Laudator Temporis Acti

John Earle (1601?–1665), "A Pretender to Learning," from Micro-cosmographie. Editio princeps, 1628. With Additional Characters from the Fifth Edition of 1629; and the Sixth Edition of 1633, ed. Edward Arber (London: [Murray], 1868), pp. 52-54 (no. 31):

Is one that would make others more fooles than himself; for though he know nothing, he would not haue the world know so much. He conceits nothing in Learning but the opinion, which he seekes to purchase without it, though hee might with lesse labour cure his ignorance, then hide it. He is indeed a kind of Scholler-Mountebank, and his Art, our delusion. He is trickt out in all the accoutrements of Learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. Hee is oftner in his study, then at his Booke, and you cannot pleasure him better, then to deprehend him. Yet he heares you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry, as interrupted. You find him in his Slippers, and a Pen in his eare, in which formality he was asleep. His Table is spred wide with some Classicke Folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath laid open in the same Page this half yeere. His Candle is alwayes a longer sitter vp then himselfe, and the boast of his Window at Midnight. He walks much alone in the Posture of Meditation, and ha's a Booke still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldome without a Greeke Testament, or Hebrew Bible, which he opens only in the Church, and that when some stander by lookes ouer. He has his sentences for Company, some scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus, which are good vpon all occasions. If he read any thing in the morning, it comes vp all at dinner: and as long as that lasts, the discourse is his. Hee is a great Plagiarie of Tauerne-wit: and comes to Sermons onely that he may talke of Austin. His Parcels are the meere scrapings from Company, yet he complains at parting what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seeme a iudgement, and listens with a sowre attention to what hee vnderstands not. Hee talkes much of Scaliger and Causabone, and the Iesuites, and prefers some vnheard-of Dutch name before them all. He has verses to bring in vpon these and these hints, and it shall goe hard but he will wind in his opportunity. Hee is criticall in a language hee cannot conster, and speaks seldome vnder Arminius in Diuinity. His businesse and retirement and caller away is his Study, and he protests no delight to it comparable. Hee is a great Nomen-clator of Authors, which hee has read in generall in the Catalogue, and in particular in the Title, and goes seldome so farre as the Dedication. Hee neuer talkes of any thing but learning, and learnes all from talking. Three incounters with the same men pumpe him, and then hee onely puts in, or grauely sayes nothing. He ha's taken paines to be an Asse, though not to be a Scholler, and is at length discouered and laught at.

J.-J. Grandville, (1803-1847), Les savants
envoyèrent un académicien armé de ses ouvrages

Samuel Butler (1613-1680), Characters and Passages from Note-Books, ed. A.R. Waller (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1908), pp. 136-137 (ellipsis in original):

A Pedant is a dwarf Scholar, that never outgrows the Mode and Fashion of the School, where he should have been taught. He wears his little Learning, unmade-up, puts it on, before it was half finished, without pressing or smoothing. He studies and uses Words with the greatest Respect possible, merely for their own Sakes, like an honest Man, without any Regard of Interest, as they are useful and serviceable to Things, and among those he is kindest to Strangers (like a civil Gentleman) that are far from their own Country and most unknown. He collects old Sayings and Ends of Verses, as Antiquaries do old Coins, and is as glad to produce them upon all Occasions. He has Sentences ready lying by him for all Purposes, though to no one, and talks of Authors as familiarly as his Fellow-Collegiates. He will challenge Acquaintance with those, he never saw before, and pretend to intimate Knowledge of those, he has only heard of. He is well stored with Terms of Art, but does not know how to use them, like a Country-Fellow, that carries his Gloves in his Hands, not his Hands in his Gloves. He handles Arts and Sciences like those, that can play a little upon an Instrument, but do not know, whether it be in Tune or not. He converses by the Book; and does not talk, but quote. If he can but screw in something, that an ancient Writer said, he believes it to be much better than if he had something of himself to the Purpose. His Brain is not able to concoct what it takes in, and therefore brings things up as they were swallowed, that is, crude and undigested, in whole Sentences, not assimilated Sense, which he rather affects; for his Want of Judgment, like Want of Health, renders his Appetite preposterous. He pumps for affected and far-fet Expressions, and they always prove as far from the Purpose. He admires Canting above Sense. He is worse than one, that is utterly ignorant, as a Cock that sees a little, fights worse than one, that is stark-blind. He speaks in a different Dialect from other Men, and much affects forced Expressions, forgetting that hard Words, as well as evil ones, corrupt good Manners. He can do nothing, like a Conjurer, out of the Circle of his Arts, nor in it without canting and .... If he professes Physic, he gives his Patients sound hard Words for their Money, as cheap as he can afford; for they cost him Money and Study too, before he came by them, and he has Reason to make as much of them as he can.

Related posts:

• A Pretender to Learning
• Doryphore
• Pedantry
• Portrait of a Pedant
• Another Kind of Pedant
• A Fantastical Scholar
• Pleasures of Pedantry
• Earle's Antiquary
• An Antiquary
• Old Cronies of Solon and Lycurgus
• Abstain from Learned Ostentation

The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online Word of the Day for today is literator. The first definition is "A pretender to learning, a sciolist. Obs."

The Sciolist would be a good name for a blog like this one. Unfortunately http://sciolist.blogspot.com/ was appropriated by someone who made only two inane blog posts back in 2003. There should be a way to reclaim these abandoned blog names.

Sciolist comes from Latin sciolus, a disparaging diminutive of scius (knowing).

Lewis & Short in their Latin dictionary, s.v. sciolus, cite Arnobius 2.86 (text doubtful) and three passages from St. Jerome's letters (48.18, 58.5, and 125.16).