The flourish of his sober youth Was the pride of naked truth.
Crashaw.
3. Something made or performed in a fanciful, wanton, or vaunting
manner, by way of ostentation, to excite admiration, etc.; ostentatious
embellishment; ambitious copiousness or amplification; parade of words
and figures; show; as, a flourish of rhetoric or of wit.
He lards with flourishes his long harangue.
Dryden.