130 Indolence. Then long eternity shall greet our bliss And joy shall overtake us like a flood. INDOLENCE. Anacreon, My individual companion. MILTON, On Time. HOLIDAY, Marriages of the Arts, act ii. sc. 6. 'Indolentia' was a word first invented by Cicero, when he was obliged to find some equivalent for the άлútɛα of certain Greek schools. That it was not counted one of his happiest coinages we may conclude from the seldom use of it by any other authors but himself, as also from the fact that Seneca, a little later proposing 'impatientia' as the Latin equivalent for árása, implied that none such had hitherto been found. The word has taken firmer root in English than it ever did in Latin. At the same time, meaning as it does now a disposition or temper of languid non-exertion, it has lost the accuracy of use which it had in the philosophical schools, where it signified a state of freedom from passion and pain; which signification it retained among our own writers of the Caroline period, and even later. To this day, indeed, surgeons call painless swellings indolent tumours.' Now, to begin with fortitude, they say it is the mean between cowardice and rash audacity, of which twain the one is a defect, the other an excess of the ireful passion; liberality between niggardise and prodigality, clemency and mildness between senseless indolence and cruelty.-HOLLAND, Plutarch's Morals, p. 69. Now though Christ were far from both, yet He came nearer to an excess of passion than to an indolency, to a senselessness, to a privation of natural affections. Inordinateness of affections may sometimes make some men like some beasts; but indolency, absence, emptiness, privation of affections, makes any man, at all times, like stones, like dirt.-DONNE, Sermons, 1640, p. 156. The submission here spoken of in the text is not a stupid indolence, or insensibility under such calamities as God shall be pleased to bring upon us.-SOUTH, Sermons, 1744, vol. x. P. 97. INGENIOUS, We are now pretty well agreed in our use of these words; but there was a time when the uttermost confusion reigned amongst them. INGENUOUSNESS. Thus, in the first and second quotations which follow, 'ingenious' is used where we should now use, and where oftentimes the writers of that time would have used, 'ingenuous,' and the converse in the third; while in like manner 'ingenuity' in each of the succeeding three quotations stands for our present ingenuousness,' and 'ingenuousness' in the last for 'ingenuity.' In respect of ingenious' and 'ingenuous,' the arrangement at which we have now arrived regarding their several meanings, namely that the first indicates mental, the second moral qualities is good; 'ingenious' being from 'ingenium' and 'ingenuous' from 'ingenuus.' But 'ingenuity,' being from 'ingenuous,' should have kept the meaning, which it has now quite let go, of innate nobleness of disposition; while 'ingeniousness,' against which there can be no objection to which 'ingenousness is not equally exposed, might have expressed what 'ingenuity' does now. Now as an ingenious debtor desires his freedom at his creditor's hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery which himself should en 132 Ingenious-Insolent. dure by his imprisonment; so an ingenious soul (and such is every saint) deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God's glory as to his own ease and happiness.-GURNALL, The Christian Armour, part ii. c. 54, § 2. Here let us breathe and haply institute A course of learning and ingenious studies. SHAKESPEARE, Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. 1. An ingenious person will rather wear a plain garment of his own than a rich livery, the mark of servitude.-BATES, Spiritual Perfection, Preface. Thou art true and honest; ingeniously I speak; SHAKESPEARE, Timon of Athens, act ii. sc. 2. Since heaven is so glorious a state, and so certainly designed for us, if we please, let us spend all that we have, all our passions and affections, all our study and industry, all our desires and stratagems, all our witty and ingenuous faculties, towards the arriving thither.-J. TAYLOR, Holy Dying, c. 2, § 4. Christian simplicity teaches openness and ingenuity in contracts and matters of buying and selling.—Id., Sermon 24, part ii. When a man makes use of the name of any simple idea, which he perceives is not understood, or is in danger to be mistaken, he is obliged by the laws of ingenuity and the end of speech, to declare his meaning, and make known what idea he makes it stand for.-LOCKE, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, b. iii. c. II, § 14. It [gratitude] is such a debt as is left to every man's ingenuity (in respect to any legal coaction) whether he will pay it or no.— SOUTH, Sermons, vol. i. p. 410. By his ingenuousness he [the good handicrafts-man] leaves his art better than he found it.-FULLER, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 19. INSOLENT, The 'insolent' is properly no more This, as the vio lation of the fixed law and order of society, is com monly offensive, even as it indicates a mind willing to offend; and thus 'insolent' has acquired its present meaning. But for the poet, the fact that he is forsaking the beaten track, that he can say, 'peragro loca, nullius ante Trita solo,' in this way to be 'insolent' or original, as we should now say, may be his highest praise. The epithet 'furious' joined to 'insolence' in the second quotation is to be explained of that 'fine madness' which Spenser as a Platonist esteemed a necessary condition of the poet. For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Raleigh's vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate.-PUTTENHAM, Art of English Poesy, b. i. c. 3. INSTITUTE, SPENSER, Colin Clout's come Home again. These all had once in English mean. Gives longest lessons unto those, where Heaven SYLVESTER, Du Bartas; Seventh Day of the Neither did he this for want of better instructions, having had the learnedest and wisest man reputed of all Britain, the stituter of his youth.-MILTON, History of England, b. iii. A Short Catechism for the institution of young persons in the Christian Religion.- Title of a Treatise by Jeremy Taylor. } INTEND, The inveterate habit of procrastinaINTENTION. tion has brought us to say now that we' intend' a thing, when we mean hereafter to do it. Our fathers with a more accurate use of the word 'intended' that which they were at that moment actually and earnestly engaged in doing. The same habit of procrastination has made ‘by-and bye' mean not straightway, but at a comparatively remote period; and 'presently' not at this present, but in a little while. 'Intention' too, or 'intension,' for Jeremy Taylor in the same work spells the word both ways, was once something not future but pre sent. So often as he [Augustus] was at them [the games], he did nothing else but intend the same.-HOLLAND, Suetonius, p. 60. He [Lord Bacon] saw plainly that natural philosophy hath been intended by few persons, and in them hath occupied the least part of their time.--BACON, Filum Labyrinthi, 6. It is so plain that every man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon.-Id., Essays, 29. I suffer for their guilt now, and my soul, BEN JONSON, Cynthia's Revels. But did you not Observe with what intention the duke Set eyes on Domitilla? SHIRLEY, The Royal Master, act ii. sc. I. According as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect; meditation being the soul of prayer, and the intention of our spirit.-J. TAYLOR, Life of Christ, part i. § 5. |