In him better
than in Newton do we realise the temper of the early members of the Royal
Society. In this tale of his other activities I have not forgotten _The
Closet Opened_. Of all Digby's many interests the most constant and
permanent was medicine. How to enlarge the span of man's life was a problem
much meditated on in his age. We have seen how Descartes's mind ran on it;
and in Bacon's _Natural History_ there is reference to a 'book of the
prolongation of life.' In spite of what is written on his Janssen hermit
portrait--_Saber morir la mayor hazanza_--Digby loved life. His whole
exuberant career is a paean to life, for itself and its great chances, and
because "it giveth the leave to vent and boyle away the unquietnesses and
turbulences that follow our passions." To prolong life, fortify it, clarify
it, was a noble pursuit, and he set out on it as a youth under the tuition
of the 'good parson of Lindford. His _Physick and Chirurgery_ receipts,
published by Hartman, are many of them incredible absurdities, not
unfrequently repulsive; but when we compare them with other like books of
the time, they fit into a natural and not too fantastic place.
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