MONTI

1754-1828.

Monti is, without question, the greatest Italian poet that has appeared

since the golden days of its poetry: he alone emulates his predecessors

in the higher flights of the imagination. It has been pronounced of

Dryden, that if each of the princes of poetry surpassed him in their

peculiar vein, yet his fire and originality give him a near place beside

them. Thus Monti has not the sublimity of Dante, nor the tenderness of

Petrarch; neither the inventive flow of Ariosto, nor Tasso's epic

conception and voluptuous grace: but he has a fervour, a power of

imagery, an overflowing and redundance of ideal thought, that mark the

genuine poet.

He came to revive the languid and unnatural style that flourished under

the reign of the Arcadians. Some few real poets had sprung up in Italy

in the interval between Ariosto and Monti: they are recorded in this

volume. Chiabrera and Filicaja are the chief. These men found in the

inspiration of their own minds the power that led them to adopt a style

of their own, and to bestow originality--which, in one shape or another,

is the vivifying soul of composition,--on their productions. Metastasio

carried clearness and grace of expression to a great perfection, but he

wanted strength and daring: Alfieri had not a trace of that sunshiny and

rainbow-like (so to speak) colour-giving power of fancy, without which

there is no real poetry. For the rest, the poets of those days were

Arcadians; the very word seems to express volumes of inane affectation,

and turgid, yet soulless, language. It is thus that a clever Italian

critic of the present day speaks of them:--"To the hyperboles and

conceits of the seicentisti, succeeded the follies and pastorals of the

Arcadians. The subject treated by these poets were restrained in narrow

limits; they were all futile, trite, vulgar, or silly,--adulatory, or

false. A new-married pair, a nun,--the new-born babe of some sovereign

or noble,--the election of a cardinal, or a bishop, or even of an

abbé--a funeral or a feigned love; such were the favourite themes of

the Arcadians. Was a marriage in question,--Hymen was adjured to bring

its chains to link two hearts; and a new Hercules or Achilles was

prognosticated as the future result of the union. If a girl shut herself

up in the cloister, the poets expatiated on her happiness; they

described the heavenly bridegroom as descending and stretching out his

hand to her, while the mischievous Cupid angrily threw away his golden

quiver; a censurable mixture of sacred and profane imagery was thus

introduced, and their ideas were steeped in two fountains, in

contradiction one to the other, the Bible and mythology. The most

shameless flattery blotted their pages, as they praised one another, and

depicted themselves on the heights of Parnassus,--beside the waters of

Hypocrene,--in the company of Apollo and the Muses; and the wonders of

Orpheus and Amphion were renewed, to express the charms of each other's

verses. No Arcadian dared imagine himself enamoured of a human being:

she was no mortal woman, but a goddess,--a Venus sprung on the instant

from the foam of the sea: lips, and eyes, and hair, had all their

appropriate, still-repeated epithets: did their lady sigh, or did one

word escape the paling of her ivory teeth,--tempests fled, the winds

were stilled, and Jove was again tempted to transform himself into a

bull for her sake."[52]

Men can do strange things when they associate in companies, and keep

each other in countenance by a wide-spread folly, that bars out the

wholesome fear of ridicule. Thus, the Arcadians had colonies all over

Italy. They gave feigned names to each other; they lauded, and

celebrated, and crowned each other. Good sense and good taste were

sacrificed in the emulation each felt to transcend his rivals in a

sonorous and turgid system of words, in which neither passion nor

thought appeared.[53] A new genius was wanted to trample on this

overgrowth of vanity or folly, and to gift the tamed and chained

language of Dante and Bojardo with wings and liberty. Such was the poet,

the incidents of whose life we now proceed to detail.

Vincenzo Monti was born in Romagna, on the 19th of February, 1754. His

father's simple, and even humble, but pretty and agreeable, house was

situated among the vineyards and agricultural country which lies between

Fusignano and the Alfonsine, in the Ravennese territory. The air is

healthy and serene, the country fertile and diversified, and the style

of life of his parents such as at once cultivated simplicity of taste

and kindness of heart. Nothing can be more primitive and patriarchal

than the mode of life of the smaller landholders in Italy; and to this

class Monti's father belonged. The farm-house--or villa, as it is

called, if a little better than a cottage--is situated amidst the ground

they cultivate. The name of _podere_ is given to these small farms,

enclosed by hedges, within whose limits grapes, corn, vegetables, and

fruits are all cultivated in a sort of picturesque confusion. The vines,

trained on trellises, form covered walks; and the sound of the

water-wheel is continually heard, and of the water trickling through the

conduits that lead it to the various parts of the grounds. The Italian

farmer works very hard, and the cottager still harder. He divides the

produce of the land with his landlord, entertains few servants, and his

habits are at once laborious and frugal. The parents of Monti were an

excellent specimen of the virtues of this unpretending race. They are

still remembered in the country by numbers of the poor whom they

assisted and comforted. Their children were brought up to consider it a

valuable privilege to bestow help upon those in want of the necessaries

of life, and Vincenzo in particular inherited from them a warm heart and

a tenderness of feeling that caused him to be idolised in his domestic

circle.

Monti passed his early boyhood in this rural retirement. To the end of

his life he remembered with fondness the days of his childhood, which

were spent gaily amidst a large family of three brothers, older than

himself, and five sisters. The reward for good behaviour among them was

a permission to distribute charity among the indigent,--a sacred,

soul-saving duty with catholics. The well-known benevolence of his

parents drew numbers to their house, where portions of food were

distributed to them. His mother never felt so happy as when thus

engaged; and it is related of her that, when, a few years after, the

family removed to Majano, where their charitable habits were at first

unknown, she complained in a sort of alarm that they were no longer

visited by the poor. The same biographer relates a story of Vincenzo. On

one occasion he was permitted to distribute the portions of food to

mendicants, who entered at one door and went out at the other: some

among them fancied that they could deceive the child, and returned

twice; and he, with ingenuous shame, turned away, and gave to them twice

without looking, that he might not be obliged to accuse them of their

trick. "An anecdote," continues his biographer, "perhaps scarcely worth

relating, only that it describes the character, or rather, it may be

said, the whole life of Monti, who, even in old age, frequently suffered

himself voluntarily to be imposed upon." Were a philosophical analysis

of Monti's disposition to be attempted, it might be discovered how this

sensitiveness to the shame of others, this sparing of their feelings in

preference to the assertion of truth and honesty, makes a part of the

same weakness that led him always to regard as a secondary consideration

moral truths and political integrity, when put in competition with the

happiness and welfare of his domestic circle. We call this sort of

sensibility weakness, because, though usually united to great private

rectitude of character, it is incompatible with the heroism of the

patriot and the martyr.

For several years Monti had no instructors except his kind parents; but,

soon after their removal to Majano, he was sent to the seminary of

Faenza, which enjoyed a good reputation for the solidity of its

instruction; there he learnt early and well the Latin language. His

first attempts in Latin verse were, however, so singularly infelicitous,

that his master thought it necessary to put him into a lower class than

that in which he had first been placed. The boy, roused to indignation,

made no complaints, but secretly learned by heart the whole of the

Æneid; and persevered so earnestly in conquering the difficulties, that

his Latin verses soon became distinguished for a style and harmony that

announced his poetic talent. His second trial was so different from the

first, that his masters began to regard him as a sort of prodigy; and he

himself entered with delight and ardour on the study of the Roman poets.

The full force of his impetuous and fertile imagination was early

awakened by them, and he began to exercise the art peculiar to his

country of extemporising verses; but his master had the judgment to

withdraw him from an exercise so pernicious to the strength and critical

delicacy of poetry, and induced him to write with care and meditation.

He was yet a boy when, under this tutelage, he composed a volume of

elegies, several of which have been printed.

It is the usual custom among the smaller landholders of Romagna to

destine their youngest sons to the agricultural labours of their farms;

and this was fixed as the career of Monti. He yielded to his father's

commands, but with reluctance. His mind was opened to the necessity of

cultivation, and mere manual labour and low-thoughted cares were

infinitely distasteful to him. His heart was with the Latin poets, from

whom he could not separate himself; and his dislike to every occupation

that was not intellectual grew to be insurmountable. His father thought

it necessary to reprove him; and a scene ensued similar to one recorded

as having taken place, several centuries before, between Petrarch and

his father. Vincenzo, moved by his parent's reproof to a belief that his

literary predilections were reprehensible, made a resolution to renounce

them. He led his father into his chamber, and there, before him, threw

his favourite authors into a large fire. The good man, touched by this

act of docility, gave him twelve sequins; and the youth, unable to

resist the temptation thus held out, hastened to the neighbouring fair

of Luga, and spent the whole sum in buying over again the authors whose

works he had left at home, still warm in the ashes of the fire into

which he had thrown them. His father, seeing the inutility of combating

with his inclinations, sent him to the university of Ferrara, wishing

him to enter on the legal or medical profession. But, after a few vain

attempts to apply himself to these studies, Monti gave up every other

pursuit, and dedicated himself wholly to the cultivation of literature

and poetry. He still continued to write in Latin, and always retained a

predilection for this language, and later in life translated some of his

own works into it. His first Italian poem was "The Prophecy of Jacob."

