The third sort of those that live unprofitably and without a calling are our idle sturdy rogues and vagrant towns-end beggars. I mean such as are able to work, yet rather choose to wander abroad the country, and to spend their days in a most base and ungodly course of life.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 197.
Romantic. It is much rarer to find words which in lapse of time have mended their position than those which have seen theirs grow worse. But such there are, and this is one of them. Who would have expected two centuries ago that ‘romantic’ would have held the place of honour which now it does; would have divided with ‘classical’ the whole world of modern literature?
Can anything in nature be imagined more profane and impious, more absurd, and indeed romantic, than such a persuasion [namely that whenever in Scripture the Covenant is mentioned, the Scotch Covenant was intended]? and yet, as impious and absurd as it was, it bore down all before it, and overturned the equallest and best framed government in the world.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. p. 42.
Room. In certain connexions we still employ ‘room’ for place, but in many more it obtains this meaning no longer. Thus one who accepts the words, ‘When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room’ (Luke xiv. 8), according to the present use of ‘room,’ will probably imagine to himself guests assembling in various apartments, some more honourable than other; and not, as indeed the meaning is, taking higher or lower places at one and the same table.
In Clarence, Henry, and his son, young Edward,
And all the unlooked-for issue of their bodies,
To take their rooms, ere I can place myself?
Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.
If he have but twelve pence in’s purse, he will give it for the best room in a playhouse.—Sir T. Overbury, Characters: A Proud Man.
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