unliveliness

The soberest and best-governed men are least practised in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation?

The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 David Masson 1864

The soberest and best-governed men are least practised in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation?

The Life of John Milton Masson, David, 1822-1907 1859

But she had youth, and country freshness; her "unliveliness and natural sloth unfit for conversation" passed as "the bashful muteness of a virgin;" and if a doubt intruded that he was being too hasty, Milton may have thought that a girl of seventeen could be moulded at pleasure.

Milton Mark Pattison 1848

The “soberest and best-governed men, ” he says, “are least practised in these affairs, ” are not very well aware that “the bashful muteness” of a young lady “may ofttimes hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation, ” and are rather in too great haste to “light the nuptial torch”: whereas those “who have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches; because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience.

John Milton (1859) 1909