A common and coarse kind of cloth made of linen and cotton. Hence trumpery of any kind; vain bombastic language.
' Hold, hold, quoth she; no more of this, Sir knight,
you take your aim amiss:
For you will find it a hard chapter
To catch me with poetick rapture,
In which your mastery of art
Doth show itself, and not your heart:
Nor will you raise in mine combustion
By dint of high heroic fustian.'— Butler, Hudibras, ii. l. 583.
Cf also Milton, Areopagitica , p. 35, Clarendon Press Series:
'Nothing had bin there writt'n now these many years but flattery and fustian.'
And in Hudibras, i. l. 98, we have the word in its literal sense:—
''Twas English cut on Greek and Latin Like fustian heretofore on satin.'