"either the third foot must be read as an anapaest or the word hugest must be pronounced as one syllable, hug'st," I think Milton would have invoked the soul of Sir John Cheek. 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