It was, of course, inexact in versification, and unequal; but when Jacob

prophesies the future glory of the Lion of Judah, the style rises into

vigour, and even sublimity. At this time the "Visions" of Varino and the

sonnets of Minzoni, two Ferrarese poets, fell into his hands. They rose

above the inanities of the Arcadians, and indicated to him the path he

should pursue. Through reading them he was brought to the perusal of

Dante, and his soul opened at once to the conception of all that Italian

poetry contains of grand and beautiful. Henceforth Alighieri was his

model and master, and he regarded at once with admiration and a sort of

worship the elevated and godlike powers of this most inspired of poets.

He wrote the "Vision of Ezekiel" in a sort of imitation of his

favourite, in which he displayed that grandeur of imagery and command of

language which distinguish his compositions.

Cardinal Borghese was at that time legate at Ferrara. Admiring the

youth's genius, he took him under his protection. On his return from his

legation, he obtained the elder Monti's consent to his son's

accompanying him to Rome. He was now eighteen. The first intimacy that

he formed in the capital was with Ennio Quirino Visconti, a man of vast

erudition; and under his direction Monti extended his classical

knowledge. It happened, while he was at Rome, that the Erme of Pericles

and Aspasia were discovered,--one in excavations made in the villa of

Cassius at Tivoli, the other at Cività Vecchia. Visconti wrote a

treatise on these marbles, and invited his friend to celebrate them in a

poem; and he wrote the "Prosopopea di Pericle," which is preserved in

the Vatican museum, written with great simplicity of style, and his

usual easy flow, yet fervour, of language. This was the first time that

he appeared in the character of a poet at Rome; and it was followed by

several other attempts. He thus attracted attention; but, having no

fixed situation, after remaining some years in the capital, he was on

the point of complying with his father's frequent requests that he would

return home, when a circumstance happened to change his plans. The

Arcadians of the Bosco Parrasio celebrated the Quinquenalli of Pius VI.

(1780, ætat. 26.); when Monti recited some of his compositions, which

attracted so much applause that the duke of Braschi, the pope's nephew,

sent for him the next day, and offered him the place of his secretary,

which was at once accepted. Monti remained at Rome in the house of the

prince, who treated him with all the kindness of friendship, and he

enjoyed full leisure to pursue his literary studies.

Yet it is, perhaps, matter of regret that Monti should have been thus

employed. It is very difficult to make rules for the education of

genius, when, on the one hand, care and want may fetter, and even crush,

its loftiest aspirations; or too much case and leisure wean it from

habits of industry, and foster the dissipation of thought and feeling

which too frequently accompanies the poetic temperament. Monti's muse

had surely not been silent if he had remained in his father's farm,

surrounded by the luxuriant beauty of nature, and supported by conscious

worth and independence. But no people need so much sympathy as poets.

The interchange of thought and feeling, the fresh spirit of inquiry and

invention, that springs from the collision or harmony of different

minds, are with them a necessity and a passion. And though solitude is

named the mother of all that is truly sublime, yet this solitude ought

not to be that of desolation, but retirement to meditate on the stores

heaped up in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. Monti, among the

uncultivated peasantry of Romagna, might have found his glowing

enthusiasm grow cool from the absence of appreciation, and the want of

sympathy and equal intercourse.

Yet servitude at the court of Rome was no good moral school. To the

years he spent in the service of the pope's nephew, the habits of

dependence, and his daily intercourse with courtiers, may be attributed

that want of political integrity, and ready worship of ruling powers,

which was the great blot of Monti's character. The genuine glow of real

talent, the ambition natural to conscious genius, and the instinct of

one, in whom invention and the power of expression were indigenous, to

pour forth his ideas and sentiments, qualities which indefeasibly

belonged to him, would, in almost any situation, have made Monti a

writer. He might have been less refined in the farms of Romagna, but

more useful as a moral and dignified asserter of truth and independence.

Yet we must reflect that the germ of each man's character is born with

him, to be checked or fostered by education, but still there to colour

the tide of thought and influence the motives of conduct. And as

independence and strength of principle never displayed themselves as a

part of Monti's character, temptation might have found him as willing a

slave in the poverty of his farm as in the luxurious servitude of papal

Rome.

At Rome, at least, he continued to cultivate his poetic tastes. He

produced several poems which kept alive his fame. On occasion of the

marriage of his patron, the duke of Braschi, he wrote an ode entitled

"Beauty of the Universe;" and he celebrated the journey of Pius VI. to

the imperial court in a poem entitled the "Apostolic Pilgrim." But he

aspired to signalise himself by some greater work, and long meditated

writing a tragedy. As early as 1779 he writes to a friend,--"I am weary

of writing verses on frivolous subjects. A tragic drama is the notion

that most delights me. But how can I satisfy the craving I have to write

a tragedy, since I am not able to tranquillise my mind, and am occupied

by affairs which have no connection with poetry? An hundred times I have

begun, and as often broken off." And in another letter he expresses a

feeling which has often entered the mind of any one deeply interested in

carrying on some literary labour:--"I have a ravenous desire," he says,

"to write tragedies, which preys upon me. This is my madness; and I am

in despair, because I fear to die before I finish one."

His ambition was further excited by the emulation inspired by Alfieri.

This great tragedian was now residing at Rome; and Monti was present

when he read his "Virginia" in a society composed of the most celebrated

literati of the day. Monti listened with transport, and, burning with a

desire to rival this production, he instantly began his tragedy of

"Aristodemo," founded on a story he had read a few days before in

Pausanias. He was the more eager to accomplish his purpose, as lie

perceived the faults of Alfieri's style, and hoped to avoid them. The

fecundity of his imagination rendered it easy for him to rise above the

baldness and unideal versification of his rival; so that it has been

pronounced, that a perfect tragedy would be produced, were "the grandeur

and penetration of Alfieri adorned by the style of Monti." "Aristodemo"

was acted with the greatest success at Rome in 1787. Monti writes to a

friend,--"My tragedy was represented yesterday evening at the theatre of

Valle. I was not present; but when it was over, my house was inundated

by my acquaintances, who seemed mad with delight. I ought not to mention

this, but I write to a friend, and I assure you that every one agrees

that so great a success and so much enthusiasm was never known at Rome

before."

And here it is impossible not to remark the different feelings of

Alfieri and Monti. Alfieri entered upon his literary career when the

more brilliant portion of the fire of youth was passing away. He had

sufficient enthusiasm to animate him to mental labour, and to warm his

imagination to the conception of fictitious situations, but not enough

to foster the delusion of success. While he pretended stoicism and

disdain, he was very sensitive to criticism; but when applause was

afforded, he scanned the merits of his judges, was annoyed by the faults

of the actors, and never reaped the just reward of his toils--the sense

of triumph. While the more youthful Monti, early catching the spark of

enthusiasm from his audience and his friends, enjoyed, to its full

extent, the celebrity which a successful tragedy, more than any other

species of literary composition, is able to confer.

The genius of Monti, however, was not that of a tragedian: lyrical and

imaginative rhapsodies, rather than the concatenation of a plot and the

impersonation of human passion, were the native bent of his mind. The

story of "Aristodemo" is eminently simple in its construction; the

interest is entirely confined to the principal character, and there is

almost no action to support the piece. Aristodemo had, to acquire the

popular favour, and his election to the throne of Mycene, resolved to

sacrifice his daughter, when some angry god required that the blood of a

virgin should be shed on his altar. To save the girl, her lover declares

that she has yielded to him, and is about to be a mother. In his fury

the father destroys her, and afterwards discovers that she is innocent.

