" "No man knew better how to abound, and
to be abased, and either was indifferent to him."
He had his detractors. One who plays so many parts incites envy and
ridicule; and he laid himself particularly open to both. Fantasy was in the
Digby blood; and that agility of mind and nerve that turns now here, now
there, to satisfy an unquenchable curiosity, that exuberance of mental
spirits that forces to rapid and continuous expression, has ever been
suspect of the English mind. He was "highly caressed in France." To Evelyn
Sir Kenelm was a "teller of strange things," and again the Diarist called
him "an errant mountebank"--though Evelyn sought his society, and was
grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the
Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories
than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person
of most excellent parts, and a very fine bred gentleman." "A certain
eccentricity and unsteadiness perhaps inseparable from a mind of such
vanity," is Lodge's criticism.
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