The Jesuite that came from China, Ann. 1664, told Mr. Waller,
That there they use sometimes in this manner. To near a pint
of the infusion, take two yolks of new laid-eggs, and beat
them very well with as much fine Sugar as is sufficient for
this quantity of Liquor; when they are very well incorporated,
pour your Tea upon the Eggs and Sugar, and stir them well
together. So drink it hot. This is when you come home from
attending business abroad, and are very hungry, and yet have
not conveniency to eat presently a competent meal. This
presently discusseth and satisfieth all rawness and indigence
of the stomack, flyeth suddainly over the whole body and into
the veins, and strengthenth exceedingly and preserves one a
good while from necessity of eating. Mr. Waller findeth all
those effects of it thus with Eggs. In these parts, He saith,
we let the hot water remain too long soaking upon the Tea,
which makes it extract into itself the earthy parts of the
herb. The water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you
can say the _Miserere_ Psalm very leisurely. Thus you have only
the spiritual parts of the Tea, which is much more active,
penetrative, and friendly to nature.
Sometimes, it is true, one suspects Sir Kenelm of a tendency to
gild the lily. In the matter of perfuming his tobacco, this was his
procedure:--
Take Balm of Peru half an ounce, seven or eight Drops of Oyl of
Cinamon, Oyl of Cloves five drops, Oyl of Nutmegs, of Thyme, of
Lavender, of Fennel, of Aniseeds (all drawn by distillation) of
each a like quantity, or more or less as you like the Odour,
and would have it strongest; incorporate with these half a dram
of Ambergrease; make all these into a Paste; which keep in a
Box; when you have fill’d your Pipe of Tobacco, put upon it
about the bigness of a Pin’s Head of this Composition.
It will make the Smoak most pleasantly odoriferous, both to
the Takers, and to them that come into the Room; and ones
Breath will be sweet all the day after. It also comforts the
Head and Brains.
It is a great temptation to go on quoting these seductive formulæ. I
feel sure that my tenderer readers would relish instructions for the
Beautifying Water or Precious Cosmetick,--for the secret of which
ladies of high degree pursued Sir Kenelm all over Europe. (He does
not include in the _Closet_ any details of the Viper Wine for the
Complection which was said to have caused the death of Lady Digby--a
rather painful scandal at the time.) But I fear to trespass on your
patience. Let me only add that the ambition of the Three Hours for
Lunch Club has long been to hold a DIGBY DINNER, at which all the
dishes will be prepared as nearly as possible according to Sir Kenelm’s
prescriptions. The project offers various perplexities, and might even
have to be consummated at sea, beyond the hundred-fathom curve. But if
it ever comes to pass, the following menu, carefully chosen from Sir
Kenelm’s delicacies, seems to me promising:--
Portugal Broth, As It Was Made for the Queen
Sack with Clove Gillyflowers
Sucket of Mallow Stalks
A Herring Pye
A Smoothening Quiddany of Quinces
My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops
Mead, from the Muscovian Ambassador’s Steward
The Queen Mother’s Hotchpot of Mutton
Pease of the Seedy Buds of Tulips
Boiled Rice in a Pipkin
Marmulate of Pippins
Dr. Bacon’s Julep of Conserve of Red Roses
Excellent Spinage Pasties
Pleasant Cordial Tablets, Which Strengthen Nature
Small Ale for the Stone
A Nourishing Hachy
Plague Water
Marrow Sops with Wine
My Lord of Denbigh’s Almond Marchpane
Sallet of Cold Capon Rosted
My Lady of Portland’s Minced Pyes
The Liquor of Life
A Quaking Bag-Pudding
Metheglin for the Colic
But I must not mislead you into thinking that Sir Kenelm was merely a
convivial trencherman. His biography as related in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ is as diverting as a novel--more so than many. Infant
prodigy, irresistible wooer, privateer, scientist, religious
controversialist, astrologer, and a glorious talker, he made a profound
impression on the life of his time. But, as so often happens, his
name has been carried down to posterity not by the strange laborious
treatise he regarded as his opus maximum, but by his chance association
with one of the great books of all time. When Digby was under
honorable confinement (as a “Popish recusant”) at Winchester House,
Southwark, in 1642, he was busy there with chemical experiment and
the MS. of his _Of Bodies and Mans Soul_ (of which more in a moment).