To add to his misfortunes he loses his only other child, a little girl

of three years old, in a skirmish with the Spartans. Henceforth he is

pursued by remorse; the spectacle of his murdered daughter for ever

haunts him, and horror and despair darken his soul. The tragedy opens,

fifteen years after these events, at the conclusion of a war with

Sparta, with the discussion for a treaty of peace, when the prisoners on

both sides are to be given up. Among those taken by Aristodemo is a

girl, to whom he has attached himself with paternal fondness, and who

devotes herself to mitigating his sufferings. She, of course, is

discovered to be his long lost daughter; but this is not made known to

him till the last scene, when the agonies of remorse, joined to sorrow

at losing his last consolation, have driven him to destroy himself. The

pure but warm attachment between him and his unknown child is delicately

and sweetly described, while his passionate and remorseful ravings,

though they rise to sublimity, shock us by going beyond ideal terrors

into images palpably disagreeable. From this sketch it may be seen how

deficient in action the piece is. Aristodemo comes before us to lament

and to rave. Still, despite his woe, he is a hero and a king; and, when

the interests of his country require it, he can dismiss his private

griefs, and assert the majesty of the crown. His character is conceived

in the truth and sublimity of tragic nature; and the interest that

hovers over him, the dim but harrowing horrors of his spectral visions,

the mingled remorse, terror, and love that tear his heart, and the

poetry in which these overpowering passions are expressed, take

absolutely from the languor which the want of action might otherwise

impart.

The success of "Aristodemo" induced Monti to write another drama.

"Galeotto Manfredi" is, however, a failure. It is founded on the passion

of jealousy. In his preface the poet mentions that it is wanting in

tragic dignity: such is not of necessity the fault of his subject, but

it decidedly is of his method of treating it, and there is no poetry to

redeem it from the charge of mediocrity.

He married, about this period, the daughter of the celebrated cavaliere

Giovanni Pickler, who had died a short time before. It is a singular

fact, that he made choice of his wife without having seen her, and not

on account of her extraordinary beauty, of which he was ignorant, but

from respect for the reputation of her father, and a wish to console his

afflicted family; while she accepted him on account of her admiration

for the author of "Aristodemo." And now we enter on a new epoch of

Monti's life, when he composed his most celebrated poem, and at the same

time gave to his productions that political groundwork which, from his

vacillation of principle, has not redounded to his honour.

The French revolution was at its height; and the time-worn and absolute

governments of every country of Europe were shaken, as by an earthquake,

by the mere echo of the Parisian tocsin. The French, drunk with

enthusiasm, were eager to call the whole world into a fraternity of

liberty and equality; and many were the warm young hearts, long bowed

down by the yoke of the continental systems of slavery, that beat

responsive to the call. One of the persons sent by the French to spread

their revolutionary tenets beyond the Alps was Hugh Basseville. He was

the son of a dyer at Abbeville; the talents he early displayed induced

his father to wish him to pursue a more dignified career, and he

educated him for the church, as the only profession then open to the

lowly born. But Basseville studied theology only to find doubts as to

his creed; he soon abandoned the clerical profession, and, going to

Paris, gave himself up entirely to literature. He here fell in with two

Americans, who engaged him as their companion, or tutor, in a journey

they made through Germany. At Berlin, Basseville became acquainted with

Mirabeau. Leaving his Americans he visited Holland, and wrote a work on

the Elements of Mythology, and a volume of amatory poems. When the

revolution began, he attached himself to the royal, or rather

constitutional, party, and instituted a journal which took that side. He

wrote also a "History of the French Revolution," dedicated to La

Fayette, with whom he was intimately acquainted; and the views he

developes are moderate and rational. He was naturally eloquent, and his

manners were agreeable, while he joined to these fascinating qualities

the more solid ones of industry, intelligence, and boldness, so that he

acquired the confidence and friendship of several of the Girondist

leaders. General Demourier named him secretary to the embassy at Naples;

and while there he visited Rome, for the purpose of secretly propagating

revolutionary doctrines. This imprudence cost him his life. On the night

of the 13th of January, 1793, he was assailed by the populace, and

received a stab, of which he died thirty-four hours after. In his last

moments, it is said that he was induced to regard his conduct, in

endeavouring to raise sedition against the pope, as criminal, and to

have exclaimed several times that he died the victim of folly.

Monti, who lived in the service of the pope's nephew, and was thus

attached to the papal court, and without that ardour for liberty which

is so natural to many hearts, and which appears at once senseless and

even wicked to those who do not feel independence of thought to be the

greatest of human blessings, of course looked on the French revolution

as a series of crimes, and saw no redeeming good in the madness that

urged a whole nation to so terrific a mixture of heroism and guilt. He

was acquainted with Basseville, and, hearing the recantations of his

dying moments, celebrated at once the repentance of his friend, and the

awful tragedy acted almost at the same moment (Louis XVI. was beheaded

on the 19th of January, 1793), in a poem entitled the "Basvilliana." In

this he feigns that the great enemy of mankind contended with the angel

of God for the soul of the murdered man. His death-bed remorse caused

the good spirit to remain triumphant; but as the crime-tainted soul

could not, according to the tenets of Catholicism, be received at once

into Paradise, the disembodied spirit of Basseville was condemned to

visit once more the banks of the Seine, and to view the horrors there

perpetrated, as the consequence of his guilty and impracticable

theories. The imagination of Monti developed itself in the happiest

manner in treating this theme; and the mingled emotions of horror and

grief that pervade the poem take a shape at once sublime and pathetic.

The soul of Basseville hovers over Paris at the moment that Louis XVI.

loses his head by the guillotine. The imagery with which he adorns the

scene is original and majestic. Four mighty shadows rush on the

scaffold, and hover over the dying monarch; shadows of former regicides,

who glory in the companionship of crime. Ravaillac, Ankerstrom, Damiens,

and one (the executioner of our Charles I.) who veils his face with his

hand, proudly assist in giving the fatal blow. Louis dies, and before

his beatified ghost Basseville prostrates himself; but his penance is

not got over, and he is forced to view other scenes of greater bloodshed

and more frightful violence; but as the poem enters upon these, it

breaks off abruptly, and is left unfinished.

The style of this poem does not resemble modern Italian poetry, but is

modelled on that of Dante; so faithfully modelled, that many

expressions, ideas, and even whole lines are, as it were, transfused,

into Monti's verses. It is a singular fact that no poet was ever a

greater plagiarist than the author of the "Basvilliana;" but the verses

of others, which he thus employs, are framed, as it were, so

magnificently by original ones, and are placed with such propriety, and

acknowledged with such frankness, that, as an English author observes,

"so far from accusing him of plagiarism, we are agreeably surprised by

the new aspect which he gives to beauties already familiar to every

reader." And thus transfusion expresses his imitations better than the

word borrowing: for though the form of expression is the same, a new

soul and a new sense--not better, certainly, but different from their

former one--are breathed into them. In some sort Dante and Monti

resembled each other in the cast of their ideas. They were both painters

of the mind's images. Dante was the more faithful, delicate, and

heartfelt; but there is a shadowy grandeur joined to a perfection of

taste and fire of sentiment in Monti, which renders his poetry highly

fascinating and beautiful.

The "Basvilliana" at once raised Monti's reputation higher than that of

any poet who had for centuries appeared in Italy; and he might have been

considered the laureate of royalty, but that his character was not

adorned by that sincere and exalted enthusiasm, without which no man

can, with any success, advocate any cause which embraces the interests

of human nature.

The tide of French republicanism, checked a little in its first

advances, now swelled by Bonaparte's victories, overflowed the Alps and

deluged Italy. The Austrians, defeated at Montenotte, Lodi, and Arcoli,

were driven from Lombardy: and the Italians hoped to exchange servitude

to a foreign power for national independence; forgetting that liberty,

when given, may also be withdrawn, and that it is only by force that any

real freedom can be acquired. While resistance was made to the French

arms, the requisitions of the victor, and the seizure of the finest

works of art, might have opened their eyes to the real views of their

_soi-disant_ deliverers. Napoleon himself had but one idea with

regard to liberty, which was a free scope to the exercise of his own

will. When that was given him, he could be generous, magnificent, and

useful; but when his measures were obstructed, no tyrant ever exceeded

him in the combinations of a despotism which at once crushed a nation,

and bore down with an iron hand every individual that composed it.

Bonaparte's ambition, however, could only be gratified in France, and

the conquest of Italy was but the stepping-stone to the French empire.

Still, when all the north of the peninsula was subjected to him, when

the pope had submitted to his terms, and the haughty queen of Naples had

been induced to enter into a treaty with her sister's destroyers, he

could no longer with any grace refuse the shows of freedom so often

promised. On the 3d of January, 1797, the Cisalpine republic was

erected.

