Milton: Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 781-88
…. or faery elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth
Wheels her pale course: they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.

- supposedly a reference to Bottom’s speech in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream 4.1

White’s feelings are a pure example of the ambivalent state of excitement that is the emotion most characteristic of curiosity.

Note: White “exhorted all those who had any curiosity to look sharp from about one to three o’clock as they would stand a good chance of being entertained with a very extraordinary sight.”

Gilbert White, the curate of Selbourne, exhibited in his life and writing that careful attention illustrated in the use of the old word “cure”, meaning care, in Chaucer’s prologue to the Canterbury Tales regarding his “Clerk of Oxenford” - “Of studie took he most cure and most hede. ….
And gladly wolde he learn and gladely teche.” You see here the root cur as in curate, accuracy and curiosity.