Apparently they treated political prisoners with more indulgence in
those days. One evening he received a letter from his friend the Earl
of Dorset, urging him to read a book that was making a stir among
the intellectuals. One may think it was perhaps a trifle niggardly
of Dorset merely to have recommended the book. To a friend in jail,
surely he might (and it was just before Christmas) have sent a copy
as a present. But the liberality of the Earl is not to be called in
question: he had made Sir Kenelm at least one startlingly gracious
gift--viz. Lady Digby herself, previously Dorset’s mistress. This oddly
amusing story, or gossip, may be pursued in Aubrey’s _Brief Lives_,
a fascinating book (published by the Oxford Press)--a sort of Social
Register of seventeenth century England.
“Late as it was” when Sir Kenelm received the letter from his
benefactor and colleague, he sent out at once (mark the high spirit
of the true inquirer; also the sagacity of seventeenth century
booksellers, who kept open at night)--
To let you see how the little needle of my Soul is throughly
touched at the great Loadstone of yours, and followeth
suddenly and strongly, which way soever you becken it.... I
sent presently (as late as it was) to _Pauls_ Church-yard, for
this Favourite of yours, _Religio Medici_: which found me in
a condition fit to receive a Blessing; for I was newly gotten
into my Bed. This good natur’d creature I could easily perswade
to be my Bed-fellow, and to wake with me, as long as I had any
edge to entertain my self with the delights I sucked from so
noble a conversation.
Rarely have the pleasures of reading in bed had such durable result.
The following day he spent in pouring out a long, spirited and
powerful letter to Dorset (75 printed pages) which has become famous as
_Observations upon Religio Medici_, and a few years later was included
as a supplement to that book--where it still remains in most editions.
In this tumbling out of his honourable meditations and excitements,
Sir Kenelm took issue pretty smartly with Dr. Browne on a number of
points, particularly in regard to his own special hobby of Immortality.
He, just as much as the Norwich physician, loved to lose himself in an
Altitudo; but in some cloudlands of airy doctrine Browne seemed to him
too precise. “The dint of Wit,” Digby remarked felicitously of some
theological impasse, “is not forcible enough to dissect such tough
matter.”
These _Observations_ are of more than casual importance. Dorset,
apparently, took steps (unknown to Digby) to have them published;
and report of this coming blast roused Browne to protest courteously
against “animadversions” based upon the unauthorized and imperfect
version of his book--his own “true and intended Originall” being by
this time in the printer’s hands. Digby had written his observations
without knowing who the author of _Religio_ was. The letters that now
passed between him and Browne are an exhilarating model of controversy
goldenly conducted between gentlemen of the grand manner. “You shall
sufficiently honour me in the vouchsafe of your refute,” writes Browne,
“and I obliege the whole world in the occasion of your Pen.” To which
Digby, avowing that his comments were written without thought of
print and merely as a “private exercitation,” charmingly disclaims
any ambition to enter public argument with so superior a scholar.
“To encounter such a sinewy opposite, or make Animadversions upon so
smart a piece as yours is, requireth such a solid stock and exercise
in school learning. My superficial besprinkling will serve only for
a private letter, or a familiar discourse with Lady auditors. With
longing I expect the comming abroad of the true copy of the Book,
whose false and stoln one hath already given me so much delight.” The
delightful remark about lady auditors causes one to suspect that even
in that day the germ of the lecture passion was moving in circles of
high-spirited females.