Monti had been before invited to accept a professor's chair in the

university of Pavia, which he had refused. In the month of February

1797, general Marmont was sent to Rome on occasion of the treaty of

Tolentino, to carry letters from Bonaparte to the pope. Monti became

acquainted with him; being then in a bad state of health, and advised to

change the air of Rome for that of Tuscany, he accepted Marmont's

invitation, who offered him a seat in his carriage, and proceeded to

Florence. It may be imagined, that familiar intercourse with one of

Napoleon's generals was the foundation of Monti's admiration for the

French hero, and the cause of his opening his eyes to the good to be

derived from adhering to the new order of things in his native country.

At first he entertained the delusive hope that the blessing of liberty

had really been conferred on Italy by the French arms, and that his

countrymen would rise from chains and slavery to the enjoyment of

national independence under national institutions; and yet the

extravagant praise of Napoleon, which he indulges in, in all his poems

written at this time, does not bear the marks of a sincere patriotism.

Besides this, he had to struggle with many personal mortifications. The

"Basvilliana" was not forgotten. French exactions and French assumptions

had already alienated the minds of the noble born among the Italians.

They feared the conqueror, but disdained the masquerade of liberty in

which they were invited to play a part: thus the better classes shrunk

from forming a part of the new governments, and the offices devolved

upon men who had little to lose either in possessions or character. They

regarded Monti with envy and aversion, and, instead of receiving him as

a convert with open arms, his superior claims as a man of talent caused

them to persecute him as an interloper and almost as a spy. The heads of

the government, indeed, at first favoured him: he was invited to Milan,

and elected central secretary of foreign affairs; but he was soon

disturbed by persecutions. "My arrival," he writes several years

afterwards, "was hailed by the usual abuse of the republican journals,

who censured the directory for employing an enemy of the republic. I

loved liberty; but the object of my love was the freedom described in

the writings of Cicero and Plutarch: that which was adored on the altars

of Milan appeared to me a prostitute, and I refused to worship her.

Hence my excommunication,--hence the public burning of the

'Basvilliana.' On this I was obliged to prostrate myself before the

idol. I sang her virtues, and became a revolutionary poet: I grew insane

with the rest, and my conversion procured me patronage and grace."

It was not without a struggle that he stooped to these abject

submissions, and several events first intervened. The hatred of the

democrats, then the rulers of the Cisalpine republic, caused them to

pass a law which decreed that no one should be permitted to hold any

public employment who, since the year 1 of the French republic, had

published any books tending to throw odium on democracy. Monti's poem

was the principal object of this law; and one of his adversaries

exclaimed, "Let us get rid, not of the author of some foolish sonnet in

praise of kings, but of those who, with powerful enthusiasm and

Dantesque imagination, have inspired a hatred for democracy." This law

being passed, Monti lost his situation. He had published other poems

since the "Basvilliana;" but even these were not considered sufficiently

democratic.

The "Musogonia," or Birth of the Muses, is almost entirely mythological;

but, in the concluding verses, he apostrophises Bonaparte. He implores

him to be at once the Alexander and Numa of Italy: he beseeches him to

bestow laws upon her, and to unite her scattered members; and, with a

noble voice, he calls upon the Italians to cultivate concord and

unanimity. "Brothers!" he exclaims, "bear the voice of your brother!

What do you hope from divided opinions and counsels? Ah, let there be in

our country, in its danger, one mind, one courage, one soul, one life!"

The republicans perceived a hankering for royalty and tyranny in his

dislike of their measures.

The "Prometeo" is a finer poem, or rather fragment, for but few of the

cantos are written. The subject of it is the history of Prometheus; but

we have only a small portion of it in the poem as it stands. It opens

with the foolish act of Epimetus. Jupiter had sent to him a casket

containing the various intellectual attributes and moral qualities, to

be distributed among the new creation on earth. Epimetus begins by

bestowing various qualities on animals, and is so prodigal of his gifts,

that when he comes to man he finds the casket empty. On this, he has

recourse to his wiser brother Prometheus, who reprimands him for his

folly. This opening is the weaker part of the poem. Lyrical outbursts

were more accordant to Monti's genius. The appearance of Constancy

before Prometheus is sublime, and the hero's prophecy of the future

state of man is full of fire and grandeur. It ends, however, by a

prophecy of Napoleon, on whom is heaped every epithet that admiration or

adulation could suggest. Jupiter gives him his lightning, which loses

none of its terrors in the young hero's hands. He shakes the bolts over

Germany, and the Rhetian Alps resound with the hoofs of the Gallic

cavalry. One after the other, Prometheus celebrates the glorious

victories achieved in Italy, and hails with enthusiasm French Liberty,

as the mother of heroes who shiver the chains that bound Ausonia, and

wipe the tears from universal Europe--obstructed in its beneficent

career only by the English robber. Bonaparte must have exulted in the

bitter and venomous abuse that Monti never fails to heap upon England.

He tells us, in the preface to this poem, that its scope is to bring

into favour the neglected literature of Greece and Rome, and to merit

well from a free country by speaking in the accents of freedom. There is

something in the applause heaped on the conqueror that jars with our

notions of real independence and patriotism.

Monti, at this time, entertained the idea of returning to republicanised

Rome. But his friends dissuaded him; and his reputation, and probably

his adulation of the victor, caused him soon after to be named

commissary of the province of the Rubicon. But a poet makes a bad

politician; and Monti's integrity stood in the way of his success, and

he was obliged to give up his office. He made many enemies, and,

naturally timid and fearful for the welfare of his family, he was

terrified into making a complete _amende_ to the democrats of his

country by writing odes, whose violent sentiments went beyond those of

the most furious demagogues: and it is to these poems that he alludes

when he speaks of the worship he was forced to pay to the mockery of

liberty; and ever after he regretted his pusillanimity, and despised

himself for his concessions.

At the time they gained this point, his enemies were pacified; and the

survivorship of the professor's chair of belles lettres in Brera, then

occupied by Parini, was bestowed on him. But scarcely had he overcome

the enmity of the friends of liberty and equality, than their star was

eclipsed, and their reign came to an end.

[Sidenote: 1799.

Ætat.

45.]

During the absence of Bonaparte in Egypt, Suvaroff and the Austrians

crossed the Alps, and the French were driven from Italy. Her republics

vanished like a forgotten dream; and their partisans, Monti among them,

were forced to follow the retreating army of France, and to take refuge

beyond the Alps.

Monti fell into a state of deplorable destitution. He had left his wife

and young daughter in Italy, and he roamed alone and friendless among

the mountains of Savoy. His sufferings during the brief period of his

exile were frightful. He wandered about, subsisting on the fruit he

picked up under the trees. Often seated on the rugged banks of a

torrent, he satisfied his hunger with roots and nuts, and wept as he

thought of Italy and his ruined fortunes. The benevolence of his heart

manifested itself in the midst of this adversity. It is related of him,

that, as he was wandering one evening in a narrow lane, near Chamberi, a

stranger accosted him and asked charity, relating that he had a sick

mother and five children. Monti's heart was moved: two sequins was all

that he possessed in the world; he gave one of them to the suppliant.

His health failed through the hardships that he endured; the labour of

collecting his food became intolerable, and he forced himself to gather

at one time sufficient for two days, so as to secure himself one of

uninterrupted rest. His wife, who had remained to put their affairs in

some order, now joined him. She found him stretched on a wretched bed,

weak from inanition, but disdaining to apply to any one for relief in

his need. She brought money with her, and proper food soon restored his

strength; nor did he again fall into such an extremity of disaster,

though it was long before the fickle goddess smiled upon him.

The minister, Mareschalchi, invited him to Paris; and the new victories

of Bonaparte in Italy, on his return from Egypt in the following year,

revived his hopes of better times. Mareschalchi obtained that he should

be employed to write a hymn and an ode in celebration of the victory of

Marengo, which had driven the allies from Italy and restored it to the

French. He was to have been paid 1500 francs for these two poems, with

the further reward of the professorship of Italian literature in the

French university. But fortune was not weary of persecuting him; and

this remuneration was withheld, on its being represented to government

that he was, at heart, inimical to the French. Mareschalchi continued to

befriend him, and obtained 500 francs, or about 20_l_. "No small relief

to me," he writes, "in my necessitous circumstances." He was very eager

to return to Italy, and he writes to his brother,--"Of the many thousand

refugees who were here, almost all have returned to their country,

because all have instantly received the necessary succour from home. I

alone find myself abandoned by my relations, in a strange country,

without friends, and without resources; unless, indeed, I can make up my

mind to renounce my country for the sake of earning my bread in some

office. But an irresistible sentiment is linked to the name of my native

land. I possess in Italy the objects dearest to my heart--my child, my

mother, brothers, friends, studies, habits; all, in short, that renders

life dear. I pant, therefore, to return; and I implore you to send me

assistance in the shape of a remittance for my journey, and to discharge

my debts here. Every delay injures my interests, particularly at this

moment. Direct to 'Citizen Vincenzo Monti, Post-office, Paris.' I shall

count the days and moments--make my account short, if my happiness is

dear to you."

