Is a native of all countries and an alien at home. He flies from the
place where he was hatched, like a wild goose, and prefers all others
before it. He has no quarrel to it but because he was born in it, and,
like a bastard, he is ashamed of his mother, because she is of him. He
is a merchant that makes voyages into foreign nations to drive a trade
in wisdom and politics, and it is not for his credit to have it thought
he has made an ill return, which must be if he should allow of any of
the growth of his own country. This makes him quack and blow up himself
with admiration of foreign parts and a generous contempt of home, that
all men may admire at least the means he has had of improvement and
deplore their own defects. His observations are like a sieve, that lets
the finer flour pass and retains only the bran of things, for his whole
return of wisdom proves to be but affectation, a perishable commodity,
which he will never be able to put off. He believes all men's wits are
at a stand that stay at home, and only those advanced that travel, as if
change of pasture did make great politicians as well as fat calves. He
pities the little knowledge of truth which those have that have not seen
the world abroad, forgetting that at the same time he tells us how
little credit is to be given to his own relations and those of others
that speak and write of their travels. He has worn his own language to
rags, and patched it up with scraps and ends of foreign. This serves him
for wit; for when he meets with any of his foreign acquaintances, all
they smatter passes for wit, and they applaud one another accordingly.
He believes this raggedness of his discourse a great demonstration of
the improvement of his knowledge, as Inns-of-Court men intimate their
proficiency in the law by the tatters of their gowns. All the wit he
brought home with him is like foreign coin, of a baser alloy than our
own, and so will not pass here without great loss. All noble creatures
that are famous in any one country degenerate by being transplanted, and
those of mean value only improve. If it hold with men, he falls among
the number of the latter, and his improvements are little to his credit.
All he can say for himself is, his mind was sick of a consumption, and
change of air has cured him; for all his other improvements have only
been to eat in ... and talk with those he did not understand, to hold
intelligence with all _Gazettes_, and from the sight of statesmen in the
street unriddle the intrigues of all their Councils, to make a wondrous
progress into knowledge by riding with a messenger, and advance in
politics by mounting of a mule, run through all sorts of learning in a
waggon, and sound all depths of arts in a felucca, ride post into the
secrets of all states, and grow acquainted with their close designs in
inns and hostelries; for certainly there is great virtue in highways and
hedges to make an able man, and a good prospect cannot but let him see
far into things.