette. ”

“ It seems more than probable that the prudent Lady Digby intercepted her son’s love-letters, and did all in her power to prevent a marriage she thought most undesirable, and she was doubtless delighted when Kenelm accompanied his kinsman, Lord Bristol, to Spain, where he was then negotiating the Prince of Wales’s marriage with the Infanta at Madrid. ”

“ Save for his handsome person and the memory of a fervent devotion to the Catholic faith, which was to work strongly in him after he came to mature years, he owed little or nothing to that most unhappy young man, surely the foolishest youth who ever blundered out of the ways of private virtue into conspiracy and crime. Kenelm, his elder son, born July 11, 1603, was barely three years old when his father, the most guileless and the most obstinate of the Gunpowder Plotters, died on the scaffold. ”

“ Evelyn, who visited him in Paris in 1651, describes him as an “errant mountebank.” Henry Stubbes characterizes him as “the very Pliny of our age for lying,” and Lady Fanshawe refers to the same “infirmity.” [7] His famous “powder of sympathy,” which seems to have been only powder of “vitriol,” healed without any contact, by being merely applied to a rag or bandage taken from the wound, and Digby records a miraculous cure by this means in a lecture given by him at Montpellier on this subject in 1658, published in French and English the same year, in German in 1660 and in Dutch in 1663 ”

“ About this time Digby professed himself a Protestant, but by October 1635, while in France, he had already returned to the Roman Catholic faith. [3] In a letter dated the 27th of March 1636 Laud remonstrates with him, but assures him of the continuance of his friendship. [4] In 1638 he published A Conference with a Lady about choice of a Religion, in which he argues that the Roman Church, possessing alone the qualifications of universality, unity of doctrine and uninterrupted apostolic succession, is the only true church, and that the intrusion of error into it is impossible. ”

“ The notes by the Reformers from the margin of the Geneva version, have been reprinted with what is usually called King James' version, the one now in use, in the editions printed at Amsterdam, at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
POEMS DISCOVERED AMONG THE PAPERS OF SIR KENELM DIGBY.
MR. HALLIWELL (Vol. ii., p. 238.) says that he does not believe my MS. of the "Minde of the Lady Venetia Digby" can be an autograph. ”

“ So the good old gentleman gott his watch again.
Sir Kenelm Digby loved him much (vide Sir K. Digby's Life 69 [90] ) , and bought his excellent library of him, which he gave to the University. I have a Stifelius' Arithmetique that was his, which I find he had much perused, and no doubt mastered. He was interred in Trinity College Chapell, (quaere where: as I take it, the outer Chapell.) George Bathurst [E] B.D. made his funerall oration in Latin, which was printed. 'Tis pitty there had not been his name on a [91] stone over him. ”

“ The characters and places appear under fictitious names: thus, Sir Kenelm calls himself Theagenes, his wife Stelliana, Sir Edward Sackville Mardontius, London Corinth, and so forth. For these identifications see Sir H. N. Nicolas's introduction, several papers by J. G. Nichols in Gent. Mag. for 1829, and Mr. Warner's notes in Poems from Digby's Papers, 1877. Digby's Journal of the Scanderoon Voyage, published by the Camden Society (1868) , has a useful introduction by John Bruce. The Biog. Brit. (Kippis) has an exhaustive life. ”

“ As a philosopher and an Aristotelian Digby shows little originality and followed the methods of the schoolmen. His Roman Catholic orthodoxy mixed with rationalism, and his political opinions, according to which any existing authority should receive support, were evidently derived from Thomas White (1582–1676) , the Roman Catholic philosopher, who lived with him in France. White published in 1651 Institutionum Peripateticorum libri quinque, purporting to expound Digby’s “peripatetic philosophy,” but going far beyond Digby’s published treatises. ”

“ The same subject is treated in letters to George Digby, afterwards 2nd earl of Bristol, dated the 2nd of November 1638 and the 29th of November 1639, which were published in 1651, as well as in a further Discourse concerning Infallibility in Religion in 1652. Returning to England he associated himself with the queen and her Roman Catholic friends, and joined in the appeal to the English Romanists for money to support the king’s Scottish expedition. ”

“ Women adored him; and he took great pains to please them—though in spite of the importunities of Marie de Médicis, 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. ”

“ In him better than in Newton do we realise the temper of the early members of the Royal Society. In this tale of his other activities I have not forgotten The Closet Opened. Of all Digby's many interests the most constant and permanent was medicine. How to enlarge the span of man's life was a problem much meditated on in his age. We Page xli have seen how Descartes's mind ran on it; and in Bacon's Natural History there is reference to a 'book of the prolongation of life.' In spite of what is written on his Janssen hermit portrait—Saber morir la mayor hazanza—Digby loved life. ”

“ Among them were early works on science by Grostête and Roger Bacon, besides histories and chronicles. Many of these books had belonged to Thomas Allen, who gave them to Digby as a token of regard. Sir Kenelm wrote about them to Sir Robert Cotton, who was to thank Allen for his kindness: 'in my hands they will not be with less honourable memory of him than in any man's else.' He felt sure that Allen would have wished them to be freely used: 'all good things are the better the more they are communicated' ”

“ Henry Kenelm was tall, more than five feet ten inches in height, strong and well-made, but not large-limbed; with light hair, dark blue eyes, and dark eye-lashes, and a fair complexion. The expression of his countenance was, like his mind, benevolent, frank, cheerful, and intelligent. When we were at Florence, a year after his death, a cast, from a statue in the public gallery, was sent to our lodging as a model for drawing. All of us were struck by the resemblance of this bust to him whom we regretted, whose features were still so fresh in our recollection. [Pg 375] Antoine was called ”

“ The doctor coincided entirely with the reasoning of his patient: he said, "For some time past you have been forming unwholesome chyle: the bowels must be relieved; perspiration, so as not to weaken you, but to carry off the fever, probably caused by the cold bath, must be sustained: all will soon be well again." Kenelm had talked of his scruples in so edifying a manner, as to inspire the devout doctor with great respect for his piety and humility: returning into the first salon, he said to the mother: "Madame, votre fils est un ange:" she replied, "Pas encore." ”

“ Yet this fear, "the beginning of wisdom," acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, "If there are beings, (and we are told that such there are,) who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend." A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris ”

“ They will tell you how to mix in your liquor eglantine for coolness, borage, rosemary, and sweet-marjoram for vigour, and by which planet each herb or flower is governed. Has our sentiment for the flowers of the field increased now we no longer drink their essence, or use them in our dishes? I doubt it. It is surely a pardonable grossness that we should desire the sweet fresh things to become part of us—like children, who do indeed love flowers, and eat them. ”

“ This winter Kenelm took lessons in fencing, and, after having acquired some skill in the noble science of defence, he engaged a sous-officier to come daily to the house to teach him the manual exercise. He had learned dancing in his college, where masters attended for that purpose. During his first winter at Avignon he refused to take dancing lessons, from scruples suggested to him by a devout person, who also endeavoured to engage me to forbid my children to learn to dance, supporting his opinion of its unlawfulness by the usual topics. ”

“ No water must be put in, after the oven is closed (nor the oven ever be opened, till after all is throughly baked) and therefore you must put in enough at first to serve to the last; you must rowl your Collars as close as may be, that no air may be left in the folds of them: and sow them up in exceeding strong cloth, which a strong man must pull as hard as He can in the sowing. Their cloths must not be pulled off, till the Collars have been three or four days out of the oven, least you pull off part of the Brawn with them. ”