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]