Soon after his wishes were fulfilled, and he celebrates his return to

his beloved Italy by a beautiful hymn, which begins--

"Bella Italia, amate sponde,

Pur vi torno a riveder,

Trema il petto, e si confonde

L' alma oppressa di piacer."

He does not forget the victor in this song of joy and triumph. Marengo

is mentioned with exultation; and Bonaparte celebrated with enthusiasm,

as liberating Italy from the barbarians, and again bestowing upon her

the blessings of freedom.

On his arrival at Milan, Monti employed himself in correcting his poem,

entitled the "Mascheroniana," which he had begun amidst the Alps, when

overwhelmed by misery, an exile, weeping over the disasters of his

country and his own wrongs. Lorenzo Mascheroni, a celebrated

mathematician as well as an elegant poet, was forced to quit Italy at

the same time as Monti, and died in France shortly after. In this poem

the poet vents all his spleen against his democratic enemies. In his

preface he exclaims, "Reader, if you really love your country, and are a

true Italian, read! but throw aside the book if, for your and our

misfortune, you are an insane demagogue, or a cunning trafficker in the

cause of liberty." The poem opens with the death of Mascheroni, and the

ascent of his soul to heaven. He here meets Parini, who laments the

unhappy condition of Italy. "When I saw her misery," he cries, "I

desired to die, and my wish was fulfilled. I first beheld her woe when

dressed in her new freedom, which was called liberty, but which, in

truth, was rapine. I then beheld her a slave, alas! a despised slave,

covered with wounds and blood, complaining to heaven that she was

betrayed by her own children--by the many foolish, base, and perverse

tyrants, not citizens; while the few remained mute or were destroyed.

Iniquitous law's were given her; discord waited on her, and pride, and

hate, and madness, ignorance and error; while the tears and sighs of the

people remained unheard. O, wretches! who spoke of virtue in

high-sounding words, and called themselves Brutus and Gracchus, while

they proved themselves traitors and monsters. But short-lived was their

joy. I saw the Russian and the Austrian swords destroy the hopes of the

fields of Italy, and the armed people commit crimes exceeding the supper

of Atreus and the vengeance of Theseus!" While Parini is thus pouring

out his angry and bitter denunciations, Mascheroni interrupts him.

"Peace, austere spirit!" he exclaims, "your country is again saved. A

deity has caught her by the hair, and drawn her from the abyss:

Bonaparte!" At this name, the frowning Parini raises his head, and a

smile illuminates his countenance. The victories of Egypt, of Marengo,

and Hohenlinden, are commemorated; and the "British felon" assailed with

the usual violence of hate. In the midst of the conversation of the

friends, God appears with his cherubim,--one the herald of peace and

pardon, the other of war and vengeance: they are sent out on the earth

to assist and wait on the Gallic hero. This poem, like so many others of

Monti, which celebrated what was then the present, and is therefore

truncated of its catastrophe, is a fragment. Such praise, dressed in all

the magnificence of poetry, must have sounded sweetly in Napoleon's ear.

The "Mascheroniana," whose chief object is to bestow on him new wreaths

of victory, is one of Monti's finest compositions. It is full of

strength, vehemence, and beauty. His imitation of Dante is even more

apparent than in the "Basvilliana." The machinery of the poem, and the

peculiar versification, are borrowed from the "Divina Commedia." But, as

we have before observed, Monti's was too original a mind to be a

plagiarist. What he took from another, he remoulded and brought forth in

a new form, in fresh and brilliant hues, all his own. He has not the

sublimity, the sweetness and pathos, nor the distinct yet delicate

painting, of his prototype; but no one can read his verses without

feeling that the true spirit of poetry breathes in every line, and that

the author pours out the overflowings of a genuine and rapt inspiration.

His third tragedy of "Caius Gracchus" had been written at Paris, and he

occupied himself in finishing and correcting it on his return to Milan.

This tragedy has been praised by some as superior to "Aristodemo," but

it is difficult to coincide in this opinion. It possesses fine passages

and some energy, but it is wanting in poetry; and the characters want

the simple heroism of antiquity, and resemble rather violent Italians of

modern days. The defects of monotonous dialogue and often repeated

situations flow also from an observation of the unities, which, by

confining the subject in narrow limits, permit no variety of action,

and, except in peculiar instances, force the poet to repeat himself;

making one scene frequently little else than a repetition of what had

gone before.

Monti had begun his literary and poetic life by servitude, when he

became secretary of the duke of Braschi. In his present desperate

circumstances he saw no hope, except in conciliating the ruling power of

the continent, and entering on the service of the man who looked on all

men as merely engines to fulfil his vast and illimitable projects.

[Sidenote: 1802.

Ætat.

48.]

Napoleon had by fresh victories driven the Austrians from Italy; and a

congress, called the Cisalpine, was held at Lyons, to fix on a form of

government for the north of the peninsula. This was a kind of mockery

that Bonaparte was fond of encouraging in the early days of his

elevation, since, under some of the forms of popular election, new

powers were, with a show of legality, bestowed on him. The Italians of

the congress fixed on a plan of government, at the head of which was to

be a president: they entreated Napoleon to accept this office, as the

disunited state of the country rendered ii unadvisable to elect an

Italian to it. Napoleon consented. This was a happy moment to bring

himself before the supreme power, and Monti seized on it. He wrote an

ode to Bonaparte, in the name of the Cisalpine congress; he chose the

motto from Virgil, and it was a happy one,--

"Victorque volentes

Per populos dat jura."

The verses are very beautiful, and worthy of a better cause than laying

the liberties of his country prostrate at the first consul's feet. Still

Monti was aware that, degraded by long servitude and disunited by petty

passions, the Italians were ignorant of the nature of true liberty. He

saw party spirit, oppression, and rapine as the result of any attempt on

the part of his countrymen to govern themselves; he knew also how vain

it was to contend with the conqueror, and he was very probably sincere

in his belief that the welfare of his country was safest in his hands.

Still, while we admire the harmony of the verses and the beauty of the

imagery, we repine at the slavish spirit that lurks within them.

Bonaparte, who loved to be borne up by the wings of men's imaginations

into a superior sphere of glory and success, must have been pleased by

the halo of poetry with which Monti stooped to adorn his name.

He did not go unrewarded. When peace was restored to Italy, the

institutions for public education became objects of interest to the

government; and a professorship was offered Monti; either at Milan or

Pavia, at his choice. Monti preferred the latter, for the sake of

enjoying the society of the able professors who filled the chairs of

that university. He was diligent and conscientious in his attendance to

the duties of his situation, and his lectures were fully attended: the

best of his prose writings being his inauguration lecture, which had for

its subject the praise of the literary men of Italy, and the claiming

for them the merit of many discoveries usually attributed to the natives

of other countries. After three years spent at Pavia, he was invited by

the governor to Milan, and a number of offices and honours were bestowed

on him. He was made assessor to the minister of the interior for the

department of literature and the fine arts; he was named court poet and

historiographer, and made cavalier of the iron crown, member of the

institute, and of the legion of honour. Monti was no laggard in

fulfilling the duties of the first of these places. He wrote a variety

of poems in praise of Napoleon, and in celebration of his victories. In

the "Bard," a fictitious personage, Ullino, attended by the maiden

Malvina, while watching with enthusiastic admiration the advance of the

French arms, falls in with a young wounded warrior; they, of course,

take him home, and watch over his recovery, when he relates, at their

request, the events of the expedition to Egypt and the battles that

illustrated Napoleon's return to Europe. There is the merit of

enthusiasm and glowing description in portions of this poem. The canto

on the expedition to Egypt contains the best passages.

[Sidenote: 1805.

Ætat.

51.]

