But then how it was sweet!"

_Confessions_, by Robert Browning.]

[262] {220}[Compare--

"In sleep I heard the northern gleams; ...
In rustling conflict through the skies,
I heard, I saw the flashes drive."

_The Complaint_, stanza i. lines 3, 5, 6.

See, too, reference to _Hearne's Journey from Hudson's Bay, etc_., in
prefatory note, _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 86.]

[263] [As Dr. Englaender points out (_Mazeppa_, 1897, p. 73), it is
probable that Byron derived his general conception of the scenery of the
Ukraine from passages in Voltaire's _Charles XII._, e.g.: "Depuis Grodno
jusqu'au Borysthene, en tirant vers l'orient ce sont des marais, des
deserts, des forets immenses" (_Oeuvres_, 1829, xxiv. 170). The
exquisite beauty of the virgin steppes, the long rich grass, the
wild-flowers, the "diviner air," to which the Viscount de Voguee
testifies so eloquently in his _Mazeppa_, were not in the "mind's eye"
of the poet or the historian.]

[bu] {222}

_And stains it with a lifeless red_.--[MS.]
_Which clings to it like stiffened gore_.--[MS. erased.]

[264] {223}[The thread on which the successive tropes or images are
loosely strung seems to give if not to snap at this point. "Considering
that Mazeppa was sprung of a race which in moments of excitement, when
an enemy has stamped upon its vitals, springs up to repel the attack, it
was only to be expected that he should sink beneath the blow--and sink
he did." The conclusion is at variance with the premiss.]

[265] {224}[Compare--

"'Alas,' said she, 'this ghastly ride,
Dear Lady! it hath wildered you.'"

_Christabel_, Part I. lines 216, 217.]

[266] {225}[Compare--

"How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare."

_Ancient Mariner,_ Part V. lines 393, 394.]

[267] [Compare--

"From precipices of distempered sleep."

Sonnet, "No more my visionary soul shall dwell," by S. T. Coleridge,
attributed by Southey to Favell.--_Letters of S. T. Coleridge,_ 1895, i.
83; Southey's _Life and Correspondence,_ 1849, i. 224.]

[268] {226}[Compare _Werner_, iii. 3--

"Burn still,
Thou little light! Thou art my _ignis fatuus_.
My stationary Will-o'-the-wisp!--So! So!"

Compare, too, _Don Juan_, Canto XI. stanza xxvii. line 6, and Canto XV