He is a religious man, and wears the time in his cloister, and, as the
cloak of his doing nothing, pleads contemplation; yet is he no whit the
leaner for his thoughts, no whit learneder. He takes no less care how to
spend time than others how to gain by the expense; and when business
importunes him, is more troubled to forethink what he must do, than
another to effect it. Summer is out of his favour for nothing but long
days that make no haste to their even. He loves still to have the sun
witness of his rising, and lies long, more for lothness to dress him
than will to sleep; and after some streaking and yawning, calls for
dinner unwashed, which having digested with a sleep in his chair, he
walks forth to the bench in the market-place, and looks for companions.
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.