This vice is a lazy and beastly negligence of a man’s person, whereby he becomes so filthy as to be offensive to those who are about him. You’ll see him come into a company when he is covered all over with a leprosy or scurf, or with very long nails, and he says those distempers are hereditary, that his father and grandfather had them before him. He will speak with his mouth full, and gurgle at his cup in drinking. He will intrude into the best company in ragged clothes. If he goes with his mother to the soothsayers, he cannot even then refrain from coarse and profane expressions. When he is making his oblations at the temple, he will let the dish fall out of his hand, and laugh as at some jocular exploit. At the finest concert of music he cannot forbear clapping his hands and making a rude noise. He will pretend to sing along with the singers, and rail at them when they leave off. --_The Characters._ _OF LOQUACITY_ If we would define loquacity, it is an excessive affluence of words. The prater will not suffer any person in company to tell his own story, but, let it be what it will, tells you you mistake the matter, that he takes the thing right, and that if you will listen, he will make it clear to you. If you make any reply, he suddenly interrupts you, saying, “Why, sir, you forget what you were talking about; it’s very well you should begin to remember, since it is most beneficial for people to inform one another.” Then presently he says, “But what was I going to say? Why, truly, you very soon apprehend a thing, and I was waiting to see if you would be of my sentiment in this matter.” And thus he always takes such occasions as these to prevent the person he talks with the liberty of breathing. After he has thus tormented all who will hear him, he is so rude as to break into the company of persons met to discuss important affairs, and drives them away by his troublesome impertinence. Thence he goes into the public schools and places of exercise, where he interrupts the masters by his foolish prating, and hinders the scholars from improving by their instruction. If any person shows an inclination to go away, he will follow him, and will not part from him till he comes to his own door. If he hears of anything transacted in the public assembly of the citizens, he runs up and down to tell it to everybody. He gives you a long account of the famous battle that was fought when Aristophanes the orator was governor, or when the Lacedæmonians were under the command of Lysander; then tells you with what general applause he made a speech in public, repeating a great deal of it, with invectives against the common people, which are so tiresome to those that hear him that some forget what he says as soon as it is out of his mouth, others fall asleep, and others leave him in the midst of his harangue. If this talker be