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.

A CURIOUS MAN

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.