Whomsoever he meets he stays with idle questions, and lingering discourse; how the days are lengthened, how kindly the weather is, how false the clock, how forward the spring, and ends ever with, What shall we do?  It pleases him no less to hinder others than not to work himself.  When all the people are gone from church, he is left sleeping in his seat alone.  He enters bonds, and forfeits them by forgetting the day; and asks his neighbour when his own field was fallowed, whether the next piece of ground belong not to himself.  His care is either none or too late.  When winter is come, after some sharp visitations, he looks on his pile of wood, and asks how much was cropped the last spring.  Necessity 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