He becomes more silent than a statue, and generally excites people's laughter. Because they cannot ride a horse, which every clown can do; salute and court a gentlewoman, carve at table, cringe and make conges, which every common swasher can do, [1990]hos populus ridet, &c., they are laughed to scorn, and accounted silly fools by our gallants. Yea, many times, such is their misery, they deserve it: [1991]a mere scholar, a mere ass. [1992]Obstipo capite, et figentes lumine terram, Murmura cum secum, et rabiosa silentia rodunt, Atque experrecto trutinantur verba labello, Aegroti veteris meditantes somnia, gigni De nihilo nihilum; in nihilum nil posse reverti.
[1993]———who do lean awry Their heads, piercing the earth with a fixt eye; When, by themselves, they gnaw their murmuring, And furious silence, as 'twere balancing Each word upon their out-stretched lip, and when They meditate the dreams of old sick men, As, 'Out of nothing, nothing can be brought; And that which is, can ne'er be turn'd to nought.'
Thus they go commonly meditating unto themselves, thus they sit, such is their action and gesture. Fulgosus, l. 8, c. 7, makes mention how Th. Aquinas supping with king Lewis of France, upon a sudden knocked his fist upon the table, and cried, conclusum est contra Manichaeos, his wits were a wool-gathering, as they say, and his head busied about other matters, when he perceived his error, he was much [1994]abashed. Such a story there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that having found out the means to know how much gold was mingled with the silver in king Hieron's crown, ran naked forth of the bath and cried ἕυρηκα, I have found: [1995]and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never perceived what was done about him: when the city was taken, and the soldiers now ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it. St. Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where he was, Marullus, lib. 2, cap. 4. It was Democritus's carriage alone that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and send for Hippocrates to cure him: if he had been in any solemn company, he would upon all occasions fall a laughing. Theophrastus saith as much of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laertius of Menedemus Lampsacus, because he ran like a madman, [1996]saying, he came from hell as a spy, to tell the devils what mortal men did. Your greatest students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellows in their outward behaviour, absurd, ridiculous to others, and no whit experienced in worldly business; they can measure the heavens, range over the world, teach others wisdom, and yet in bargains and contracts they are circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these men fools? and how should they be otherwise, but as so many sots in schools, when (as [1997]he well observed) they neither hear nor see such things as are commonly practised abroad? how should they get experience, by what means? [1998]I knew in my time many scholars, saith Aeneas Sylvius (in an epistle of his to Gasper Scitick, chancellor to the emperor), excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility, nor knew how to manage their domestic or public affairs. Paglarensis was amazed, and said his farmer had surely cozened him, when he heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigs, and his ass had but one foal. To say the best of this profession, I can give no other testimony of them in general, than that of Pliny of Isaeus; [1999]He is yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain-dealing men. Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and inconveniences as dotage, madness, simplicity, &c. Jo. Voschius would have good scholars to be highly rewarded, and had in some extraordinary respect above other men, to have greater [2000]privileges than the rest, that adventure themselves and abbreviate their lives for the public good. But our patrons of learning are so far nowadays from respecting the muses, and giving that honour to scholars, or reward which they deserve, and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of many noble princes, that after all their pains taken in the universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious tasks, wearisome days, dangers, hazards, (barred interim from all pleasures which other men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives) if they chance to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected, contemned, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts, exposed to want, poverty, and beggary.