> as lemmas

1579 E. Spenser Shepheardes Cal. Oct. 113 How I could reare the Muse on stately stage, And teache her tread aloft in bus-kin fine. [Gloss., the buskin in poetrie is vsed for tragical matter.]

c1602 C. Marlowe tr. Ovid Elegies ii. xviii. sig. D4^v Tragedies, and scepters fild my lines, But though I apt were for such high deseignes. Loue laughed at my cloak, and buskines painted.

1679 J. Dryden Troilus & Cressida Pref. sig. b2^v I doubt to smell a little too strongly of the Buskin.

1711 H. Cromwell Let. to Pope 7 Dec. (1736) V. 114 Mr. Wilks..has express'd a furious ambition to swell in your buskins.

1786 T. Jefferson Let. 28 Jan. in Papers (1954) IX. 239 It is more difficult here to get small than great news, because most of our correspondents in writing letters to cross the Atlantic, think they must always tread in buskins.

1818 Ld. Byron Beppo xxx. 16 He was a critic upon operas, too, And knew all niceties of the sock and buskin.

1860 A. L. Windsor Ethica iii. 171 Our English dramatists combine the office of comedy and tragedy writers in one and the same person... Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence never put on the buskin.

1910 A. A. Milne Day's Play in Those were Days ii. 49 Though I have never assumed the buskin myself,..I have, of course, heard of you as an amateur actor.

1997 D. Dunnett Game of Kings 27 I was all ready for buskins, and it's nothing but socks.