1832, John Wilson, Noctes Ambrosianæ No. LX, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 32, No. 190, February 1832, p. 281, […] let [a poet] speak of a man-of-war in a style that shows he knows a frigate from a three-decker, a cutter from a schooner […] , and Neptune shall be to him Apollo, the Nereids the Muses, and every line shall be a line of light—all a-dazzle with appropriate words, surcharged with the imagery of the great deep.
Source: wiktionary