Is a kind of alchymist or persecutor of nature, that would change the
dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with success many times as
unprosperous, or at least not quitting the cost, to wit, of his own oil
and candles. He has a strange forced appetite to learning, and to
achieve it brings nothing but patience and a body. His study is not
great but continual, and consists much in the sitting up till after
midnight in a rug-gown and a nightcap, to the vanquishing perhaps of
some six lines; yet what he has, he has perfect, for he reads it so long
to understand it, till he gets it without book. He may with much
industry make a breach into logic, and arrive at some ability in an
argument; but for politer studies he dare not skirmish with them, and
for poetry accounts it impregnable. His invention is no more than the
finding out of his papers, and his few gleanings there; and his
disposition of them is as just as the book-binder's, a setting or gluing
of them together. He is a great discomforter of young students, by
telling them what travel it has cost him, and how often his brain turned
at philosophy, and makes others fear studying as a cause of duncery. He
is a man much given to apophthegms, which serve him for wit, and seldom
breaks any jest but which belonged to some Lacedemonian or Roman in
Lycosthenes. He is like a dull carrier's horse, that will go a whole
week together, but never out of a foot pace; and he that sets forth on
the Saturday shall overtake him.