a. Occurring at long intervals; infrequent. (Chiefly in predicative use, after Campbell’s echo of Blair’s phrase.)
1743. R. Blair, Grave, 589.
| Alas! too well he sped:—The Good he scorn’d, | |
| Stalk’d off reluctant, like an ill-us’d ghost, | |
| Not to return;—or if it did, its visits, | |
| Like those of angels, short, and far between. |
1797. Campbell, Pleas. Hope, II. 372.
| What though my winged hours of bliss have been, | |
| Like angel-visits, few and far between, | |
| Her musing mood shall every pang appease, | |
| And charm—when pleasures lose the power to please! |
1836–9. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Elect. Beadle, I. 37. Occasions for their coming into direct collision are neither few nor far between.
1861. [F. W. Robinson], No Church, I. ii. 48. Bessy washed and sang, and rinsed the clothes in the stream, and filled her tub with fresh water, totally unconscious of a watcher, travellers being so few and far between Aberogwin way.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, x. 312. These pines are few and far between; growing alone or in pairs they stand like monuments upon the hills, their black forms sculptured on the cloudlike olive groves, from which at intervals spring spires and columns of slender cypress-trees.
