Is a well-willer to the mathematics; he pursues knowledge rather out of
humour than ingenuity, and endeavours rather to seem than to be. He has
nothing of nature but an inclination, which he strives to improve with
industry; but as no art can make a fountain run higher than its own
head, so nothing can raise him above the elevation of his own pole. He
seldom converses but with men of his own tendency, and wheresoever he
comes treats with all men as such; for as country gentlemen use to talk
of their dogs to those that hate hunting because they love it
themselves, so will he of his arts and sciences to those that neither
know nor care to know anything of them. His industry were admirable if
it did not attempt the greatest difficulties with the feeblest means;
for he commonly slights anything that is plain and easy, how useful and
ingenious soever, and bends all his forces against the hardest and most
improbable, though to no purpose if attained to; for neither knowing how
to measure his own abilities nor the weight of what he attempts, he
spends his little strength in vain and grows only weaker by it; and as
men use to blind horses that draw in a mill, his ignorance of himself
and his undertakings makes him believe he has advanced when he is no
nearer to his end than when he set out first. The bravery of
difficulties does so dazzle his eyes that he prosecutes them with as
little success as the tailor did his amours to Queen Elizabeth. He
differs from a pedant as things do from words, for he uses the same
affectation in his operations and experiments as the other does in
language. He is a haberdasher of small arts and sciences, and deals in
as many several operations as a baby artificer does in engines. He will
serve well enough for an index to tell what is handled in the world, but
no further. He is wonderfully delighted with rarities, and they continue
still so to him though he has shown them a thousand times, for every new
admirer that gapes upon them sets him a-gaping too. Next these he loves
strange natural histories; and as those that read romances, though they
know them to be fictions, are as much affected as if they were true, so
is he, and will make hard shift to tempt himself to believe them first
to be possible, and then he's sure to believe them to be true,
forgetting that belief upon belief is false heraldry. He keeps a
catalogue of the names of all famous men in any profession, whom he
often takes occasion to mention as his very good friends and old
acquaintances. Nothing is more pedantic than to seem too much concerned
about wit or knowledge, to talk much of it, and appear too critical in
it. All he can possibly arrive to is but like the monkeys dancing on the
rope, to make men wonder how 'tis possible for art to put nature so much
out of her play.
His learning is like those letters on a coach, where, many being writ
together, no one appears plain. When the King happens to be at the
university and degrees run like wine in conduits at public triumphs, he
is sure to have his share; and though he be as free to choose his
learning as his faculty, yet, like St. Austin's soul, _Creando
infunditur, infundendo creatur_. Nero was the first emperor of his
calling, though it be not much for his credit. He is like an elephant
that, though he cannot swim, yet of all creatures most delights to walk
along a river's side; and as, in law, things that appear not and things
that are not are all one, so he had rather not be than not appear. The
top of his ambition is to have his picture graved in brass and published
upon walls, if he has no work of his own to face with it. His want of
judgment inclines him naturally to the most extravagant undertakings,
like that of making old dogs young, telling how many persons there are
in a room by knocking at a door, stopping up of words in bottles, &c. He
is like his books, that contain much knowledge, but know nothing
themselves. He is but an index of things and words, that can direct
where they are to be spoken with, but no farther. He appears a great man
among the ignorant, and, like a figure in arithmetic, is so much the
more as it stands before ciphers that are nothing of themselves. He
calls himself an antisocordist, a name unknown to former ages, but
spawned by the pedantry of the present. He delights most in attempting
things beyond his reach, and the greater distance he shoots at, the
farther he is sure to be off his mark. He shows his parts as drawers do
a room at a tavern, to entertain them at the expense of their time and
patience. He inverts the moral of that fable of him that caressed his
dog for fawning and leaping up upon him and beat his ass for doing the
same thing, for it is all one to him whether he be applauded by an ass
or a wiser creature, so he be but applauded.