It will not do, however, to take this assertion too seriously, especially since incitements of a far different sort seem to have occasioned several sections of the poem. Besides conforming to the conventional practice of his predecessors in these three important respects, Byron linked himself with them by so many other ties that even in matters of minor detail _English Bards_ resembles the classical satires of Pope and Gifford. As a satire it may justly be compared with the _Dunciad_ and the _Baviad_, and may be judged by the standards which are applied to them. An analysis of _English Bards_ is rendered difficult by the lack of any coherent plan in the poem, and its consequent failure to follow any logical order in treating its material. The author wanders from his avowed theme to satirise the depravity of the Argyle Institution and to ridicule the antiquarian folly of Aberdeen and Elgin, slipping, moreover, easily from critics to bards and from bards to critics, as a train of observations occurs to him. The same excuse may be pleaded for him that Mathias advanced in his own behalf: that an informing personality lends a kind of unity to the poem. It may be said, too, that the classical satire, not aiming as a rule to be compact and close in structure, is very likely to become a panorama in which figures pass in long review. This impression is conveyed in _English Bards_ by the use of stock phrases which serve to introduce each new character as if he were appearing in a parade of celebrities.[74] Under the false impression that Jeffrey was responsible for the scornful review of _Hours of Idleness_, Byron singled him out for violent abuse, though he did not neglect his colleagues, “the allied usurpers on the throne of taste.” For his attack on critics as a class Byron could have found much encouragement in previous English satire. Dryden had expressed a common enough feeling of authors, in the lines: “They who write ill, and they who ne’er durst write, Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.”[75] Pope had condemned the “bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,” who knows no method in his calling but censure.[76] Young had carried out rather tamely in his third satire his boastful intention of falling upon critics: “Like the bold bird upon the banks of Nile, That picks the teeth of the vile crocodile.”