As other souls to his, dwelt in a lane."

[Footnote 1: All virtue.]

There was nothing singular in his interest in astrology and alchemy. Lilly
and Booker, both of them among his acquaintances, were ordered to attend
the parliamentary army at the siege of Colchester, "to encourage the
soldiers with predictions of speedy victory." Still--though he believed in
greater absurdities--his attitude towards such matters was that of his
chosen motto, _Vacate et Videte._ "To rely too far upon that vaine art I
judge to be rather folly than impiety." As with regard to spirits and
witches, he says, "I only reserve my assent." That he was not altogether
absorbed in the transmutation of metals in his laboratory practice, and yet
that he dabbled in it, makes him historically interesting. 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 pæan 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. Sir Thomas