text:  While the production of Byron is rather an admirable development of certain incidents either entirely invented by the poet or only slightly suggested by passages of the old Kazak Hetman's biography the _Mazepa_ of Pushkin is a most spirited and faithful version of the real history of the romantic life of the hero; the actual events adopted by the Russian poet as the groundwork of his tale being certainly not inferior in strangeness novelty and romantic incident to the short fiery tale dawning rosily in mutual love and finishing with the wild gallop on the desert steed which thrills us so deeply in the pages of Byron