Dionysius scoffeth at those grammarians who ploddingly labour to know
the miseries of Ulysses, and are ignorant of their own.... Except our
mind be the better, unless our judgement be the sounder, I had rather my
scholar had employed his time in playing at tennis; I am sure his body
would be the nimbler. See but one of these our university men or bookish
scholars return from school, after he hath there spent ten or twelve
years under a pedant's charge: who is so inapt for any matter? who so
unfit for any company? who so to seek if he come into the world? all
the advantage you discover in him is that his Latin and Greek have made
him more sottish, more stupid, and more presumptuous, than before he
went from home.... My vulgar Perigordian speech doth very pleasantly
term such self-conceited wizards, letter-ferrets, as if they would say
letter-stricken men, to whom (as the common saying is) letters have
given a blow with a mallet.--MONTAIGNE.