"All worn with wounds, when day was low.
With severed sword and shattered shield;"
thus making his battle rather a trial of the respective powers of ancient and modern weapons than a conflict between equally-armed foes. Mr. Thackeray perpetrates a nice little anachronism in "The Newcomes," when he makes Clive, in a letter dated 183-, quoting an Academy exhibition critique, ask: "Why have we no picture of the sovereign and her august consort from Smee's brush?"—the author, in his anxiety to compliment the artist, forgetting that there was no consort till 1840.
A bull in a china-shop is scarcely more out of place than a bull in a serious poem, but accidents will happen to the most regular of writers. Thus Milton's pen slipped when he wrote:
"The sea-girt isles
That like to rich and various gems inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep;"
a quotation reminding us that the favorite citation,
"Beauty when unadorned, adorned the most,"
is but a splendid bull, beautiful for its [{273}] boldness. Thomson was an adept at making pretty bulls; here is another:
"He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty concealed;"
as if it were possible to see some of them, although they were concealed. Pope, correct Pope, actually tell us:
"Young Mars in his boundless mind.
A work t' outlast immortal Rome designed."