Mock-heroics.—Cowper, in one of his letters to Joseph Hill, reminds his friend of the following mock-heroic line, written at one of their convivial meetings, called the Nonsense Club—
"To whom replied the Devil, yard-long-tail'd;"
And adds, "there never was anything more truly Grecian than that triple epithet; and were it possible to introduce it either into the Iliad or Odyssey, I should certainly steal it." This of course was written in jest; and had the translator been disposed to exemplify his own pleasantry, he might have found an opportunity in the well-known line of the sixth book of the Iliad—
Αιδεομας Θρωας αι Θρωαδας ελκεσιπεπλους
[Greek: Aideomas Trôas ai Trôadas elkesipeplous.]
I dread the Trojan ladies, yard-long-tail'd;
Of which Pope makes this sweeping periphrasis—
"And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground."