he loathed the strain of stumbling after cash: ‘only the observation of others is my preservation from extreme idleness, else I profess, that I hate business so much, as I am sometimes glad to remember that the Roman Church reads that verse A negotio perambulante in tenebris’. He’s punning: negotium can mean both ‘business’ and ‘pestilence’, and so, Donne writes, ‘equal to me do the plague and business deserve avoiding.’
