er, and for five years remained the guest of Turkey."--_Peter the
Great_, by Eugene Schuyler, 1884, ii. 149-151.]

THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.

"'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before."

Campbell, [_Lochiel's Warning_].

INTRODUCTION TO _THE PROPHECY OF DANTE_.

The _Prophecy of Dante_ was written at Ravenna, during the month of
June, 1819, "to gratify" the Countess Guiccioli. Before she left Venice
in April she had received a promise from Byron to visit her at Ravenna.
"Dante's tomb, the classical pinewood," and so forth, had afforded a
pretext for the invitation to be given and accepted, and, at length,
when she was, as she imagined, "at the point of death," he arrived,
better late than never, "on the Festival of the _Corpus Domini_" which
fell that year on the tenth of June (see her communication to Moore,
_Life_, p. 399). Horses and books were left behind at Venice, but he
could occupy his enforced leisure by "writing something on the subject
of Dante" (_ibid_., p. 402). A heightened interest born of fuller
knowledge, in Italian literature and Italian politics, lent zest to this
labour of love, and, time and place conspiring, he composed "the best
thing he ever wrote" (Letter to Murray, March 23, 1820, _Letters_, 1900,
iv. 422), his _Vision_ (or _Prophecy_) _of Dante_.

It would have been strange if Byron, who had sounded his _Lament_ over
the sufferings of Tasso, and who had become _de facto_ if not _de jure_
a naturalized Italian, had forborne to associate his name and fame with
the sacred memory of the "Gran padre Alighier." If there had been any
truth in Friedrich Schlegel's pronouncement, in a lecture delivered at
Vienna in 1814, "that at no time has the greatest and most national of
all Italian poets ever been much the favourite of his countrymen," the
reproach had become meaningless. As the sumptuous folio edition (4
vols.) of the _Divina Commedia_, published at Florence, 1817-19; a
quarto edition (4 vols.) published at Rome, 1815-17; a folio edition (3
vols.) published at Bologna 1819-21, to which the Conte Giovanni
Marchetti (_vide_ the Preface, _post_, p. 245) contributed his famous
excursus on the allegory in the First Canto of the _Inferno_, and
numerous other issues remain to testify, Dante's own countrymen were
eager "to pay honours almost divine" to