Digby and Browne were evidently kinsprits. They were nearly of an
age; Browne was a physician, and Digby--though many considered him a
mountebank and charlatan--had a genuine scientific zeal for medical
dabblings. His Powder of Sympathy, a nostrum for healing wounds at a
distance, has been a cause of merriment among later generations; but
Sir Kenelm was no fool and I am not at all sure that there wasn’t much
excellent sense in his procedure. The injury itself was washed and
kept under a clean bandage. The Powder of Sympathy was to be prepared
from a paste of vitriol, and the instructions included necessity for
mixing and exposing it in sunshine. Sir Kenelm was quite aware of
the public appetite for hocus-pocus, and surely there was a touch of
anticipatory Christian Science and Coué in his idea of keeping the
patient’s mind off the trouble and giving him this harmless amusement
in the open air. For the sympathetic powder, please note, was never to
be applied to the wound itself, but only to something carrying the
blood of the injured person--a stained bandage, a garment, or even
the weapon with which the damage was done. The injury was left to the
curative progress of Nature. This theory of treating not the wound but
the weapon might well be meditated by literary critics. For instance,
when some toxicated energumen publishes an atrocious book, the best
course to pursue is not to attack the author but to praise Walter de la
Mare or Stella Benson. This may be termed the allopathic principle in
criticism; but few of us are steadfast enough to adhere to it.
Digby’s _Memoirs_--not published until 1827--exhibit him as the
swashbuckler, and amorist by no means faint. They are amusing enough
but give only a carnal silhouette. Perhaps he did not write the book
himself: there is a vein of burlesque in the narrative that makes me
suspicious. It purports to be an account of Sir Kenelm’s fidelity to
his wife, the lovely Venetia; and we are told that the account was
written under Antonian pressure. Importuned by ladies of much personal
generosity and recklessness, Sir Kenelm austerely retires to a cave and
pens this confession of uxorious loyalty. When you consider that the
relations of Sir Kenelm and Lady Venetia were one of the fashionable
uproars of the day, you begin to guess that the Memoir (in which all
the characters are concealed by romantic pseudonyms) was an elaborate
skit intended for private circulation, probably the work of some
satirical friend. Exactly so, when any great scandal nowadays is riding
on the front pages of the newspapers, do City Room reporters compose
humorous burlesques of the printed “stories,” and these have delightful
currency round the office.
So you will still find legends in print suggesting that Sir Kenelm
was a blend of Casanova and Dr. Munyon. He has been attributed what
historians used to call “Froude’s disease”--an insufficient curiosity
as to the total of 2 and 2 when added together. But a man whose
memory still makes a page and a half of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_
such lively reading, must have had more than mere animal spirits in
his make-up. It is easy to find testimony to his potent social and
military accomplishments. But the man himself, his earnest scientific
passions, his valiant speculation on human destinies, does not emerge
from the entries in encyclopædias. For that you must look into his
great book _Two Treatises: The Nature of Bodies, and The Nature of Mans
Soul_ (1658). By the kindness of Mr. Wilbur Macey Stone, generous and
astonishingly Elizabethan explorer of old books, I have an original,
tawny and most aromatic copy of this queer treasure. The title page of
the Second Treatise is endorsed, with a charming use of the aspirates--
SAMUEL MELLOR’S BOOK, December 22th 1792.
_Samuel Mellor his my Name
and Cheshire is my Nation
and Burton is my Dwellings
Place and Christ is my
Salvation
this Book geven
has A Gift to Samuel Mellor_
Sir Kenelm dedicates the volume to his son, in a touching and
honourable letter dated “Paris the last of August 1644.” “The calamity
of this time” (he says) “hath bereft me of the ordinary means of
expressing my affection to you; I have been casting about, to find some
other way of doing that in such sort, as you may receive most profit
by it. Therein I soon pitched upon these Considerations; that Parents
owe unto their children, not only material subsistence for their Body,
but much more, spiritual contributions to their better part, their
Mind.” Accordingly, with perfect gravity and that sombre and Latinized
eloquence which was the peculiar gift of his century, he proceeds to
expound in nearly 600 dense pages his observations on what we would
call nowadays physics and psychology. It would be agreeable enough,
if I did not fear to weary you, to copy down some of Sir Kenelm’s
delightful shrewd comments. A few of his section headings will serve to
give an idea of his matter. For instance:--
_The experience of burning glasses, and of soultry gloomy
weather, prove light to be fire._
_Philosophers ought not to judge of things by the rules of
vulgar people._
_The reason why the motion of light is not discerned coming
towards us, and that there is some real tardity in it._
_The true sense of the Maxim, that Nature abhorreth from
vacuity._
_The loadstone sendeth forth its emanations spherically.
