"Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. We looked out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. […]
1791 — Fanny Burney, diary entry dated 8 August 1791, in Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay: 1788 to 1796 (ed. Charlotte Barrett), Bickers and Son, page 359:
Hence we set out, after dinner, for Lyme, and the road through which we travelled is the most beautiful to which my wandering destinies have sent me. It is diversified with all that can compose luxuriant scenery, and with just as much of the sublime as is the province of unterrific beauty.
1887 — John Ruskin, Præterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts, George Allen (1887), pages 392-393:
Of these the nearest — yet about twelve miles distant — is the before-named Brezon, a majestic, but unterrific, fortalice of cliff, forest, and meadow, with unseen nests of village, and unexpected balm and honey of garden and orchard nursed in its recesses.