there above six weeks. He had a great faculty, which proceeded from
abundance of wit and invention, of proposing and reporting matters to the
Virtuosi."

Women adored him; and he took great pains to please them--though in spite
of the importunities of Marie de Médicis, the long friendship with
Henrietta Maria, his early flirtation with the lovely Spaniard, his earnest
and impolitic championship of the notorious Lady Purbeck--Romish convert
and adventuress--Venetia, it seems, remained his only love. He was never
the mere gallant. He treated women as his intellectual equals, but as
equals who had to be splendidly entertained and amused. His conversation
was "ingeniose and innocent." Lloyd speaks of "the grace wherewith he could
relate _magnarum rerum minutias_, the little circumstances of great
matters." But men were at his feet as well; and on his tour among Italian
courts, one of the grandees said that, "having no children, he was very
willing his wife should bring him a Prince by Sir Kenelme, whom he imagined
the just measure of perfection."

A first-rate swordsman, yet was he "not apt in the least to give offence."
His strength was that of a giant. Bristol related that one day at Sherborne
he took up "a midling man," chair and all, with one arm. But there was
nothing of the swashbuckler about him, and his endless vitality was matched
by his courtesy. True, he hustled a Pope; but he addressed the Short
Parliament in such reverential terms as no Roundhead could have found. One
who had been courtier, exile, naval commander, student, prisoner, and
diplomatist, who had associated with all sorts of persons, from kings to
alchemists and cooks, had learnt resourcefulness. But he was never too hard
put to it perhaps, seeing that "if he had not fourpence, wherever he came
he would find respect and credit." "No man knew better how to abound, and
to be abased, and either was indifferent to him."