Is one that has his being in this age, but his life and conversation is
in the days of old. He despises the present age as an innovation and
slights the future, but has a great value for that which is past and
gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra. He is an old
frippery-philosopher, that has so strange a natural affection to
worm-eaten speculation that it is apparent he has a worm in his skull.
He honours his forefathers and foremothers, but condemns his parents as
too modern and no better than upstarts. He neglects himself because he
was born in his own time and so far off antiquity, which he so much
admires, and repines, like a younger brother, because he came so late
into the world. He spends the one-half of his time in collecting old
insignificant trifles, and the other in showing them, which he takes
singular delight in, because the oftener he does it the farther they are
from being new to him. All his curiosities take place of one another
according to their seniority, and he values them not by their abilities,
but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are
stricken in years, and are grown so aged that they have outlived their
employments. These he uses with a respect agreeable to their antiquity
and the good services they have done. He throws away his time in
inquiring after that which is past and gone so many ages since, like one
that shoots away an arrow to find out another that was lost before. He
fetches things out of dust and ruins, like the fable of the chemical
plant raised out of its own ashes. He values one old invention, that is
lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the world,
though never so useful. The whole business of his life is the same with
his that shows the tombs at Westminster, only the one does it for his
pleasure, and the other for money. As every man has but one father, but
two grandfathers and a world of ancestors, so he has a proportional
value for things that are ancient, and the farther off the greater.
He is a great time-server, but it is of time out of mind to which he
conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present. His days were
spent and gone long before he came into the world, and since his only
business is to collect what he can out of the ruins of them. He has so
strong a natural affection to anything that is old, that he may truly
say to dust and worms, "You are my father;" and to rottenness, "Thou art
my mother." He has no providence nor foresight, for all his
contemplations look backward upon the days of old; and his brains are
turned with them, as if he walked backwards. He had rather interpret one
obscure word in any old senseless discourse than be author of the most
ingenious new one, and, with Scaliger, would sell the Empire of Germany
(if it were in his power) for an old song. He devours an old manuscript
with greater relish than worms and moths do, and, though there be
nothing in it, values it above anything printed, which he accounts but a
novelty. When he happens to cure a small botch in an old author, he is
as proud of it as if he had got the philosopher's stone and could cure
all the diseases of mankind. He values things wrongfully upon their
antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient
of all things in the world, like those that reckon their pounds before
their shillings and pence of which they are made up. He esteems no
customs but such as have outlived themselves and are long since out of
use, as the Catholics allow of no saints but such as are dead, and the
fanatics, in opposition, of none but the living.