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." 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:--
"A hundred [hundered] and fifty thousand horse, Two hundred thousand foot, brave men at arms."[379]
Mr. Masson is especially puzzled by verses ending in one or more unaccented syllables, and even argues in his Introduction that some of them might be reckoned Alexandrines. He cites some lines of Spenser as confirming his theory, forgetting that rhyme wholly changes the conditions of the case by throwing the accent (appreciably even now, but more emphatically in Spenser's day) on the last syllable.
"A spirit and judgment equal or superior,"
he calls "a remarkably anomalous line, consisting of twelve or even thirteen syllables." Surely Milton's ear would never have tolerated a dissyllabic "spirit" in such a position. The word was then more commonly of one syllable, though it might be two, and was accordingly spelt _spreet_ (still surviving in _sprite_), _sprit_, and even _spirt_, as Milton himself spells it in one of Mr. Masson's facsimiles.[380] Shakespeare, in the verse
"Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,"
uses the word admirably well in a position where it _cannot_ have a metrical value of more than one syllable, while it gives a dancing movement to the verse in keeping with the sense. Our old metrists were careful of elasticity, a quality which modern verse has lost in proportion as our language has stiffened into uniformity under the benumbing fingers of pedants.