Now rant! rave! roar! and rend! and rattle.
I Christopher Caustic, censured by critics, for my apt alliterations, though artfully allied, yet presume it is policy for a pennyless poet to polish his puny lays to such a pitch of perfection, that posterity may please to place the pithy production paramount to the peaked point of the pinnicle of Pierian Parnassus.
Drives, Jehu-like, Death’s iron wagon!!
A poet of less judgment than myself would have seated Mars in the chariot of Victory, a Vauxhall car, or some other flimsy vehicle of that kind, which would be sure to be dashed to pieces in a conflict like this in which we are at present engaged. The carriage here introduced was made by Vulcan, in his best style of workmanship, for the express purpose of this attack, and in point of strength and size, bears no more proportion to the chariot commonly used by the god of war, than one of those huge broad-wheeled Manchester wagons to the little whalebone thingamy which the duke of Queensbury ran at New Market.
Rend the blue “blanket” of the skies.
This is the same “blanket” which Mr Canning said was “wet” when he exhibited it in the House of Commons. Since his use of it on that occasion it has been so frequently wrung by the wits, that it has now become a perfectly dry and almost thread-bare article.