3) is a prologue to the play. The
"Lakers" had given samples of their poetry, their politics and their
morals, and now it was his turn to speak and to speak out. He too would
write "An Excursion." He doubted that _Don Juan_ might be "too free for
these modest days." It _was_ too free for the public, for his publisher,
even for his mistress; and the "building up of the drama," as Shelley puts
it, was a slow and gradual process. Cantos I., II. were published (4to) on
the 15th of July 1819; Cantos III., IV., V., finished in November 1820,
were not published till the 8th of August 1821. Cantos VI.-XVI., written
between June 1822 and March 1823, were published at intervals between the
15th of July 1823 and the 26th of March 1824. Canto XVII. was begun in May
1823, but was never finished. A fragment of fourteen stanzas, found in his
room at Missolonghi, was first published in 1903.

He did not put all his materials into _Don Juan_. "Mazeppa, a tale of the
Russian Ukraine," based on a passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII._, was
finished by the 30th of September 1818 and published with "An Ode" (on
Venice) on the 28th of June 1819. In the spring of 1819 Byron met in
Venice, and formed a connexion with, an Italian lady of rank, Teresa (born
Gamba), wife of the Cavaliere Guiccioli. She was young and beautiful,
well-read and accomplished. Married at sixteen to a man nearly four times
her age, she fell in love with Byron at first sight, soon became and for
nearly four years remained his mistress. A good and true wife to him in all
but name, she won from Byron ample devotion and a prolonged constancy. Her
volume of _Recollections_ (_Lord Byron juge par les temoins de sa vie_,
1869), taken for what it is worth, is testimony in Byron's favour. The
countess left Venice for Ravenna at the end of April; within a month she
sent for Byron, and on the 10th of June he arrived at Ravenna and took
rooms in the Strada di Porto Sisi. The house (now No. 295) is close to
Dante's tomb, and to gratify the countess and pass the time he wrote the
"Prophecy of Dante" (published April 21, 1821). According to the preface
the poem was a metrical experiment, an exercise in _terza rima_; but it had
a deeper significance. It was "intended for the Italians." Its purport was
revolutionary. In the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, already translated
into Italian, he had attacked the powers, and "Albion most of all" for her
betrayal of Venice, and knowing that his wo