When Napoleon was crowned king of Italy, Monti was commanded to

celebrate the event. He writes to Cesarotti,--"While you are robing the

magnificent spleen of Juvenal in beautiful and dignified Italian, I am

sounding the Pindaric harp for the emperor Napoleon. The government has

commanded me, and I must obey. I hope that love of my country will not

make my thoughts too free; and that I may respect the hero, without

betraying my duty as a citizen. I am in a path where the wishes of the

nation do not accord with its political necessities, and I fear to lose

myself. St. Apollo help me! and do you pray that I may be endowed with

sagacity and prudence." This poem, in which he tries to trim his sail so

nicely between patriotism and servitude, is called "Il Benificio;" or

The Benefaction, a vision. It has great merit. All that Monti ever wrote

is graced with such a happy flow, and with so much beauty of imagery and

expression, that it is impossible not to admire as we read. He describes

Italy as appearing to him in a vision; she is personified by a woman,

wounded and drooping, the victim of grief and slavery. The poet, struck

with compassion and horror, evokes the shades of mighty Romans from

their tombs to assist the degraded queen of the world; but they turn in

scorn from the fallen and lost one. Then a warrior, godlike and

majestic, descends from the Alps,--Victory attends him,--yet he

disregards her, and prefers the olive to the laurel (a most unfortunate

compliment to a man whose whole soul was war). He approaches the

unfortunate prostrate being,--raises her, and bids her reign; nor could

the livid glare cast by the British cannon over the Tyrrhene sea avail

against him. The warrior smiles, and at his smile all danger vanishes.

Then the austere and noble spirit of Dante arises and apostrophises

Italy, telling her that the regal power of Napoleon was exactly the

restraint and law he had wished her to fall under; and, taking the crown

from her head, places it on that of the French emperor. Spain salutes

the new diadem. The German, still crimson with his own blood,

acknowledges the victor, and bends his eyes to earth; while the British

pirate, powerful in fleets and fraud, curses aloud. "I send you a copy

of the Vision," Monti writes to a friend, "which I have written for the

coronation of our king: it has succeeded perfectly, and no work of mine,

since I began to write verses, has prospered so well." It is impossible

not to congratulate him on his success in attaining prudence. Assuredly

there was nothing too free in these verses; and Napoleon might accept

them without an unpleasant thought being awakened as to his usurpation,

tyranny, and rapacious, unbounded ambition.

Every fresh victory, every new conquest, was a theme for the venal muse

of Monti; venal we have a right to call it, since he acknowledges the

bond of a salary and the necessity of obedience. Thus, on occasion of

the battle of Jena, he brought out the "Spada di Federico;" or, the

Sword of Frederic,--the most popular of his odes of triumph. In this

poem he images the spectral hand of the warrior king of Prussia

disputing with Napoleon the possession of his sword, and yielding to the

proud assumptions and tenacious grasp of the Gallic victor. Ten editions

of this work were sold in the space of five months, and it was

translated into the French and Latin languages.

The attempted usurpation of the Spanish throne did not go uncelebrated.

The "Palingenesi" has for its subject the regeneration of mind and of

political institutions wrought in Spain, under the auspices of the

French emperor and his brother Joseph. If we could dismiss from our

minds the truth, and fancy, as Monti assumes, that a great and generous

nation had sunk into the depths of slavery and degradation through the

evil influence of a corrupt government, and that Napoleon was bent on

loosening its fetters and raising it to freedom and knowledge, it would

be impossible not to be filled with enthusiasm by the noble ideas and

grand imagery of this poem. But the taint of falsehood prevents any

sympathy, and our admiration of the imagination displayed is checked by

our contempt of the flatterer; while we smile at the bitter and violent

curses poured upon the English, whose motives for assisting the

Spaniards in resisting the French are painted in the most odious

colours.

We wonder as we read. There is fire, sublimity, and power in every line.

Can these be inspired, as we are assured by Monti's friends, by the mere

desire of acquiring the loaves and fishes, if not for himself

individually, for his wife and daughter? Are the shadowy forms which he

invests with so much beauty--the conceptions into which he infuses so

much energy and seeming sincerity--the mere playthings of his thought,

and not the genuine offspring of a mind teeming and overflowing with a

sense of usefulness and truth? We cannot believe it; we are so apt to

forget what our feelings were when the occasion that called them forth

has vanished like morning mist. When Napoleon fell, men forgot the

wonder and admiration with which they had regarded him during his

prosperity. He had come on the time-worn world like an incarnation of

the memories of antiquity. The greatest sovereigns, who traced their

descent from the middle ages--the thrones of the world, so long the

objects of worship and fear--the crowns and sceptres which had been

looked upon as the sacred and inviolable symbols of divine right--were

all at his feet, dispossest, transferred, and broken. It could be no

wonder that men looked upon the cause of these things as something

prodigious and superhuman. Monti may be excused that he joined in the

common feeling of awe and admiration; while, afterwards, seeing how

little good arose from the breaking up of the ancient tyrannies, and how

the indomitable will of one man was enforced by means of treachery and

slaughter, he might forget that he could ever have been so blinded, and

fancy that acknowledged fear was the cause of an inspiration which

really sprung from the slavish worship of success, which is too

naturally inherent in human beings.

Although Monti brought forward this disingenuous plea to excuse his

celebration of the hero of the age, he was sincere in one feeling,--an

attachment to the offspring of his brain, and in the indignation he felt

against those who depreciated his poetic merits. The "Sword of Frederic"

was attacked by the critics with great asperity, and he replied with

still greater acrimony. He had been charged with mannerism and sameness,

especially in the machinery of his poems, in which visions, spectres,

and cloudy spiritual essences play for ever a principal part. He would

not allow this to be a defect, and railed at the unimaginative minds who

conceived it to be such. He tries to be jocose in his indignation, but

his laugh is bitter; and he heaps the accusations of ill faith and envy,

as well as of ignorance and bad taste, on those who attack him. There

may be justice in this, but there is no dignity. There is always a

degree of degradation in noticing the enmity of a race of ephemera, and

not calmly relying on the award of the public.

Besides the poems above mentioned, Monti wrote several other poems in

praise of the conqueror. "The Jerogamia" and the "Api Panacridi" were

compositions which, whatever their apparent subject might be, turned,

after all, on the praise of the emperor. They maintained, if they did

not increase, the poet's fame. His best works were already written; and

these may be named to be the "Aristodemo," the "Basvilliana," passages

in the "Prometèo," the "Mascheroniana," and the "Palingenesi" and of his

shorter odes, that to Bonaparte, on occasion of the Cisalpine congress,

and his hymn on his return to Italy.

Years began to tame the fire of his imagination, and he felt the spirit

of original composition fail him. His active mind turned to other

subjects on which to exercise it: his love of classical learning led him

to works of criticism and erudition, and he wrote "Remarks on the Winged

Horse of Arsinoe." A want of knowledge of the Greek language must,

however, have been a great drawback to this species of study; but we

must regard with still greater wonder, considering this defect, his next

enterprise, which was the translation of the Iliad. He had been looking

out for a subject, and meditating in what way he could employ his

powers, when a word, spoken by chance by Ugo Foscolo, at once awoke in

his mind the desire and the energy requisite for so arduous a task. Not

being acquainted with Greek, he applied himself to every kind of literal

translation, and was, besides, mainly assisted by his friend Mustoxidi,

who explained passages, compared his version with the original, and

bestowed a degree of labour which, barren as it was of reputation to

himself, must be regarded as a singular proof of disinterested

attachment. Monti applied himself so vigorously to the task, that, in

spite of all his disadvantages, in less than two years he brought it to

a conclusion.

This new labour yielded him a large harvest of reputation. Other Italian

translations of the Iliad already existed: that of Salvini is valuable,

from his profound knowledge of the Greek and Italian languages. It is

elegantly and faithfully translated, but it wants spirit; and the

sublime Homeric fire, which renders the Iliad the greatest of human

works, glimmers feebly in his version. The translation of Ceruti is as

faithful as is compatible with his ignorance of Greek; but, besides the

want of the true spirit of the original, his style, modelled on that of

Metastasio and Rolli, wants vigour and versatility.

