Of Curiosity, or an Over-Busy Inquisitiveness into Things Impertinent. (9)

And now as the accumulation of notions in the head usually begets multiplicity of words,—for which reason Pythagoras thought fit to check the too early loquacity of his scholars, by imposing on them five years’ silence from their first admission,—so the same curiosity that is thus inquisitive to know is no less intemperate in talking too, and must needs be as ill-spoken as it is ill-natured. And hence it is that curiosity does not only become a restraint to the vices and follies of others, but is a disappointment also to itself. For all mankind are exceeding shy of inquisitive persons: no serious business is consulted of where they are; and if they chance to surprise men in the negotiation of any affair, it is presently laid aside as carefully as the housewife locks up her fish from the cat; nor (if it be possible to avoid it) is any thing of moment said or done in their company. But whatever is freely permitted to any other people to see, hear, or talk of, is kept as a great secret from persons of this busy impertinent disposition; and there is no man but would commit his letters, papers,

By the great command which Bellerophon had over his curiosity, he resisted the solicitations of a lustful woman, and (though it were to the hazard of his life) abstained from opening the letters wherein he was designed to be the messenger of his own destruction. For curiosity and adultery (as was intimated before) are both vices of incontinence; only they are aggravated by a peculiar degree of madness and folly, beyond what is found in most other vices of this nature. And can there any thing be more sottish, than for a man to pass by the doors of so many common prostitutes that are ready to seize him in the streets, and to beleaguer the lodgings of some coy and recluse female that is far more costly, and perhaps far less comely too, than a hackney three-penny strumpet? But such is plainly the frensy of curious persons, who, despising all those things that are of easy access and unenvied enjoyment,— such as are the divertisements of the theatre, the conversation of the ingenious, and the discourses of the learned,— must be breaking open other men’s letters, listening at their neighbors’ doors, peeping in at their windows, or whispering with their servants; a practice which (as it deserves) is commonly dangerous, but ever extremely base and ignominious.