The honey-makers’ busy buzzing swarm
Fiercely assail and wound the naked skins
Of such as come to rob their curious inns.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, his Divine Works,
The Capitaine, 369.
| Insolent, | } |
| Insolence. |
The ‘insolent’ is properly no more than the unusual. This, as the violation of the fixed law and order of society, is commonly 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.