Values things not by their use or worth, but scarcity. He is very tender
and scrupulous of his humour, as fanatics are of their consciences, and
both for the most part in trifles. He cares not how unuseful anything
be, so it be but unuseful and rare. He collects all the curiosities he
can light upon in art or nature, not to inform his own judgment, but to
catch the admiration of others, which he believes he has a right to
because the rarities are his own. That which other men neglect he
believes they oversee, and stores up trifles as rare discoveries, at
least of his own wit and sagacity. He admires subtleties above all
things, because the more subtle they are the nearer they are to nothing,
and values no art but that which is spun so thin that it is of no use at
all. He had rather have an iron chain hung about the neck of a flea than
an alderman's of gold, and Homer's Iliads in a nutshell than Alexander's
cabinet. He had rather have the twelve apostles on a cherry-stone than
those on St. Peter's portico, and would willingly sell Christ again for
that numerical piece of coin that Judas took for Him. His perpetual
dotage upon curiosities at length renders him one of them, and he shows
himself as none of the meanest of his rarities. He so much affects
singularity that, rather than follow the fashion that is used by the
rest of the world, he will wear dissenting clothes with odd fantastic
devices to distinguish himself from others, like marks set upon cattle.
He cares not what pains he throws away upon the meanest trifle so it be
but strange, while some pity and others laugh at his ill-employed
industry. He is one of those that valued Epictetus's lamp above the
excellent book he wrote by it. If he be a book-man, he spends all his
time and study upon things that are never to be known. The philosopher's
stone and universal medicine cannot possibly miss him, though he is sure
to do them. He is wonderfully taken with abstruse knowledge, and had
rather handle truth with a pair of tongs wrapped up in mysteries and
hieroglyphics than touch it with his hands or see it plainly
demonstrated to his senses.