Monti possessed, beyond any other poet, the faculty of warming himself

with his subject, of penetrating himself with its soul, and imparting,

by the vivacity of his language and the glowing brightness of his

imagination, his own sentiments to the reader. The very act of

versifying seemed to be to him what the sound of song is to the

sensitive, in elevating and moving the soul. His mind possessed the

qualities of the harp, which gives forth sweet music when swept by the

breezes: thought with him was always pregnant with harmonious and

animated expression, with glowing and various imagery. On this has been

founded his excuse for writing with such apparent fervour on subjects

that did not really interest his feelings; and this facility is a good

quality in a translator. Monti could conceive and imbibe the spirit of

the original, and give it out, in his own language, with vigour and

life. Visconti, in waiting to the poet, says, "The choice and variety of

diction and phrases, the equal and sustained tone of the verses, and the

noble simplicity of the style, place your work among the few that

transmit the poetic name with honour to posterity." This praise was

accompanied by a few judicious criticisms which showed the care and zeal

with which he had examined the translation. Monti paid attention to

them, and endeavoured to amend all the errors pointed out in the

subsequent editions of his work.

[Sidenote: 1814.

Ætat.

60.]

When Napoleon was overthrown, and the north of Italy fell under the yoke

of the Austrians, Monti of course lost all his public employments, and

he was menaced in his old age by the miseries of hopeless poverty. But

his submissive disposition and plastic opinions were just of that sort

which kings delight to honour; and the emperor of Austria bestowed such

pensions on him as enabled him to pursue his studies in leisure and

competence. No doubt Monti felt glad, in common with all his countrymen,

to get rid of the antinational sway of the French, and hoped that a

better state of things would result from any change. His experience of

popular rule in Italy had disgusted him with it. He had not that zeal

and ardour of feeling resulting from a conviction that, however perilous

the passage from slavery to liberty, it must be attempted and persevered

in, with all its attendant evils, if men are to be brought back from

that cowardice, indolence, and selfishness which mark the slave, to the

heroism, patience, and intellectual activity which characterise the

freeman. Besides this, the armies of Austria admitted of no reply from

the unwarlike Italians. The remnants of their army which had returned,

wasted and broken, from the Russian campaign had been forced, after some

show of resistance, to capitulate: submission was their only resource,

and submission was in accordance with Monti's disposition. Nor did he

afterwards ever give umbrage to the jealous and revengeful government

whose pay he received, when hopes of better times and of redemption

warmed the hearts of all the nobler Italians to attempt the destruction

of their tyrants. He was acquainted with many of the Austrian victims;

and when we find in his letters complaints of sorrows and misfortunes,

we must attribute these to the real sympathy he felt for these unhappy

martyrs: but, though he sympathised with the men, it is probable that he

disapproved of their attempts. He was hopeless, and a hopeless struggle

presented to him only the too real picture of aggravated oppression in

general, and frightful individual suffering; he did not feel that

boiling of the heart, that fire of the spirit, which makes the great and

good risk all, rather than live subject to a power which exerted all its

leaden strength to press down genius, crush every exertion of mind, and

to reduce men as nearly as possible to the condition of the herds who

graze in the fields, without a thought beyond the food and rest which

the fertility of the soil and the beauty of the climate afford. Monti

was not one of these: his mind was active, and, in his way, he wished to

benefit his country. So when a thousand hearts were convulsed by the

throes arising from all the hopes and fears of a just rebellion, he

turned his attention to the study of the Italian language, to the task

of freeing it from the shackles which critics had thrown over it, and of

gifting it with the new spirit and animation which must arise from the

introduction of living forms of speech, instead of the classic and

restricted limitations imposed by the Della Crusca society.

He composed few poems after the fall of Napoleon. When the emperor of

Austria sent the archduke John to receive the oath of fealty from the

provinces of Lombardy, he wrote, by command, a cantata, entitled

"Mistico Omaggio," or the Mystic Homage, which was brought out at the

principal theatre at Milan. When the emperor himself visited Italy he

celebrated the event by a poem, called "The Return of Astrea," and

another, named "The Invitation to Pallas." His style in these later

compositions joins harmony to dignity, and forms that mixture of

strength and sweetness which is so delightful in Metastasio. His last

poetic compositions were written at Pesaro, where he was debarred from

his usual occupations, and dispirited by a disease that attacked one of

his eyes; and he solaced himself by dictating various poems full of

grace and beauty, which he afterwards published under the title of

"Sollievo nella Malinconia," or "Relief of Melancholy."

[Sidenote: 1812.]

One of the most fortunate incidents of his life was the marriage of his

daughter to a man of singular merit. Costanza Monti was (is, we should

rather say) remarkable for her beauty and her talents; her poetry,

though there is little of it, is of a very high grade, and one poem, "On

a Rose," has sufficed to establish her fame in Italy. Count Giulio

Perticari sprung from a noble family of Romagna. His residence was at

Pesaro, and he there filled successively the offices of podestà and

judge. He devoted himself to literature, and had published works both in

prose and verse, by which he acquired considerable reputation. It must

be in the memory of all Italians, and all those strangers who visited

Italy during his lifetime, how he was beloved by every one who knew him.

No man was ever more popular, more universally pronounced the best of

men; and this praise resulted from the goodness and singleness of his

heart, the sweetness of his disposition, and his unpretending but

attractive manners. Writing concerning this marriage to his friends,

Monti speaks of it with pride and pleasure. He says, "Count Giulio

Perticari, of Pesaro, is a young man well cultivated in literature. I

say nothing of his moral qualities, which render him dear to all. It is

the most delightful match that paternal love can desire."

After this period Monti's labours were chiefly confined to prose, and he

is considered in this manner to have greatly benefited the literature of

his country. The chief among these are the considerations on the

difficulty of well translating the poetry of the Iliad, and several

dialogues on the Italian language, full of acute criticism and wit. A

circumstance turned his attention still more entirely to the subject of

language. The government of Lombardy, wishing to show some encouragement

to literature, had ordered the Royal Institute of Milan to occupy itself

in the reform of the national dictionary; and Monti was requested by his

colleagues to publish his observations on the subject. He obeyed with

alacrity. His son-in-law, count Perticari, had devoted much attention to

this subject, and he became Monti's associate in the task.

The great question in Italy is, whether the pure and classical language,

the only one not wholly barbarous and vulgar, is Italian or Tuscan; a

mixture drawn from the various dialects of the peninsula, or solely

founded on Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio, and other early Tuscan

authors. The academy Della Crusca espoused the latter side of the

question, and, forming a dictionary, expunged every word not to be found

in the authors named the Trecentisti. Monti, on the contrary, attacked

the _ipse-dixits_ of this academy, and, pointing out innumerable errors

in their dictionary, undertook, as he called it, a crusade against the

Della Crusca.

This is a question that has divided all the talents of Italy, and in

which it appears presumptuous in a foreigner to express any decision.

Still we may reason from general grounds, and from analogy. Every

portion of Italy has a distinct dialect. Immediately on leaving the

precincts of any town, an acute ear will detect in the person who lives

outside the gate a difference in the form of speech and pronunciation.

Many of the towns use a mere _patois_, which has never been written. The

Neapolitan, Romagnole, Genoese, and Milanese, each have a dialect,

devoid of grace, cacophonous, truncated of vowels, and unintelligible to

any but themselves; the Venetian being the only one distinguished for

its own peculiar charms. To a stranger the language of the Romans has a

great charm: the _bocca Romana_, or Roman pronunciation, is clear, soft,

and yet emphatic. Their language is unidiomatic, and therefore easily

comprehended. You enter Tuscany, and come upon those terse and idiomatic

forms of speech which enraptured Alfieri, and which give so much energy

and animation to the expression of sentiment, so much clearness and

precision to narration or reasoning. But even these are not admitted by

the Della Crusca. The Florentine is still a dialect--the Pisan and the

Siennese fall under the same denomination: the principal difference is

that the grammar of all the Tuscans is pure, and that you may form your

speech on that of the peasantry and servants, without running any risk

of falling into errors and vulgarisms. Alfieri used to mingle in the

crowds assembled in the market-place of Sienna, there to imbibe from

unlearned lips the purest modes of the Italian language. The dictionary

Della Crusca was founded therefore on Tuscan, omitting its

peculiarities, and carefully registering any innovations that had crept

in since the era of the Trecentisti. It is obvious, under this tutelage,

that the Italian became, when written, virtually a dead language. No

author could adopt the forms of speech he made use of in the common

conversation. The language that they heard and spoke when moved by joy,

by grief, by love, or anger, was to be modified, corrected, and, so to

speak, translated, before it could be put in a book. The living impress

of the soul was to be taken from it, and, instead of putting down the

word that rose spontaneously to the lips, and ought to have flowed as

easily from the pen, the author hunted in the Della Crusca dictionary

for authorities, which shackled the free spirit of inspired genius with

chains and bolts forged from the works of the old writers, who

themselves wrote as they spoke, and created a language, simply by

putting down the forcible and graceful expressions then in colloquial

use.

