Of Curiosity, or an Over-Busy Inquisitiveness into Things Impertinent. (6-10)

But neither (as it appears) are such antiquated evils any agreeable entertainment to people of this perverse

disposition; they hearken most to modern tragedies, and such doleful accidents as may be grateful as well for the novelty as the horror of the relation. All pleasant and cheerful converse is irksome to them; so that if they happen into a company that are talking of weddings, the solemnities of sacred rites, or pompous processions, they make as though they heard not, or, to divert and shorten the discourse, will pretend they knew as much before. Yet, if any one should relate how such a wench had a child before the time, or that a fellow was caught with another man’s wife, or that certain people were at law with each other, or that there was an unhappy difference between near relations, he no longer sits unconcerned or minds other things, but

With ears pricked up, he listens. What, and when,

And how, he asks; pray say, let’s hear’t again!

And indeed, that proverbial saying, Ill news goes quick and far, was occasioned chiefly by these busy ill-natured men, who very unwillingly hear or talk of any ting else. For their ears, like cupping-glasses that attract the most noxious humors in the body, are ever sucking in the most spiteful and malicious reports; and, as in some cities there are certain ominous gates through which nothing passes but scavenger’s carts or the sledges of malefactors, so nothing goes in at their ears or out of their mouths but obscene, tragical, and horrid relations.

Howling and woe, as in a jail or hell,

Always infest the places where they dwell.

This noise is to them like the Sirens’ song and the sweetest melody, the most pleasant hearing in the world.

Now this curiosity, being an affectation of knowledge in things concealed, must needs proceed from a great degree of spite and envy. For men do not usually hide, but ambitiously proclaim whatever is for their honor or interest to be known; and therefore to pry into what is industriously

covered can be for no other purpose than that secret delight curious persons enjoy in the discovery of other men’s ills,—which is spite,—and the relief they gather thence, to ease themselves under their tormenting resentment at another’s prosperity,—which is envy;—both which spring from that savage and brutal disposition which we call ill-nature.

But how ungrateful it is to mankind to have their evils enquired into appears from hence; that some have chosen rather to die than disclose a secret disease to their physician. Suppose then that Herophilus or Erasistratus, or Aesculapius himself when he was upon earth, should have gone about from house to house, enquiring whether any there had a fistula in ano or cancer in utero to be cured. Although such a curiosity as this might in them seem much more tolerable, from the charity of their design and the benefit intended by their art; yet who would not rebuke the saucy officiousness of that quack who should, unsent for, thus impudently pry into those privy distempers which the modesty or perhaps the guilt of the patient would blush or abhor to discover, though it were for the sake of a cure? But those that are of this curious and busy humor cannot forbear searching into these, and other ills too that are of a more secret nature; and—what makes the practice the more exceedingly odious and detestable—the intent is not to remedy, but expose them to the world. It is not ill taken, if the searchers and officers of the customs do inspect goods openly imported, but only when, with a design of being vexatious and troublesome, they rip up the unsuspected packets of private passengers; and yet even this they are by law authorized to do, and it is sometimes to their loss, if they do not. But curious and meddlesome people will be ever enquiring into other men’s affairs, without leave or commission, though it be to the great neglect and damage of their own.

It is farther observable concerning this sort of men, how averse they are to living long in the country, as being not able to endure the quiet and calm of a retired solitude. But if by chance they take a short ramble to their country-house, the main of their business there is more to enquire into their neighbors’ concerns than their own; that they may know how other men’s fruit-trees are blasted, the number of cattle they have lost, and what a scanty harvest they are like to have, and how well their wine keeps; with which impertinent remarks having filled their giddy brains, the worm wags, and away they must to the town again. Now a true bred rustic, if he by chance meet with any news from the city, presently turns his head another way, and in his blunt language thus reflects upon the impertinence of it:

One can’t at quiet eat, nor plough one’s lond;

Zo much us country-voke they bear in hond

With tales, which idle rascals blow about,

How kings (and well, vhat then?) vall in and out.

Now to dissuade inquisitive persons (as much as possible) from this sneaking and most despicable humor, it would contribute much, if they would but recollect and review all their past observations. For as Simonides, using at certain times to open two chests he kept by him, found that wherein he put rewards ever full, and the other appointed for thanks always empty; so, if inquisitive people did but now and then look into their bag of news, they would certainly be ashamed of that vain and foolish

curiosity which, with so much hazard and trouble to themselves, had been gathering together such a confused heap of worthless and loathsome trash. If a man, in reading over the writings of the ancients, should rake together all the dross he could meet with, and collect into one volume all the unfinished scraps of verse in Homer, the incongruous expressions in the tragedians, or those obscenities of smutty Archilochus for which he was scorned and pointed at, would not such a filthy scavenger of books well deserve that curse of the tragedian,

Pox on your taste! Must you, like lice and fleas,

Be always fed with scabs and nastiness?

But without this imprecation, the practice itself becomes its own punishment, in the dishonest and unprofitable drudgery of amassing together such a noisome heap of other men’s vices and follies; a treasure much resembling the city Poneropolis (or Rogue-town), so called by King Philip after he had peopled it with a crew of rogues and vagabonds. For curious people do so load their dirty brains with the ribaldry and solecisms of other men’s writings, as well as the defects and blemishes of their lives, that there is not the least room left in their heads for one witty, graceful, or ingenious thought.

There is a sort of people at Rome who, being unaffected with any thing that is beautiful and pretty, either in the works of art or nature, despise the most curious pieces in painting or sculpture, and the fairest boys and girls that are there exposed to sale, as not worth their money; therefore they much frequent the monster-market, looking after people of distorted limbs and preternatural shapes, of three eyes and pointed heads, and mongrels

Where kinds of unlike form oft blended be

Into one hideous deformity.

[*]

All which are sights so loathsome, that they themselves would abhor them were they compelled often to behold them. And if they who curiously enquire into those vicious deformities and unlucky accidents that may be observed in the lives of other men would only bind themselves to a frequent recollection of what they had seen and heard, there would be found very little delight or advantage in such ungrateful and melancholy reflections.