_Divine Comedy_. Some twenty-seven lines, "the
sole example in English literature of that period, of the use of _terza
rima_, obviously copied from Dante" (_Complete Works of Chaucer_, by the
Rev. W. Skeat, 1894, i. 76, 261), are imbedded in Chaucer's _Compleint
to his Lady_. In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey ("Description of the restless state of a lover"),
"as novises newly sprung out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and
Petrarch" (Puttenham's _Art of Poesie_, 1589, pp. 48-50); and later
again, Daniel ("To the Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedford"), Ben Jonson, and
Milton (_Psalms_ ii., vi.) afford specimens of _terza rima_. There was,
too, one among Byron's contemporaries who had already made trial of the
metre in his _Prince Athanase_ (1817) and _The Woodman and the
Nightingale_ (1818), and who, shortly, in his _Ode to the West Wind_
(October, 1819, published 1820) was to prove that it was not impossible
to write English poetry, if not in genuine _terza rima_, with its
interchange of double rhymes, at least in what has been happily styled
the "Byronic _terza rima_." It may, however, be taken for granted that,
at any rate in June, 1819, these fragments of Shelley's were unknown to
Byron. Long after Byron's day, but long years before his dream was
realized, Mrs. Browning, in her _Casa Guidi Windows_ (1851), in the same
metre, re-echoed the same aspiration (see her _Preface_), "that the
future of Italy shall not be disinherited." (See for some of these
instances of _terza rima_, _Englische Metrik_, von Dr. J. Schipper,
1888, ii. 896. See, too, _The Metre of Dante's Comedy discussed and
exemplified_, by Alfred Forman and Harry Buxton Forman, 1878, p. 7.)

The MS. of the _Prophecy of Dante_, together with the Preface, was
forwarded to Murray, March 14, 1820; but in spite of some impatience on
the part of the author (Letter to Murray, May 8, 1820, _Letters_, 1901,
v. 20), and, after the lapse of some months, a pretty broad hint
(Letter, August 17, 1820, _ibid_., p. 165) that "the time for the Dante
would be good now ... as Italy is on the eve of great things,"
publication was deferred till the following year. _Marino Faliero, Doge
of Venice_, and the _Prophecy of Dante_ were published in the same
volume, April 21, 1821.

The _Prophecy of Dante_ was briefly but favourably noticed by Jeffrey in
his review of _Marino Faliero_ (_Edinb. Rev._, July, 1821, vol. 35, p.
285). "It is a very gr