Note 197 — LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY (continued 4)

Both Newman and Froude often employ this word in a sense now quite obsolete. ‘The notion of diversion, entertainment, is comparatively of recent introduction into the word. To amuse was to cause to muse, to occupy or engage, and in this sense indeed to divert, the thoughts and attention.’ Trench, Select Glossary, 1890, p. 7.

A perfect example of the bygone function of the word occurs in Daniel’s Musophilus, where he condoles with ‘Sacred Religion, mother of form and fear,’ in the days when she must