[f. VAST a.]
† 1. Desolation; waste. Obs. rare.
1605. Bacon, Adv. Learn., II. vii. § 7. Because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that tract.
1642. Sir E. Dering, Sp. on Relig., 87. This Bill doth seem to me an uncouth wildernesse, a dismall vastnesse.
2. The quality of being vast; immensity.
1607. Beaum. & Fl., Woman Hater, III. iii. Could the Sea throw up his vastness, And offer free his best inhabitants.
1667. Milton, P. L., VII. 472. Scarse from his mould Behemoth biggest born of Earth upheav’d His vastness.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 12. The swelling Surges menace the lowering Skies, leaving a Hollow where they borrowed their Gigantine Vastness.
1794. Mrs. Radcliffe, Myst. Udolpho, vi. Emily gazed with enthusiasm on the vastness of the sea.
1838. De Morgan, Ess. Probab., 24. When we speak of the vastness, the regularity, and the permanency of the solar system.
1886. Ruskin, Præterita, I. vi. 199. The vastness of scale in the Milanese palaces … impressed me … at once.
fig. 1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, V. iii. The open vastnesse of a tyrannes eare.
1873. Helps, Anim. & Mast., i. 8. You will be able to appreciate the vastness of this area of cruelty.
b. Of immaterial things.
1622. Fletcher, Prophetess, II. i. You have blown his swoln pride to that vastness, As he believes the Earth is in his fathom.
1658. Verney Mem. (1907), II. 77. The vastnesse of my affection.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., xcvii. I look’d on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery.
1889. Ruskin, Præterita, III. 146. The vastness of Scoti’s true historical knowledge.
3. A vast or immense space.
1674. N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., 61. The excellent Dr. Hen. More, whose soul may have roamed as far into these scopes and vastnesses as most mens in the world.
1855. Longf., Hiaw., xii. 137. Then a voice was heard … Coming from the empty vastness. Ibid. (1875), Masque Pandora, vi. Thunder and tempest of wind Their trumpets blow in the vastness.
