Some will make me the pattern of ignorance for making this Scaliger [Julius] the pattern of the general artist, whose own son Joseph might have been his father in many arts.—Fuller, Holy State, b. ii. c. 8.
Stupendous pile! not reared by mortal hands;
Whate’er proud Rome or artful Greece beheld,
Or elder Babylon its fame excelled.
Pope, Temple of Fame.
Ascertain. Now to acquire a certain knowledge of a thing, but once to render the thing itself certain. Thus, when Swift wrote a pamphlet having this title, ‘A Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue,’ he did not propose to obtain a subjective certainty of what the English language was, but to give to the language itself an objective certainty and fixedness.
Sometimes an evil or an obnoxious person hath so secured and ascertained a mischief to himself, that he that stays in his company or his traffic must also share in his punishment.—Bishop Taylor, The Return of Prayers.
Success is intended him [the wicked man] only as a curse, as the very greatest of curses, and the readiest way, by hardening him in his sin, to ascertain his destruction.—South, Sermons, vol. v. p. 286.
Aspersion. Now only used figuratively, and in an evil sense; being that which one sprinkles on another to spot, stain, or hurt him: but subject to none of these limitations of old.
The book of Job, and many places of the prophets, have great aspersion of natural philosophy.—Bacon, Fiium Labyrinthi.