The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened | Page 7

stanza of the _Faërie
Queen_, the other, his well-known _Observations on the 'Religio
Medici'_, are but mere bubbles of this seething activity, given over
mostly to the preparation of his Two Treatises, "Of the Body," and "Of
the Soul," published later in Paris, and to experiments on glass-making.
Many efforts were made for his release, the most efficacious by the
Queen of France. It should have been the Dowager Marie de Médicis,
in memory of her hot flame for him when he was a youth; but though
she may have initiated the appeal, she died before his release, which he
seems to have owed to Anne of Austria's good services. Freedom meant
banishment, but this sentence he did not take very seriously. In these
years he was continually going and coming between France and
England, now warned by Parliament, now tolerated, now banished,
again daring return, and escaping from the net. "I can compare him to
nothing but to a great fish that we catch and let go again; but still he
will come to the bait," said Selden of him in his _Table-Talk_.
Exile in Paris provided fresh opportunity for scientific study, though
his connection with the English Catholic malcontents, and his services
to the Queen Henrietta Maria, who now made him her Chancellor,
absorbed much of his time. When the Cause needed him, the Cavalier
broke away from philosophy; and in 1645 he set out for Rome, at the
bidding of the Queen, to beg money for her schemes. With all his
address, diplomacy was not among the chief of his talents. With high
personages he took a high tone. Innocent X gave 10,000 crowns to the
Cause; but they quarrelled; and the Pope went so far as to accuse Digby
of misappropriation of the money. Digby, a man of clean hands, seems
to have taken up the Queen's quarrel. She would have nothing to do
with Rinuccini's Irish expedition, which his Holiness was supporting;
and her Chancellor naturally insisted on disbursing the funds at her
commands rather than at the Pope's. Moreover, he was now renewing
his friendship with Thomas White, a heretic Catholic priest, of several

aliases, some of whose work had been placed on the Index. White was
a philosophic thinker of considerable power and subtlety, and he and
Digby acted and reacted on each other strongly--though Digby's debt is
perhaps the greater. Their respective parts in the Two Treatises and in
the Institutionum Peripateticorum libri quinque, published under
White's name, but for which Sir Kenelm is given the main credit, can
hardly now be sifted. White, at all events, was not a prudent friend for
an envoy to the Holy See. Digby "grew high and hectored with his
holinesse, and gave him the lye. The pope said he was mad." Thus
Aubrey. Henrietta Maria sent him once more on the same errand; but
the Roman Curia continued to look on him as a "useless and restless
man, with scanty wisdom." Before returning, however, he paid a round
of visits to Italian courts, making everywhere a profound impression by
his handsome person and his liveliness. He had to hasten back to
England on his own business. His fortunes were desperate; and he
desired to compound for his estates.
A week or so after the King's death he is proved by his correspondence
to be in France, having fled after one more pronouncement of him as a
dangerous man. He went into exile this time with a sad heart; and it
was not only the loyalist in him that cried out. The life of an English
country gentleman would never have satisfied him; yet he longed for it
now it had become impossible. He writes from Calais to a friend:
"Those innocent recreations you mention of tabors and pipes, and
dancing ladies, and convenient country houses, shady walks and close
arbours, make one sigh to be again a spectator of them, and to be again
in little England, where time slides more gently away than in any part
of the world. _Quando sia mai ch'a rividerti io torno_?"
He went this time knowing better than his fellow royalists the meaning
of events. He was still a rank, but at least an intelligent, conspirator.
English correspondents at Rouen and Caen report him in the company
of one Watson, an Independent; and that he is proposing "to join the
interests of all the English papists with the bloody party that murdered
the king." Dr. Winsted, an English doctor in Rouen, asked him with
indignation how he could meditate going back to England, "considering
the abomination of that country." Digby replied that he was forced to it.

"If he went not now he must starve." He plainly saw who was the real
and only force in England; and he was going