His estate is too narrow for his mind, and therefore he is fain to make
himself room in others' affairs, yet ever in pretence of love. No news
can stir but by his door, neither can he know that which he must not
tell. What every man ventures in Guiana voyage, and what they gained, he
knows to a hair. Whether Holland will have peace he knows, and on what
conditions, and with what success, is familiar to him ere it be
concluded. No post can pass him without a question, and rather than he
will lose the news, he rides back with him to apprise him of tidings;
and then to the next man he meets he supplies the wants of his hasty
intelligence and makes up a perfect tale, wherewith he so haunteth the
patient auditor, that after many excuses he is fain to endure rather the
censure of his manners in running away than the tediousness of an
impertinent discourse. His speech is oft broken off with a succession of
long parentheses, which he ever vows to fill up ere the conclusion, and
perhaps would effect it if the other's ear were as umveariable as his
tongue. If he see but two men talk and read a letter in the street, he
runs to them and asks if he may not be partner of that secret relation;
and if they deny it, he offers to tell, since he may not hear, wonders,
and then falls upon the report of the Scottish mine, or of the great
fish taken up at Lynne, or of the freezing of the Thames, and after many
thanks and admissions is hardly entreated silence. He undertakes as much
as he performs little; this man will thrust himself forward to be the
guide of the way he knows not, and calls at his neighbour's window and
asks why his servants are not at work. The market hath no commodity
which he prizeth not, and which the next table shall not hear recited.
His tongue, like the tail of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is
enough to set the whole field of the world on a flame. Himself begins
table-talk of his neighbour at another's board, to whom he bears the
first news, and adjures him to conceal the reporter, whose choleric
answer he returns to his first host enlarged with a second edition; so
as it uses to be done in the sight of unwilling mastiffs, he claps each
on the side apart, and provokes them to an eager conflict. There can no
act pass without his comment, which is ever far-fetched, rash,
suspicious, dilatory. His ears are long and his eyes quick, but most of
all to imperfections, which as he easily sees, so he increases with
intermeddling. He harbours another man's servant, and amidst his
entertainment asks what fare is usual at home, what hours are kept, what
talk passeth their meals, what his master's disposition is, what his
government, what his guests? and when he hath by curious inquiries
extracted all the juice and spirit of hoped intelligence, turns him off
whence he came, and works on anew. He hates constancy as an earthen
dulness, unfit for men of spirit, and loves to change his work and his
place: neither yet can he be so soon weary of any place as every place
is weary of him, for as he sets himself on work, so others pay him with
hatred; and look how many masters he hath, so many enemies: neither is
it possible that any should not hate him but who know him not. So then
he labours without thanks, talks without credit, lives without love,
dies without tears, without pity, save that some say it was pity he died
no sooner.