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.

OF THE SUPERSTITIOUS.

Superstition is godless religion, devout impiety.  The superstitious is fond in observation, servile in fear; he worships God but as he lists; he gives God what He asks not more than He asks, and all but what he should give; and makes more sins than the Ten Commandments.  This man dares not stir forth till his breast be crossed and his face sprinkled:  if but an hare cross him the way, he returns; or if his journey began unawares on the dismal day, or if he stumble at the threshold.  If he see a snake unkilled, he fears a mischief; if the salt fall towards him, he looks pale and red, and is not quiet till one of the waiters have poured wine on his lap; and when he sneezeth, thinks them not his friends that uncover not.  In the morning he listens whether the crow crieth even or odd, and by that token presages