Digby the great, the valiant, and the wise," etc.

The Great Fire destroyed the tomb, and scattered their ashes.

He had died poor; and his surviving son John, with whom he had been on bad
terms, declared that all the property that came to him was his father's
sumptuously compiled history of the Digby family. Apparently John regained
some part of the estates later, which perhaps had only been left away from
him to pay off debts. A great library of Sir Kenelm's was still in Paris;
and after his death it was claimed by the French king, and sold for 10,000
crowns. His kinsman, the second Earl of Bristol, bought it, and joined it
to his own; and the catalogue of the combined collection, sold in London in
1683, is an interesting and too little tapped source for Digby's mental
history. Of his five children, three were already dead. Kenelm, his eldest
son, had fallen at St. Neot's, in 1648, fighting for the King. It was his
remaining son John who sanctioned the publication of his father's receipts.

* * * * *

Sir Kenelm Digby has been recognised as the type of the great amateur, but
always with a shaking of the head. Why this scorn of accomplished amateurs?
Rather may their tribe increase, let us pray. Our world languisheth now for
lack of them. He was fitted by nature to play the rôle superbly, to force
his circumstances, never over pliant, to serve not his material interests,
but his fame, his craving for universal knowledge and attainments. Says
Wood: "His person was handsome and gigantick, and nothing was wanting to
make him a compleat Cavalier. He had so graceful elocution and noble
address that had he been dropped out of the clouds into any part of the
world, he would have made himself respected; but the Jesuits who cared not
for him, spoke spitefully, and said it was true, but then he must not stay