Your true and genuine type of farmer has no desire to hear even the news which finds its own way from the city. Says he:
_Then, while he digs, he’ll tell The terms o’the treaty. He must now, confound him, Go round and poke his nose in things like that!_
[Sidenote: 519] But to your busybody country life is a stale and uninteresting thing with nothing to fuss about. He therefore flees from it, and pushes into the Exchange, the Market, or the Harbour. ‘Is there any news?’ ‘Why, weren’t you at market early this morning? Do you imagine there has been a revolution in three hours?’ If, however, any one has a piece of news to tell, down he gets from his horse, grasps the man’s hand, kisses him, and stands there listening. But if some one meets him and says there is nothing fresh, he exclaims, as if he were annoyed: ‘What? Haven’t you been at market? Haven’t you been near the Board-Room? And haven’t you met the new arrivals from [Sidenote: B] Italy?’
The Locrian magistrates therefore did right in fining any one who, after being out of town, came up and asked, ‘Is there any news?’ As the butchers pray for a good supply of animals, and fishermen for a good supply of fish, so busybodies pray for a good supply of calamities, for plenty of troubles, for novelties and changes. They must always have their fish to catch or carcass to cut up.
Another good rule was that of the legislator of Thurii, who forbade the lampooning of citizens on the stage, with the exception of adulterers and busybodies. The one class bears a resemblance to the other, adultery being a sort of inquisitiveness into [Sidenote: C] another’s pleasure, and a prying search into matters protected from the general eye, while inquisitiveness is the illicit denuding and corrupting of a secret. While a natural consequence of much learning is having much to say, and therefore Pythagoras enjoined upon the young a five years’ silence, which he called ‘Truce to Speech’, the necessary concomitant of curiosity is speaking evil. What the curious delight to hear, they delight to talk about; what they take pains to gather from others, they joy in giving out to new hearers. It follows that, besides its [Sidenote: D] other drawbacks, their disease actually stands in the way of its own desires. For every one is on his guard to hide things from them, and is reluctant to do anything when the busybody is looking, or to say anything when he is listening. People put off a consultation and postpone the consideration of business until such persons are out of the way. If, when a secret matter is towards, or an important action is in the doing, a busybody appears upon the scene, they take it away and hide it, as they [Sidenote: E] would a piece of victuals when the cat comes past. Often, therefore, he is the only person not permitted to hear or see what others may see and hear.