insipidity

Nahum Tate was Poet Laureate, a cold writer, of no invention, but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr. Dryden. In his second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the insipidity of the rest.

The lovers of beauty, preferring what is dull to what is offensive, will rather doze over the inanities and insipidities of a drowsy dilettantism, than choose to be irritated into wakeful attention by ugly contours, disproportioned figures, and ill-assorted colours, drawn and arranged after the hard and ignorant manner of the early Christian painters, and imbued with the childish symbolism of the dismal Middle Ages.