The "Religio Medici" not only created an unprecedented sensation by its erudition and polished style, but it shocked the nervous guardians of orthodoxy by its boldness of inquiry. It was assailed for its infidelity and scientific heresies. According to Coleridge's view of the "Religio Medici," Sir Thomas Browne, "a fine mixture of humourist, genius, and pedant," was a Spinosist without knowing it. "Had he," says the poet, "lived nowadays, he would probably have been a very ingenious and bold infidel in his real opinions, though the kindness of his nature would have kept him aloof from vulgar, prating, obtrusive infidelity."
Amongst the adverse critics of the "Religio Medici" was the eccentric, gallant, brave, credulous, persevering, frivolous, Sir Kenelm Digby. A Mæcenas, a Sir Philip Sydney, a Dr. Dee, a Beau Fielding, and a Dr. Kitchener, all in one, this man is chief of those extravagant characters that astonish the world at rare intervals, and are found nowhere except in actual life. No novelist of the most advanced section of the idealistic school would dare to create such a personage as Sir Kenelm. The eldest son of the ill-fated Sir Everard Digby, he was scarcely three years old when his father atoned on the scaffold for his share in the gunpowder treason. Fortunately a portion of the family estate was entailed, so Sir Kenelm, although the offspring of attainted blood, succeeded to an ample revenue of about £3000 a-year. In 1618 (when only in his fifteenth year) he entered Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College, Oxford. In 1621 he commenced foreign travel. He attended Charles I. (then Prince of Wales) at the Court of Madrid; and returning to England in 1623, was knighted by James I. at Hinchinbroke, the house of Lord Montague, on the 23rd of October in that year. From that period he was before the world as courtier, cook, lover, warrior, alchemist, political intriguer, and man of letters. He became a gentleman of the bedchamber, and commissioner of the navy. In 1628 he obtained a naval command, and made his brilliant expedition against the Venetians and Algerians, whose galleys he routed off Scanderon. This achievement is celebrated by his client and friend, Ben Jonson:—
"Though, happy Muse, thou know my Digby well,
Yet read in him these lines: he doth excel
In honour, courtesy, and all the parts
Court can call hero, or man could call his arts.
He's prudent, valiant, just, and temperate;
In him all virtue is beheld in state;
And he is built like some imperial room
For that 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:
Witness his action done at Scanderoon
Upon his birthday, the eleventh of June."
Returning from war, he became once more the student, presenting in 1632 the library he had purchased of his friend Allen, to the Bodleian Library, and devoting his powers to the mastery of controversial divinity. Having in 1636 entered the Church of Rome, he resided for some time abroad. Amongst his works at this period were his "Conference with a Lady about the Choice of Religion," published in 1638, and his "Letters between Lord George Digby and Sir Kenelm Digby, Knt., concerning Religion," not published till 1651. It is difficult to say to which he was most devoted—his King, his Church, literature, or his beautiful and frail wife, Venetia Stanley, whose charms fascinated the many admirers on whom she distributed her favours, and gained her Sir Kenelm for a husband when she was the discarded mistress of Richard, Earl of Dorset. She had borne the Earl children, so his Lordship on parting settled on her an annuity of £500 per annum. After her marriage, this annuity not being punctually paid, Sir Kenelm sued the Earl for it. Well might Mr. Lodge say, "By the frailties of that lady much of the noblest blood of England was dishonoured, for she was the daughter of Sir Edward Stanley, Knight of the Bath, grandson of the great Edward, Earl of Derby, by Lucy, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland." Such was her unfair fame. "The fair fame left to Posterity of that Truly Noble Lady, the Lady Venetia Digby, late wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight, a Gentleman Absolute in all Numbers," is embalmed in the clear verses of Jonson. Like Helen, she is preserved to us by the sacred poet.
"Draw first a cloud, all save her neck,
And out of that make day to break;
Till like her face it do appear,
And men may think all light rose there."
In other and more passionate terms Sir Kenelm painted the same charms in his "Private Memoirs."
But if Sir Kenelm was a chivalric husband, he was not a less loyal subject. How he avenged in France the honour of his King, on the body of a French nobleman, may be learnt in a curious tract, "Sir Kenelme Digby's Honour Maintained. By a most courageous combat which he fought with Lord Mount le Ros, who by base and slanderous words reviled our King. Also the true relation how he went to the King of France, who kindly intreated him, and sent two hundred men to guard him so far as Flanders. And now he is returned from Banishment, and to his eternall honour lives in England."
Sir Kenelm's "Observations upon Religio Medici," are properly characterized by Coleridge as those of a pedant. They were written whilst he was kept a prisoner, by order of the Parliament, in Winchester House; and the author had the ludicrous folly to assert that he both read the "Religio Medici" through for the first time, and wrote his bulky criticism upon it, in less than twenty-four hours. Of all the claims that have been advanced by authors for the reputation of being rapid workmen, this is perhaps the most audacious. For not only was the task one that at least would require a month, but the impudent assertion that it was accomplished in less than a day and night was contradicted by the title-page, in which "the observations" are described as "occasionally written." Beckford's vanity induced him to boast that "Vathek" was composed at one sitting of two days and three nights; but this statement—outrageous falsehood though it be—was sober truth compared with Sir Kenelm's brag.
But of all Sir Kenelm's vagaries, his Sympathetic Powder was the drollest. The composition, revealed after the Knight's death by his chemist and steward, George Hartman, was effected in the following manner:—English vitriol was dissolved in warm water; this solution was filtered, and then evaporated till a thin scum appeared on the surface. It was then left undisturbed and closely covered in a cool place for two or three days, when fair, green, and large crystals were evolved. "Spread these crystals," continues the chemist, "abroad in a large flat earthen dish, and expose them to the heat of the sun in the dog-days, turning them often, and the sun will calcine them white; when you see them all white without, beat them grossly, and expose them again to the sun, securing them from the rain; when they are well calcined, powder them finely, and expose this powder again to the sun, turning and stirring it often. Continue this until it be reduced to a white powder, which put up in a glass, and tye it up close, and keep it in a dry place."
The virtues of this powder were unfolded by Sir Kenelm, in a French oration delivered to "a solemn assembly of Nobles and Learned Men at Montpellier, in France." It cured wounds in the following manner:—If any piece of a wounded person's apparel, having on it the stain of blood that had proceeded from the wound, was dipped in water holding in solution some of this sympathetic powder, the wound of the injured person would forthwith commence a healing process. It mattered not how far distant the sufferer was from the scene of operation. Sir Kenelm gravely related the case of his friend Mr. James Howel, the author of the "Dendrologia," translated into French by Mons. Baudoin. Coming accidentally on two of his friends whilst they were fighting a duel with swords, Howel endeavoured to separate them by grasping hold of their weapons. The result of this interference was to show the perils that