Timidus Plutus.

As fearful as Plutus, the reputed god of riches. The poor having nothing to lose, have no dread of thieves, and accustomed to feed on coarse diet, they find little difficulty in getting what is necessary for their support. In utramque dormiant aurem, they can sleep on either ear, in any posture, or on the hardest couch. The rich, on the contrary, are full of care, trouble, and anxiety. «Non solum cruciantur libidine augendi ea quae habent, sed etiam timore amittendi ea», they are not only tormented with an incessant desire of increasing their wealth, but with the fear of losing that which they possess. They believe that all with whom they have any commerce, are contriving to rob, or cheat them. They are afraid of their friends, lest they should want to borrow of them; they think their servants are false, and that their wives and children are combining to deceive, and cozen them. Their fears increasing with their years, at length, though abounding with riches, they are distressed with apprehensions of impending poverty, imagining they shall become beggars or die in a workhouse. In hunc scopulum cadaverosi senes ut plurimum impingunt, on this rock cadaverous old men, men on the verge of the grave, are for the most part wrecked, and indeed it is not until they arrive at that period, when their wants might be supplied by the smallest income, that their fears make them imagine that their immense possessions will be exhausted, before their glass shall be completely run out, and they perish miserably by the very means that, properly used, would have preserved them in health and spirits.