Of course Milton read it
"Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream,"
just as he wrote (if we may trust Mr. Masson's facsimile)
"Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills,"
a verse in which both hiatus and elision occur precisely as in the
Italian poets.[377]
"Gest that swim" would be rather a knotty _anapaest_, an insupportable
foot indeed! And why is even _hug'st_ worse than Shakespeare's
"_Young'st_ follower of thy drum"?
In the same way he says of
"For we have also our evening and our morn,"
that "the metre of this line is irregular," and of the rapidly fine
"Came flying and in mid air aloud thus cried,"
that it is "a line of unusual metre." Why more unusual than
"As being the contrary to his high will"?
What would Mr. Masson say to these three verses from Dekkar?--
"And _knowing_ so much, I muse thou art so poor";
"I fan away the dust _flying_ in mine eyes";
"_Flowing_ o'er with court news only of you and them."
All such participles (where no consonant divided the vowels) were
normally of one syllable, permissibly of two.[378] If Mr. Masson had
studied the poets who preceded Milton as he has studied _him_, he would
never have said that the verse
"Not this rock only; his omnipresence fills,"
was "peculiar as having a distinct syllable of overmeasure.
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