Some words in this poetic diction are no longer much used. “Breathing,” is an example. It usually referred to the air in gentle motion, as “breathing gales,” but we also find “breathing earth,” referring to mists, and “breathing sweets,” and “breathing flowers” or “breathing roses,” where the reference is to perfume. “Maze” and “mazy” are also much used. The Thames and other streams lead along “mazy trains.” The track of the hare is an “airy maze.” Paths meet in narrow mazes and stars unite in a mazy, complicated dance. Milton’s stream flows with “mazy error.” This word “error” is frequently used in its exact derived meaning. In another place Milton speaks of streams that wander with “serpent error.”[159] Blair has a stream that slides along in “grateful errors.”[160] In Falconer the light strays through the forest with “gay romantic error.”[161] In Gay the fly floats about with “wanton errors.”[162] Dyer winds along a mazy path with “error sweet.”[163] Armstrong’s “error” leads him through endless labyrinths.[164] Addison’s waves roll in “restless errors,”[165] and Thomson treads the “maze of autumn with cheerful error.”[166] “Amusive” is a word applied by Pitt to the ocean, and by Mallet to clouds; Shenstone says that country joys “amuse securely.”[167] It seems to be half apologetic in tone in some cases; in others it merely means pleasing. Thomson used the word as verb or adjective several times.[168] We also find it in Parnell.[169] “Lawn” is used in the sense of an open glade in the woods. Even so late as Wordsworth this meaning persists.[170] One unpleasant but not uncommon word is “sweat.” It may be a survival from the metaphysical conceits, for we find in Dr. Donne a reference to the “sweet sweat of roses,” and Cowley has flowery Hermon “sweat” beneath the dews of night. Dryden has flowers sweat at night.[171] Fenton’s flowers all pale and blighted lie, And in cold sweats of sickly mildew die.[172] Even Gray talks about the “sickly dews”[173] of night, and Thomson has caverns “sweat.”[174] Garth, as a physician, may possibly be excused for having the “sickening flowers” drink up the silver dew, and the grass tainted with “sickly sweats of dew,” but when he has the fair oak adorned with “luscious sweats,”[175] he has gone into the realm of aesthetics, and no excuse can prevail. The power of fashion in words in a conventional age is further shown by the prevalence of adjectives ending in “y.” They are favorites with Dryden, and hold their own steadily through the century that followed. Beamy, bloomy, forky, branchy, flamy, purply, steepy, spumy, surgy, foamy, blady, dampy, chinky, sweepy, sheltry, moony, paly, tusky, heapy, miny, saggy, and many more, occur where at present there would be no ending or the ending “-ing.”