Which are of two kinds: and each kind is strongest in that
hemisphere, through whose polary parts they issue out._
_The reason why sometimes the same object appears through the
prism in two places: and in one place more lively, in the other
place more dim._
_How the vital spirits sent from the brain, do run to the
intended part of the body without mistake._
_Of the rainbow, and how by the colour of any body, we may know
the composition of the body it self._
_How things renewed in the fantasie, return with the same
circumstances that they had at first._
_Why divers men hate some certain meats, and particularly
cheese._
Here, you will agree, was a man who even when he seems naïf, examined
phenomena with his own eyes and with notable sharpness. Delving into
the “crooked narrow cranies & restrayned flexuous rivolets of corporeal
things” was, he insisted, a “difficult & spiny affaire;” he was eager
to avoid “meer Chymeras and wild paradoxes,” hoped that “by strong
abstraction, and by deep retirement into the closet of judgment” he
might win “a favourable doom” from his readers. There is no naïveté so
dangerous as that of underestimating the power of another man’s mind.
Behind some of his fanciful suggestions there is an astonishing agility
of conjecture. On the subject of physiology he is delicious. Hear him
(pared down to stark brevity) on the brain:--
We may take notice that it containeth, towards the middle of
its substance, four concavities, as some do count them: but in
truth, these four, are but one great concavity, in which four,
as it were, divers roomes, may be distinguished.... Now, two
rooms of this great concavity, are divided by a little body,
somewhat like a skin, (though more fryable) which of itself is
clear; but there it is somewhat dimmed, by reason that hanging
a little slack, it somewhat shriveleth together: and this,
Anatomists do call _Septum lucidum_, or speculum....
This part seemeth to me, to be that and onely that, in which
the fansie or common sense resideth ... it is seated in the
very hollow of the brain; which of necessity must be the place
and receptacle where the species and similitudes of things doe
reside, and where they are moved and tumbled up and down, when
we think of many things. And lastly, the situation we put our
head in, when we think earnestly of any thing, favoureth this
opinion: for then we hang our head forwards, as it were forcing
the specieses to settle towards our forehead, that from thence
they may rebound, and work upon this diaphanous substance.
But it is in the Second Treatise (“Declaring the Nature and Operations
of Mans Soul; out of which, The Immortality of Reasonable Souls, is
Convinced”) that the darling man rises to really dazzling heights. In
this mystical, ecstatic and penitential essay he (in Burton’s phrase)
rectifies his perturbations. He is no longer channeled in the “crooked
narrow cranies of corporeal things;” he works from withinward and
spirals in happy ether:--
To thee then my soul, I now address my speech. For since by
long debate, and toilsom rowing against the impetuous tides
of ignorance, and false apprehensions, which overthrow thy
banks, and hurry thee headlong down the stream, whiles thou
art imprisoned in thy clayie mansion; we have with much ado
arrived to aim at some little attome of thy vast greatness; and
with the hard and tough blows of strict and wary reasoning, we
have strucken out some few sparks of that glorious light, which
invironeth and swelleth thee: it is high time, I should retire
my self out of the turbulent and slippery field of eager strife
and litigious disputation, to make my accounts with thee; where
no outward noise may distract us, nor any way intermeddle
between us, excepting onely that eternal verity, which by thee
shineth upon my faint and gloomy eyes.... Existence is that
which comprehendeth all things: and if God be not comprehended
in it, thereby it is, that he is incomprehensible of us: and
he is not comprehended in it, because himself is it.... Which
way soever I look, I lose my sight, in seeing an infinity round
about me: Length without points: Breadth without Lines: Depth
without any surface. All content, all pleasure, all restless
rest, all an unquietness and transport of delight, all an
extasie of fruition.
So don’t let any one tell you that Sir Kenelm was only a seventeenth
century epicure and bootlegger.
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