idleness vs old college try

idleness

noun
  • Groundlessness; worthlessness; triviality; vanity; frivolity. 

  • The state of being idle; inactivity. 

  • The state of being indolent; indolence. 

old college try

noun
  • A vigorous, committed attempt or effort, often in the context of a nearly hopeless situation where failure is expected. 

How often have the words idleness and old college try occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )