senses are too much his guides and his purveyors, and appetite is his steward.  He is an impotent servant to his lusts, and knows not to govern either his mind or his purse.  Improvidence is ever the companion of unthriftiness.  This man cannot look beyond the present, and neither thinks nor cares what shall be, much less suspects what may be; and while he lavishes out his substance in superfluities, thinks he only knows what the world is worth, and that others overprize it.  He feels poverty before he sees it, never complains till he be pinched with wants; never spares till the bottom, when it is too late either to spend or recover.  He is every man’s friend save his own, and then wrongs himself most when he courteth himself with most kindness.  He vies time with the slothful, and it is a hard match whether chases away good hours to worse purpose, the one by doing nothing, or the other by idle pastime.  He hath so dilated himself with the beams of prosperity that he lies open to all dangers, and cannot gather up himself, on just warning, to avoid a mischief.  He were good for an almoner, ill for a steward.  Finally, he is the living tomb of his forefathers, of his posterity; and when he hath swallowed both, is more empty than before he devoured them.

OF THE ENVIOUS.

He feeds on others’ evils, and hath no disease but his neighbour’s welfare.  Whatsoever God do for him, he cannot be happy with company; and if he were put to choose whether he would rather have equals in a common felicity, or superiors in misery, he would demur upon the election.  His eye casts out too much, and never returns home, but to make comparisons with another’s good.  He is an ill prizer of foreign commodity; worse of his own, for that he rates too high, this under value.  You shall have him ever inquiring into the estates of his equals and betters, wherein he is not more desirous to hear all than loth to hear anything over good; and if just report relate aught better than he would, he redoubles the question, as being hard to believe what he likes not, and hopes yet, if that be averred again to his grief, that there is somewhat concealed in the relation, which, if it were known, would argue the commended party miserable, and blemish him with secret shame.  He is ready to quarrel with God, because the next field is fairer grown, and angrily calculates his cost, and time, and tillage.  Whom he dares not openly backbite, nor wound with a direct censure, he strikes smoothly with an over cold praise; and when he sees that he must either maliciously impugn the just praise of another (which were unsafe), or approve it by assent, he yieldeth; but shows withal that his means were such, both by nature and education, that he could not, without much neglect, be less commendable.  So his happiness shall be made the colour of detraction.  When an wholesome law is propounded, he crosseth it either by open or close opposition, not for any incommodity