It was a pleasant humor of Calvicius Sabinus, a rich man,
and one that managed a very good fortune with a very ill
grace. He had neither wit nor memory, but would fain pass
tor a learned man, and so took several into his family ; and
whatsoever they knew he assumed to himself. There are a
sort of people that are never well but at theatres, spectacles,
and public places; men of business, but it is only in their
faces: for they wander up and down without any design;
like pismires, eager and empty ; and every thing they do is
only as it happens. This is a humor which a man may call
a kind of restless laziness. Others you shall have that are
perpetually in haste, as they were crying JPtre, or running
for a widmife, and all this hurry, perhaps, only to salute
somebody that had no mind to take notice of them ; or some
such trivial errand. At night, when they come home tired
and weary, ask them why they went out ] where they have
been 1 and what they have done? it is a very slender account
they are able to give you : and yet the next day they take
the same jaunt over again : this is a kind of fantastical in-
dustry, a great deal of pains taken to no purpose at all;
twenty visits made, and nobody at home, (they themselves
least of all.) They that have this vice are commonly hearken-
ers, talebearers, newsmongers, meddlers in other people's
afl^air^:, and curious after secreLs, which a man can neither
safely hear nor report These men of idle employment,
that run up and down eternally vexing others, and them-
r>e]ves too; that thrust themselves into all companies; what
do they get by it 1 One man is asleep, another at supper, a
third in company, a fourth in haste, a fifth gives them the
slip; and when their folly has gone the round, they close up
the day with shame and repentance. Whereas Zeno, Py-
thagoras, Democritus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and all the
patrons of philosophy and virtue, they are always at leisure,
and in gooid-humor; familiar, profitable: a man never comes
away emptyhanded from them, but full of comfort and
ft^atisfaction ; they make all past ages* present to us, or u»



286 EPISTLES.
