Just fifty years ago, in 1830, Wordsworth wrote these words
--" The subject of the following poem is from the Orlandus ' of the author's friend, Kenelm Henry Digby ; and the liberty is taken of inscribing it to him, as an acknowledgment, however unworthy, of pleasure and instruction derived from his numer- ous and valuable writings illustrative of the piety and chivalry of the olden time." After a very brief illness, Mr. Rigby died on Monday morning, full of years indeed, but of years worn to the last day with a gracious charm of manner and a sweet good.. humour that gave to his presence a sort of radiance of per- petual youth. Many of the greatest minds of a generation which he had survived owned, in language not less respectful than Wordsworth's, what they owed to the " light and leading" of works which, though never of a kind to supply adequate intellectual guidance on questions of doctrine, poured forth a prodigal profusion of learning, wisdom, and piety, humour, fancy, and pathos, woven close together in that rich and many- threaded web of exquisite English. He was the precursor of the great movement in this country towards the Roman Catholic Church, which he joined on the eve of the publication of " Morus" in 1828 ; and his more distinctively Catholic works were published in the interval between that time and the Oxford " going out, in '45."
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