Is like one that spends on the stock without any revenues coming in, and
will shortly be no wit at all; for learning is the fuel to the fire of
wit, which, if it wants this feeding, eats out itself. A good conceit or
two bates of such a man, and makes a sensible weakening in him; and his
brain recovers it not a year after. The rest of him are bubbles and
flashes, darted out on a sudden, which, if you take them while they are
warm, may be laughed at; if they are cool, are nothing. He speaks best
on the present apprehension, for meditation stupefies him, and the more
he is in travail, the less he brings forth. His things come off then, as
in a nauseateing stomach, where there is nothing to cast up, strains and
convulsions, and some astonishing bombast, which men only, till they
understand, are scared with. A verse or some such work he may sometimes
get up to, but seldom above the stature of an epigram, and that with
some relief out of Martial, which is the ordinary companion of his
pocket, and he reads him as he were inspired. Such men are commonly the
trifling things of the world, good to make merry the company, and whom
only men have to do withal when they have nothing to do, and none are
less their friends than who are most their company. Here they vent
themselves over a cup somewhat more lastingly; all their words go for
jests, and all their jests for nothing. They are nimble in the fancy of
some ridiculous thing, and reasonable good in the expression. Nothing
stops a jest when it's coming, neither friends, nor danger, but it must
out howsoever, though their blood come out after, and then they
emphatically rail, and are emphatically beaten, and commonly are men
reasonable familiar to this. Briefly they are such whose life is but to
laugh and be laughed at; and only wits in jest and fools in earnest.