Frequently used by our elder writers where we should employ munificent or generous. Yet there lay in the word something more than in these; something of the μεγαλοπρέπεια of Aristotle; a certain grandeur presiding over and ordering this large distribution of wealth. Behind both uses an earlier and a nobler than either may be traced, as is evident from my first quotation.
Then cometh magnificence, that is to say when a man doth and performeth gret werkes of goodnesse.—Chaucer, The Persones Tale.
Every amorous person becometh liberal and magnificent, although he had been aforetime a pinching snudge; in such sort as men take more pleasure to give away and bestow upon those whom they love, than they do take and receive of others.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 1147.
Am I close-handed,
Because I scatter not among you that
I must not call my own? know, you court-leeches,
A prince is never so magnificent
As when he’s sparing to enrich a few
With the injuries of many.
Massinger, The Emperor of the East, act ii. sc. 1.