The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jason Isbell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net






Transcribers note: Original spellings, including inconsistencies, left in
this e-text.

[Illustration: Sir Kenelm Digby Knight. After the Painting by Sir Anthony
Vandyke in His Majesty's Collection at Windsor Castle]




THE CLOSET OF SIR KENELM DIGBY KNIGHT OPENED:

NEWLY EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARY, BY ANNE MACDONELL

LONDON: PHILIP LEE WARNER
38 ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1910




The design on the front binding of this volume reproduces a contemporary
Binding (possibly by le Gascon?) from the library of the Author, whose arms
it embodies.




CONTENTS

                                                   PAGE

INTRODUCTION                                         ix

THE CLOSET OF SIR KENELM DIGBY OPENED:
    TITLE PAGE OF THE FIRST EDITION                   1
    TO THE READER                                     3
    RECEIPTS FOR MEAD, METHEGLIN, AND OTHER DRINKS    5
    COOKERY RECEIPTS                                111
    THE TABLE                                       263

APPENDIX  I. SOME ADDITIONAL RECEIPTS               271
         II. THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY                 272
        III. LIST OF THE HERBS, FLOWERS, &C.,
               REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT              274

NOTES                                               277

GLOSSARY                                            283

INDEX OF RECEIPTS                                   287

_The frontispiece is a reproduction in photogravure after the portrait of
Sir Kenelm Digby by Sir Anthony Vandyke in His Majesty's Collection at
Windsor Castle, by permission._





INTRODUCTION


With the waning of Sir Kenelm Digby's philosophic reputation his name has
not become obscure. It stands, vaguely perhaps, but permanently, for
something versatile and brilliant and romantic. He remains a perpetual type
of the hero of romance, the double hero, in the field of action and the
realm of the spirit. Had he lived in an earlier age he would now be a
mythological personage; and even without the looming exaggeration and
glamour of myth he still imposes. The men of to-day seem all of little
stature, and less consequence, beside the gigantic creature who made his
way with equal address and audacity in courts and councils, laboratories
and ladies' bowers.

So when, in a seventeenth-century bookseller's advertisement, I lighted on
a reference to the curious compilation of receipts entitled _The Closet of
Sir Kenelm Digby Opened_, having the usual idea of him as a great
gentleman, romantic Royalist, and somewhat out-of-date philosopher, I was
enough astonished at seeing his name attached to what seemed to me, in my
ignorance, outside even his wide fields of interest, to hunt for the book
without delay, examine its contents, and inquire as to its authenticity. Of
course I found it was not unknown. Though the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ omits any reference to it, and its name does not occur in Mr.
Carew Hazlitt's _Old Cookery Books_, Dr. Murray quotes it in his great
Dictionary, and it is mentioned and discussed in _The Life of Digby by One
of his Descendants_. But Mr. Longueville treats it therein with too scant
deference. One of a large and interesting series of contemporary books of
the kind, its own individual interest is not small; and I commend it with
confidence to students of seventeenth-century domestic manners. To
apologise for it, to treat it as if it were some freak, some unowned sin of
Digby's, would be the greatest mistake. On the contrary, its connection
with his life and career is of the closest; and I make bold to assert that
of all his works, with the doubtful exception of his _Memoirs_, it is the
one best worth reprinting. It is in no spirit of irony that I say of him
who in his own day was looked on almost as Bacon's equal, who was the
friend of Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey, Ben Jonson, Cromwell, and all
the great spirits of his time, the intimate of kings, and the special
friend of queens, that his memory should be revived for his skill in making
drinks, and his interest in his own and other folks' kitchens. If to the
magnificent and protean Sir Kenelm must now be added still another side, if
he must appear not only as gorgeous Cavalier, inmate of courts,
controversialist, man of science, occultist, privateer, conspirator, lover
and wit, but as _bon viveur_ too, he is not the ordinary _bon viveur_, who
feasts at banquets prepared by far away and unconsidered menials. His
interest in cookery--say, rather, his passion for it--was in truth an
integral part of his philosophy, and quite as serious as his laboratory
practice at Gresham College and Paris. But to prove what may seem an
outrageous exaggeration, we must first run over the varied story of his
career; and then _The Closet Opened_ will be seen to fall into its due and
important place.

Kenelm Digby owed a good deal to circumstances, but he owed most of all to
his own rich nature.