out with everything, displeased with all, weary of his life:  Nec bene domi, nec militiae, neither at home nor abroad, errat, et praeter vitam vivitur, he wanders and lives besides himself.  In a word, What the mischievous effects of laziness and idleness are, I do not find any where more accurately expressed, than in these verses of Philolaches in the [1557]Comical Poet, which for their elegancy I will in part insert.

       “Novarum aedium esse arbitror similem ego hominem,
        Quando hic natus est:  Ei rei argumenta dicam. 
        Aedes quando sunt ad amussim expolitae,
        Quisque laudat fabrum, atque exemplum expetit, &c. 
        At ubi illo migrat nequam homo indiligensque, &c. 
        Tempestas venit, confringit tegulas, imbricesque,
        Putrifacit aer operam fabri, &c. 
        Dicam ut homines similes esse aedium arbitremini,
        Fabri parentes fundamentum substruunt liberorum,
        Expoliunt, docent literas, nec parcunt sumptui,
        Ego autem sub fabrorum potestate frugi fui,
        Postquam autem migravi in ingenium meum,
        Perdidi operam fabrorum illico oppido,
        Venit ignavia, ea mihi tempestas fuit,
        Adventuque suo grandinem et imbrem attulit,
        Illa mihi virtutem deturbavit,” &c.

A young man is like a fair new house, the carpenter leaves it well built, in good repair, of solid stuff; but a bad tenant lets it rain in, and for want of reparation, fall to decay, &c.  Our parents, tutors, friends, spare no cost to bring us up in our youth, in all manner of virtuous education; but when we are left to ourselves, idleness as a tempest drives all virtuous motions out of our minds, et nihili sumus, on a sudden, by sloth and such bad ways, we come to nought.

Cousin german to idleness, and a concomitant cause, which goes hand in hand with it, is [1558]_nimia solitudo_, too much solitariness, by the testimony of all physicians, cause and symptom both; but as it is here put for a cause, it is either coact, enforced, or else voluntary.  Enforced solitariness is commonly seen in students, monks, friars, anchorites, that by their order and course of life must abandon all company, society of other men, and betake themselves to a private cell:  Otio superstitioso seclusi, as Bale and Hospinian well term it, such as are the Carthusians of our time, that eat no flesh (by their order), keep perpetual silence, never go abroad.  Such as live in prison, or some desert place, and cannot have company, as many of our country gentlemen do in solitary houses, they must either be alone without companions, or live beyond their means, and entertain all comers as so many hosts, or else converse with their servants and hinds, such as are unequal, inferior to them, and of a contrary disposition:  or else as some do, to avoid solitariness, spend their time with lewd fellows in taverns, and in alehouses, and thence addict themselves