On a rock orchid, the roundness and gloze / Of a lapith's bum!

It would form an interesting essay […] were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as strenuous, conscious, &c, and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not.

But maybe the uneventfulness was merely par for the course.

Those of us old enough will also recall that Japan used to scare the pants off Americans and just about everyone else.