“Be Homer’s works your study and delight, Read them by day and meditate by night.”[135] In this case Byron’s version, “Ye who seek finished models, never cease By day and night to read the works of Greece,”[136] is slightly more literal. Horace’s treatise, technically an epistle, suffers from a want of coherence. In plan it is merely a group of maxims, with illustrations and amplifications. _Hints from Horace_ is even more muddled and formless. It is like a collection of detached thoughts in verse, with each single observation jotted down almost at haphazard without regard to what comes before or after. It is no exaggeration to say that whole sections of the satire might be lifted bodily from one page to another without perceptibly affecting the continuity of thought. This defect, obscured in Horace and Pope by the epigrammatic brilliancy of separate phrases and the lift of “winged words,” has, in Byron’s poem, few counterbalancing virtues. _Hints from Horace_ lacks the finished perfection of style which distinguishes the _Ars Poetica_ and the _Epistle to Augustus_. Its versification is, except in isolated lines, feeble and careless, far inferior to that of _English Bards_, and even sinking at times, as in the passage on _Hudibras_,[137] into bare prosing. One finds in the poem confirmation of Byron’s confession to Lord Holland in 1812:--“Latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning.”[138] If the dates furnished by the poet are correct, 722 lines, at least, of the satire must have been composed in two weeks, a speed which may explain some of the defects in execution. Certainly, even with due allowance for Byron’s strange fondness, it must be considered one of his poorest works in structure, diction, and versification. Nor can it, viewed merely as a medium for satire, claim a high rank. It is too obviously didactic in its purpose and too general in its attacks. It does not even possess the special interest which attaches to _English Bards_ because of the references to contemporary and famous writers in the latter work. Only a few lines are devoted to personal satire, and these seldom do more than repeat or amplify the criticism embodied in the earlier poem. The result is that _Hints from Horace_, taken as a satire only, is open to a charge of futility, in that its motive is not definite and its satire is too scattered. It cannot go straight to the mark, because it is aiming at no particular target. As in _English Bards_, a large proportion of the satire is placed in prose notes. The longest passage of satire in verse is that directed at Jeffrey. The lines:-- “On shores of Euxine or Ægean sea, My hate, untraveiled, fondly turned to thee,”