'_ Browne
reproached him for his review of a pirated edition. Digby replied he had
never authorised its publication, written as it was in twenty-four hours,
which included his procuring and reading the book--a truly marvellous _tour
de force_; for the thing is still worth perusal. He was always the
improvisor--ready, brilliant, vivid, imperfect. He must give vent to the
ideas that came upon him in gusts. "The impressions which creatures make
upon me," he says, "are like boisterous winds." He fully recognised his own
limitations. "I pretend not to learning," he declares, with exaggerated
modesty. Amateur and improviser of genius, let us praise him as such. The
spacious, generous minds that can find room for all the ideas and culture
of an epoch are never numerous enough. There is no one like such amateurs
for bridging two ages; and Digby, with one hand in Lilly's and the other in
Bacon's, joins the mediaeval to the modern world. Nor is a universal amateur
a genius who has squandered his powers; but a man exercising his many
talents in the only way possible to himself, and generally with much
entertainment and stimulus to others.
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