Thus much I dare boldly say, He or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy, let them have all things in abundance, and felicity, that heart can wish and desire, all contentment, so long as he or she, or they are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in body and minde, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else carried away with some foolish phantasie or other.

And this is the true cause that so many great men, Ladies, and Gentlewomen, labor of this disease in Countrey and City; for idleness is an appendix to nobility, they count it a disgrace to work, and spend all their days in sports, recreations, and pastimes, and will therefore take no pains; be of no vocation: they feed liberally, fare well, want exercise, action, employment, (for to work, I say, they may not abide) and company to their desires, and thence their bodies become full of gross humors, wind, crudities, their mindes disquieted, dull, heavy, &c. care, jealousie, fear of some diseases, sullen fits, weeping fits seize too familiarly on them.

For what will not fear and phantasie work in an idle body? what distempers will they not cause? when the children of Israel murmured against Pharaoh in Egypt, he commanded his officers to double their task, and let them get straw themselves, and yet make their full number of Brick; for the sole cause why they mutiny, and are evil at ease, is, they are idle.

When you shall hear and see so many discontented persons, in all places where you come, so many several grievances, unnecessary complaints, fear, suspicions, the best means to redress it, is to set them awork, so to busie their mindes; for the truth is, they are idle. Well they may build castles in the air for a time, and sooth up themselves with phantastical and pleasant humors, but in the end they will prove as bitter as gall, they shall be still I say discontent, suspicious, fearful, jealous, sad, fretting and vexing of themselves;

so long as they be idle, it is impossible to please them, Otio qui nescit uti, plus habet negotii quam qui negotium in negotio, as that Agellius could observe: He that knows not how to spend his time, hath more business, care, grief, anguish of minde, then he that is most busie in the midst of all his business. Otiosus animus nescit quid volet: An idle person (as he follows it) knows not when he is well, what he would have, or whither he would go, Quum illuc ventum est, illinc lubet, he is tired out with every thing, displeased with all, weary of his life: Nec benè domi, nec militiæ, neither at home, nor abroad, errat, & præter vitam vivitur, he wanders, and lives besides himself.

In a word, What the mischievous effects of laziness and idleness are, I do not finde any where more accurately expressed, then in these verses of Philolaches in the Comical Poet, which for their elegancy, I will in part insert.

Novarum ædium esse arbitror similem ego hominem, Quando hic natus est: Ei rei argumenta dicam. Ædes quando sunt ad amussim expolitæ, Quisque laudat fabrum, atque exemplum expetit, &c. At ubi illò migrat nequam homo indiligensque, &c. Tempestas venit, confringit tegulas, imbricesque, Putrifacit aer operam fabri, &c.

Dicam ut homines similes esse ædium 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 illicò, oppidò, Venit ignavia, ea mihi tempestas fuit, Adventuque suo grandinem & 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 maner of vertuous education; but when we are left to our selves, Idleness as a tempest drives all vertuous motions out of our mindes, & nihili sumus, on a sudden, by sloath and such bad ways, we come to naught.

Cozen German to Idleness, and a concomitant cause, which goes hand in hand with it, is 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, Friers, 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 Countrey Gentlemen do in solitary houses, they must either be alone without companions, or live beyond their means, and entertain all comers as so many hostes, or else converse with their servants and hindes, such as are unequal, inferior to them, and of a contrary disposition; or else as some do, to avoid solitariness, spend their time with leud fellows in Taverns, and in Ale-houses, and thence addict themselves to some unlawful disports, or dissolute courses.

Divers again are cast upon this rock of solitariness for want of means, or out of a strong apprehension of some infirmity, disgrace, or through bashfulness, rudeness, simplicity, they cannot apply themselves to others company. Nullum solum infelici gratius solitudine, ubi nullus sit qui miseriam exprobret;

this enforced solitariness takes place, and produceth his effect soonest in such as have spent their time jovially, peradventure in all honest recreations, in good company, in some great family or populous City, and are upon a sudden confined to a desert Country Cottage far off, restrained of their liberty, and barred from their ordinary associates: Solitariness is very irksom to such, most tedious, and a sudden cause of great inconvenience.

Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with Melancholy, and gently brings on like a Siren, a shooing-horn, or some Sphinx to this irrevocable gulf, a primary cause Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary Grove, betwixt Wood and Water, by a Brook side, to meditate upon some delightsom and pleasant Subject, which shall affect them most; amabilis insania, and mentis gratissimus error:

A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholize, and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done: Blandæ quidem ab initio, saith Lemnius, to conceive and meditate of such pleasant things, sometimes, Present, past or to come, as Rhasis speaks.

So delightsom these toyes are at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole yeers alone in such contemplations, and phantastical meditations, which are like unto dreams, and they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt, so pleasant their vain conceits are, that they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary business, they cannot address themselves to them, or almost to any study or imployment,

these phantastical and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urgently, so continually set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, and detain them, they cannot I say go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholizing, and carried along, as he (they say) that is lead round about an Heath with a Puck in the night,

they run earnestly on in this labarinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain, or easily leave off, winding and unwinding themselves, as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until at last the Scene is turned upon a sudden, by some bad object, and they being now habituated to such vain meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can ruminate of nothing but harsh and distastfull subjects.

Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life surprize them in a moment, and they can think of nothing else, continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of Melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds, which now by no means, no labour, no perswasions they can avoid, hæret lateri lethalis arundo, they may not be rid of it, they cannot resist.

I may not deny but that there is some profitable Meditation, Contemplation, and kinde of solitariness to be embraced, which the Fathers so highly commended, Hierom, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Austin, in whole Tracts, which Petrarch, Erasmus, Stella, and others, so much magnifie in their books; a Paradise, an Heaven on Earth, if it be used aright, good for the body, and better for the soul:

As many of those old Monks used it, to divine contemplations, as Simulus a Courtier in Adrians time, Dioclesian the Emperour retired themselves, &c. in that sense, Vatia solus scit vivere, Vatia lives alone, which the Romans were wont to say, when they commended a Country life. Or to the bettering of their knowledg, as Democritus, Cleanthes, and those excellent Philosophers have ever done, to sequester themselves from the tumultuous world, or as in Plinies villa Laurentana, Tullies Tusculan, Jovius study, that they might better vacare studiis et Deo, serve God, and follow their studies.

Me thinks therefore our too zealous innovators were not so well advised in that general subversion of Abbies and religious houses, promiscuously to fling down all, they might have taken away those gross abuses crept in amongst them, rectified such inconveniencies, and not so far to have raved and raged against those fair buildings, and everlasting monuments of our forefathers devotion, consecrated to pious uses;