"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." He retains Milton's spelling of hunderd without perceiving the metrical reason for it, that d, t, p, b, &c., followed by l or r, might be either of two or of three syllables. In Marlowe we find it both ways in two consecutive verses:—