Publisher's Synopsis
Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened.
This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Kenelm Digby, which is now, at last, again available to you.
Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened:
So when, in a seventeenth-century booksellers advertisement, I lighted on a reference to the curious compilation of receipts entitled The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened, having the usual idea of him as a great gentleman, romantic Royalist, and somewhat out-of-date philosopher, I was enough astonished at seeing his name attached to what seemed to me, in my ignorance, outside even his wide fields of interest, to hunt for the book without delay, examine its contents, and inquire as to its authenticity.
... It is in no spirit of irony that I say of him who in his own day was looked on almost as Bacons equal, who was the friend of Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey, Ben Jonson, Cromwell, and all the great spirits of his time, the intimate of kings, and the special friend of queens, that his memory should be revived for his skill in making drinks, and his interest in his own and other folks kitchens.
...But in 1617 Sir John was English ambassador in Madrid; and it may have been to get the boy away from the influence of his mother and her Catholic friends that this kinsman, always well disposed towards him, and anxious for his advancement, took him off to Spain when he was fourteen, and kept him there for a year.
...I went with most of my shippes to Delphos, a desert island, where staying till the rest were readie, because idlenesse should not fixe their mindes upon any untoward fansies (as is usuall among seamen), and together to avayle myselfe of the convenience of carrying away some antiquities there, I busied them in rolling of stones doune to the see side, which they did with such eagernesse as though it had been the earnestest business that they had come out for, and they mastered prodigious massie weightes; but one stone, the greatest and fairest of all, containing four statues, they gave over after they had been, 300 men, a whole day about it
....
...When the same Sir Kenelm was provoked in the Kings presence (upon occasion of the old business of Scanderoon) by the Venetian Ambassador, who told the King it was very strange that his Majesty should slight so much his ancient amity with the most noble state of Europe, for the affections which he bore to a man (meaning Sir Kenelm) whose father was a traitor, his wife a --, and himself a pirate, altho he made not the least reply (as long as the ambassador remained in England) to those great reproaches, yet after, when the quality of his enemy was changed (by his return) to that of a private person, Sir Kenelm posted after him to Italy.
