Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to
have been ambitious.
--Dr. Johnson, _Life of Cowley_.
Prohibition, I dare say, is going to make fashionable the private
compilation of just such delightful works as _The Closet of the
Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Opened; London, at the Star in
Little Britain, 1669_. Sir Kenelm, “the friend of kings and the special
friend of queens,” crony of such diverse spirits as Bacon, Ben Jonson,
and Oliver Cromwell, kept this notebook of his jocund experiments in
home brewing and cookery. Just as nowadays a man will jot down the
formula of some friend’s shining success in the matter of domestic
chianti, so did the admirable Kenelm record “Sir Thomas Gower’s
Metheglin for Health,” or “My Lord Hollis’ Hydromel,” or “Sir John
Colladon’s Oat-Meal Pap,” or “My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops;”
and adding, of course, his own particular triumphs--e. g., “Hydromel
as I Made it Weak for the Queen Mother,” “A Good Quaking Bag-Pudding,”
and “To Fatten Young Chickens in a Wonderful Degree.” Sir Kenelm’s
official duty at the court of Charles the First was Gentleman of the
Bed-chamber; but if I had been Charles, I should have transferred him
to the Pantry.
The _Closet Opened_ (which was not published until after Sir Kenelm’s
death; he was born 1603, died 1665) is the kind of book delightfully
apt for the sad, sagacious, and solitary, for one cannot spend an hour
in it without deriving a lively sense of the opulence and soundness
of life. The affectionate attention Sir Kenelm pays the raisin makes
him seem almost a Volsteadian figure: in his pages that excellent and
powerful fruity capsule plays, perhaps for the first time in history, a
heroic and leading rôle. Consider this: