The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened

Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby
Knight Opened, The

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Knight Opened
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Title: The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened
Author: Kenelm Digby
Editor: Anne MacDonell
Release Date: August 5, 2005 [EBook #16441]
Language: English
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[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gentleman, romantic Royalist, and somewhat out-of-date philosopher, I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