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. His family was ancient and honourable. Tiltons
originally, they took their later name in Henry III's time, on the
acquisition of some property in Lincolnshire, though in Warwickshire and
Rutland most of them were settled. Three Lancastrian Digby brothers fell at
Towton, seven on Bosworth Field. To his grandfather, Sir Everard the
philosopher, he was mentally very much akin, much more so than to his
father, another of the many Sir Everards, and the most notorious one. Save
for his handsome person and the memory of a fervent devotion to the
Catholic faith, which was to work strongly in him after he came to mature
years, he owed little or nothing to that most unhappy young man, surely the
foolishest youth who ever blundered out of the ways of private virtue into
conspiracy and crime.
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