4] [The Prince of Orange ... was proclaimed Sovereign Prince of the
Low Countries, December 1, 1813; and in the following year, August 13,
1814, on the condition that he should make a part of the Germanic
Confederation, he received the title of King of the
Netherlands.-_Ibid_., p. 233.]

[245] [Compare "Oceano dissociabili," Hor., _Odes_, I. iii 22.]

[246] [In October, 1812, the American sloop _Wasp_ captured the English
brig _Frolic_; and December 29, 1812, the _Constitution_ compelled the
frigate _Java_ to surrender. In the following year, February 24, 1813,
the _Hornet_ met the _Peacock_ off the Demerara, and reduced her in
fifteen minutes to a sinking condition. On June 28, 1814, the
sloop-of-war _Wasp_ captured and burned the sloop _Reindeer_, and on
September 11, 1814, the _Confiance_, commanded by Commodore Downie, and
other vessels surrendered."--_History of America_, by Justin Winsor,
1888, vii. 380, _seq_.]

[247] {198}[Byron repented, or feigned to repent, this somewhat
provocative eulogy of the Great Republic: "Somebody has sent me some
American abuse of _Mazeppa_ and 'the Ode;' in future I will compliment
nothing but Canada, and desert to the English."--Letter to Murray,
February 21, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 410. It is possible that the
allusion is to an article, "Mazeppa and Don Juan," in the _Analectic
Magazine_, November, 1819, vol. xiv, pp. 405-410.]

MAZEPPA.

INTRODUCTION TO _MAZEPPA_

_Mazeppa_, a legend of the Russian Ukraine, or frontier region, is based
on the passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII_. prefixed as the
"Advertisement" to the poem. Voltaire seems to have known very little
about the man or his history, and Byron, though he draws largely on his
imagination, was content to take his substratum of fact from Voltaire.
The "true story of Mazeppa" is worth re-telling for its own sake, and
lends a fresh interest and vitality to the legend. Ivan Stepanovitch
Mazeppa (or Mazepa), born about the year 1645, was of Cossack origin,
but appears to have belonged, by descent or creation, to the lesser
nobility of the semi-Polish Volhynia. He began life (1660) as a page of
honour in the Court of King John Casimir V. of Poland, where he studied
Latin, and acquired the tongue and pen of eloquent statesmanship.
Banished from the court on account of a quarrel, he withdrew to his
mother's estate in Volhynia, and there, to beguile the t