1. Not displaying special art or skill; unskilful, inartistic, clumsy. Now rare or Obs.
1591. Harington, Orl. Fur., Pref. If I shold confesse … that my verse is vnartificiall, the stile rude, the phrase barbarous.
1597. Morley, Introd. Mus., 80. It is an vnartificiall kinde of descanting in the middle of a lesson, to let the plainsong sing alone.
1602. Campion, Art Eng. Poesie, Ded. The vulgar and vnarteficiall custome of riming.
1702. S. Parker, trans. Cicero’s De Finibus, III. 154. The Common-Places and suggestions of your Advocates for Pleasure are, at best, but very Shallow and Unartificial.
1790. Burke, Fr. Rev., 275. They have levelled and crushed together all the orders which they found, even under the coarse unartificial arrangement of the monarchy.
1825. Bentham, Ration. Reward, 204. Art and science, on the one hand, and unartificial practice and unscientific knowledge, on the other.
2. Not artificial; simple, natural.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, III. xii. 628. It representeth in an vn-artificiall boldnesse, and infantine securitie, the pure impression and first ignorance of nature.
1656. Earl Monm., trans. Boccalini’s Advts. fr. Parnass., I. lxxvii. (1674), 100. Men who live in sincerity…, with an undisguised and unartificial goodness.
1799. Monthly Rev., XXX. 345. Example arising from a natural unartificial developement of incidents.
