In _Don Juan_ this employment of uncommon rhymes had become a genuine art. Byron once declared to Trelawney that Swift was the greatest master of rhyming in English; but Byron is as superior to Swift as the latter is to Barham and Browning in this respect. Indeed Byron’s only rival is Butler, and there are many who would maintain, on good grounds, that Byron as a master of rhyming is greater than the author of _Hudibras_. When we consider the length of _Don Juan_, the constant demand for double and triple rhymes, and the fact that Byron seldom repeated himself, we cannot help marvelling at the linguistic cleverness which enabled him to discover such unheard-of combinations of syllables and words. Some of the most extraordinary have become almost classic,[329] _e.g._:-- “But--Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?”[330] “Since in a way that’s rather of the oddest, he Became divested of his native modesty.”[331] Naturally in securing such a variety of rhymes he was forced to draw from many sources. Foreign languages proved a rich field, and he obtained from them some striking examples of words similar in sound, sometimes rhyming them with words from the same language, sometimes fitting them to English words and phrases. Some typical specimens are worthy of quotation: Latin--in medias res, please, ease.[332] Greek--critic is, poietikes.[333] French--seat, tête-à-tête, bete.[334] Italian--plenty, twenty, “mi vien in mente.”[335] Spanish--Lopé, copy.[336] Russian--Strokenoff, Chokenoff, poke enough.[337] Byron also resorts to the uses of proper names, borrowed from many tongues: Dante’s--Cervantes.[338] Hovel is--Mephistophelis.[339] Tyrian--Presbyterian.[340] Avail us--Sardanapalus.[341] Pukes in--Euxine.[342] It may be added, too, that he was seldom over-accurate or careful in making his rhymes exact. In one instance he rhymes certainty--philosophy--progeny.[343] Most stanzas have either double or triple rhymes, but there are occasional stanzas in which all the rhymes are single.[344] In _Don Juan_ run-on lines are the rule rather than the exception. Certain stanzas are really sentences in which the thought moves straight on, disregarding entirely the ordinary restrictions of versification.[345] In more than one case the idea is even carried from one stanza to another without a pause.[346] In one extraordinary instance a word is broken at the end of a line and finished at the beginning of the next,[347] following the example set by the Anti-Jacobin in Rogero’s song in _The Rovers_. Like a public speaker, Byron at times neglects coherence in order to keep the thread of his discourse or to digress momentarily without losing grip on his audience.