cessity
drives him to every action, and what he cannot avoid he will yet defer.
Every change troubles him, although to the better, and his dulness
counterfeits a kind of contentment. When he is warned on a jury, he had
rather pay the mulct than appear. All but that which Nature will not
permit he doth by a deputy, and counts it troublesome to do nothing, but
to do anything yet more. He is witty in nothing but framing excuses to
sit still, which if the occasion yield not he coineth with ease. There
is no work that is not either dangerous or thankless, and whereof he
foresees not the inconvenience and gainlessness before he enters; which
if it be verified in event, his next idleness hath found a reason to
patronize it. He had rather freeze than fetch wood, and chooses rather
to steal than work; to beg than take pains to steal, and in many things
to want than beg. He is so loth to leave his neighbour's fire, that he
is fain to walk home in the dark; and if he be not looked to, wears out
the night in the chimney-corner, or if not that, lies down in his
clothes, to save two labours. He eats and prays himself asleep, and
dreams of no other torment but work. This man is a standing pool, and
cannot choose but gather corruption. He is descried amongst a thousand
neighbours by a dry and nasty hand, that still savours of the sheet, a
beard uncut, unkempt, an eye and ear yellow with their excretions, a
coat shaken on, ragged, unbrushed, by linen and face striving whether
shall excel in uncleanness. For body, he hath a swollen leg, a dusky and
swinish eye, a blown cheek, a drawling tongue, an heavy foot, and is
nothing but a colder earth moulded with standing water. To conclude, is
a man in nothing but in speech and shape.

OF THE COVETOUS.

He is a servant to himself, yea, to his servant; and doth base homage to
that which should be the worst drudge. A lifeless piece of earth is his
master, yea his god, which he shrines in his coffer, and to which he
sacrifices his heart. Every face of his coin is a new image, which he
adores with the highest veneration; yet takes upon him to be protector
of that he worshippeth, which he fears to keep and abhors to lose, not
daring to trust either any other god or his own. Like a true chemist, he
turns everything into silver, both what he should eat, and what he
should wear; and that he keeps to look on, not to use. When he returns
from his field, he asks, not without much rage, what became of