Repels their forward passage into air.
In “The Poet” there is a striking example of what can only be the pedantic, even if playful, use of a cumbrous epithet:
On shelves pulverulent, majestic stands
His library.
Similar examples are to be found in “The Art of Preserving Health” by John Armstrong, published in the same year as Akenside’s “Pleasures.” The unpoetical nature of this subject may perhaps be Armstrong’s excuse for such passages as
Mournful eclipse or planets ill-combined
Portend disastrous to the vital world;
but this latinizing tendency was perhaps never responsible for a more absurd periphrasis than one to be found in the second part of the poem, which treats of “Diet”:
Nor does his gorge the luscious bacon rue,
Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste