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 role 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 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 Medicis, 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."