ed he had
never authorised its publication, written as it was in twenty-four hours,
which included his procuring and reading the book--a truly marvellous _tour
de force_; for the thing is still worth perusal. He was always the
improvisor--ready, brilliant, vivid, imperfect. He must give vent to the
ideas that came upon him in gusts. "The impressions which creatures make
upon me," he says, "are like boisterous winds." He fully recognised his own
limitations. "I pretend not to learning," he declares, with exaggerated
modesty. Amateur and improviser of genius, let us praise him as such. The
spacious, generous minds that can find room for all the ideas and culture
of an epoch are never numerous enough. There is no one like such amateurs
for bridging two ages; and Digby, with one hand in Lilly's and the other in
Bacon's, joins the mediaeval to the modern world. Nor is a universal amateur
a genius who has squandered his powers; but a man exercising his many
talents in the only way possible to himself, and generally with much
entertainment and stimulus to others. It was Ben Jonson, too great a man to
be one of his detractors on this score, who wrote of him:

"He is built like some imperial room
For that[1] to dwell in, and be still at home.
His breast is a brave palace, a broad street,
Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet;
Where nature such a large survey hath ta'en
As other souls to his, dwelt in a lane."

[Footnote 1: All virtue.]

There was nothing singular in his interest in astrology and alchemy. Lilly
and Booker, both of them among his acquaintances, were ordered to attend
the parliamentary army at the siege of Colchester, "to encourage the
soldiers with predictions of speedy victory." Still--though he believed in
greater absurdities--his attitude towards such matters was that of his
chosen motto, _Vacate et Videte._ "To rely too far upon that vaine art I
judge to be rather folly than impiety." As with regard to spirits and
witches, he says, "I only reserve my assent." That he was not altogether
absorbed in the transmutation of metals in his laboratory practice, and yet
that he dabbled in it, makes him historically interesting. 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 t