Note 263 — MAZEPPA.
Reading edition
[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 déserts, des forêts 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 Vogüé testifies so eloquently in his Mazeppa, were not in the "mind's eye" of the poet or the historian.]