Still a great difficulty arises from any deviation from these rules. Was

then the Florentine dialect, or the Siennese, or the Pisan, to be the

written language of the country? Each city would have rejected its

neighbour's, and still more would Lombardisms be regarded with disdain

by the inhabitants of the south. Language, pronunciation, idiom, all

form a habit to the eye and ear, which, beginning with our very birth,

cannot be afterwards discarded. No Tuscan ever would or even could

tolerate the introduction of any of the words or phrases belonging to

other dialects; and they endure the mistakes of foreigners with less

disgust than the uncouth pronunciation of their countrymen of the north

and east of the peninsula. Nor will they allow that even the well

educated among these use classic modes of speech. This is the point of

contention; for their antagonists insist, that they are in as full

possession as the Tuscans of pure Italian, drawing it from the same

sources— namely, the best writers of the country; and assert that they

are as well able to originate new modes of expression, and to turn with

as much elegance and force those already in use.

Monti and Perticari both entered heart and soul into this dispute, which

speedily roused every literary person in Italy to take one side or the

other. The Tuscans, headed by the Della Crusca, were furious that their

long-acknowledged supremacy should be questioned; while Monti, resting

the merits of his opinion on the great authority of Dante, did not

hesitate in his attack. Several letters to his friend Mustoxidi display

his earnestness and sincerity in the cause. We extract passages from

them, as explanatory of his ideas and characteristic of the man.

"The necessity of relaxing a little the intensity of the labour I have

in hand, led me for a few days among these mountains, where yours of the

2d found me. To fulfil my duty towards government, I have been obliged

to publish my remarks on the Della Crusca vocabulary, and the great

distinction of which it is necessary to remind the Italians; the

distinction I mean between the plebeian dialects, and that dignified

language spoken by all the well educated in the country, from the summit

of the Alps to the Lilybæum promontory. Founding my opinion on the

authority of Dante, in which both Petrarch and Boccaccio concur in a

surprising manner, I have undertaken to advocate that dignified Italian

which is not spoken but written; and to vindicate the rights of fourteen

provinces of Italy against the pretensions of a single one, which,

contrary to the principles of the great father of Italian literature,

has endeavoured to substitute the language in use in a single city, in

short a peculiar dialect, which, however beautiful, is only a dialect,

and can never fill the place of that universal language of which the

country has need. I do not know whether I shall treat this great cause

worthily; but I am convinced that whoever impugns the principles which I

establish, must begin by proving that Dante and the other two were mad.

I dare not believe that I have obtained a complete victory; but I have

laid the foundation-stones on which others of greater talent may one day

erect and finish the edifice."

To another friend he writes:--"The treatise of Perticari on the language

of the Trecentisti, which will soon be published, is a _chef-d'oeuvre_,

displaying great philosophy and acute criticism. I promise you that it

will make a great sensation, and that the Crusca with drooping head,

_caudamque remulcens_, will not know what to answer."

"Grassi has written an excellent parallel of the Della Crusca dictionary

with that of Johnson and the Spanish academy, which are similar in their

plan; and you will perceive the Gothic condition of our vocabulary in

comparison with others. Assistance and support reach me from all parts

of Italy, even from Tuscany; so that I may say that the whole nation

sides with me."

With more moderation he writes afterwards,--"We do not wish to rule; but

neither reason nor honour permit us to continue slaves. We only desire

the right to have a voice in the defence of national rights against

municipal pretensions: for the rest, we will take the law from them."

In fact, Monti must have felt the extreme difficulty of the question. In

England and France it is just to say, that the language of the well

educated all over the country may serve for authority as to language.

But the nobility and higher classes in Lombardy and Romagna all speak

their unintelligible dialects among themselves; it is only with

strangers, and when they write, that they have recourse to Italian. It

is impossible, therefore, that what they compose by rule, after study

and practice, can be the living language of a people in opposition to a

dialect, if you will, which, with few omissions and some change of

pronunciation, is the admiration of all who can appreciate the true

beauties of style; which is remarkable for passion and fervour combined

with concision and sweetness; for idiomatic phrases that realise and

stamp as it were the thought, instead of a periphrastic expression which

speaks of an idea or notion rather than giving expression to these

themselves. Monti was right in throwing aside the classical shackles of

the Della Crusca; but there is token in his letters that, in his heart,

he at last acknowledged that there was more of the living spirit of true

Italian abroad in the colloquial idiom of Tuscany, than in all the

well-turned sentences and set phrases of the well educated of the rest

of Italy.

We cannot help thinking that Monti must have been very happy during the

prosecution of these labours. An active mind abhors repose, when it must

"cream and mantle like a standing pool." The aid and sympathy of his

amiable and cultivated son-in-law must have shed an infinite charm over

his labours, the zeal of his partisans have flattered, the attacks of

his enemies have animated him. He believed that he was delivering his

country from a superstition which clogged the springs of her literature,

and choked up its free course. To a great degree he was in the right,

and the proof is in the original and beautiful use made of his theory by

the Italian authors of the present day.

Monti, loudly acknowledged to be the first Italian poet of his day,

continued to reside at Milan, devoted to literary pursuits, surrounded

by a circle of admirers, the chief not so much of a sect, as of Italian

literature. Yet he was often attacked, and was by no means tolerant of

criticism. His heart, however, was of better grain than his temper, and

his violent literary disputes with distinguished contemporaries, with

Mazza, Cesarotti, and Bettinelli, terminated in mutual friendship and

esteem. Angry when offended, and unmeasured in his expressions of

offence, yet the desire of reconciliation on the part of others was

always met by him with cordiality and ready forgiveness. He was the more

loved and admired the more he was known; one of the charms that attended

his intercourse was the beauty of his recitation. To hear him read

Virgil or Dante, was to find a deeper pathos in the laments of Dido, new

energy in the complaints of Ugolino. Fond of, devoted to his art, there

was no pedantry about him: he never thrust it upon the ignorant or

frivolous; but with his friends he loved to analyse the essence of

poetry, and to discuss the great question then in vogue in Italy of the

classic and romantic schools. There is a letter of his to a friend on

this subject, passages of which may be quoted as showing his opinions on

this subject, opinions which bear the stamp of truth.

"A poet," he writes, "ought to paint the nature which he beholds. I

applaud the poetry of the North, which is in perfect accord with the

gloomy atmosphere from which it receives its inspiration. But Italian

poetry, born of a glad and happy sky, is mad when she would robe herself

in clouds, and study to paint a nature of which she can form no idea

except from imagination. And besides, should poetry, whose chief use is

to delight (and, in the miserable state of human beings, to delight is

to serve), ought she to appear rough and frowning, ruled by pedantry and

crabbed philosophy? Is it possible that no one knows how to distinguish

the office of poet from that of philosopher? It is one thing to speak to

the senses, another to speak to the intellect. Naked and dry truth is

the death of poetry; for poetry and fiction are the same, and fable

being only truth disguised, this truth must be ornamented by flowers to

be gladly received. You scattered fresh and beautiful roses over your

poetic meditations when you speak of Greece and Rome; but, when you

leave these fields of perennial poetic beauty, and say that the thoughts

of the Greeks ran around in a narrow circle of images, and after

uttering this falsehood, you throw yourself with loosened reins into the

praise of the romantic school, then, my noble friend (pardon me if I

frankly declare my opinion), you are no longer the same. Had I been at

your side when you wrote your tender adieu to the gods of Greece, I

should have persuaded you not to continue it--nor to irritate the shade

of Schiller--of that Schiller whom, next to Shakspeare, I admire. Do you

not know that his best and favourite ode is entitled the 'Gods of

Greece?' in which he manifests his indignation against those who have

expelled them from the kingdom of the muses, and prays that they may be

recalled to adorn life and poetry. I conversed much with lord Byron

during the fifteen days' stay which he made at Milan. Do you know that

he trembled with rage when any one chanced, fancying that they paid him

a compliment, to praise the romantic school. Yet, in the sense in which

we understand it, no one was more romantic than he. But he disdained the

name, hating to find himself mixed up with the crowd of fools who

dishonour that noble school. I do not wish to play the preceptor with

you, but allow the true friendship that binds me to you to conclude with

a counsel which for many years I have myself followed, _inter utrumque

vola_; and, leaving the squabbles of party, let us use our best

endeavours to write good verses."

We may add to this profession of the poet's faith with regard to the

classic and romantic schools, that Monti considered Homer, Dante, and

Shakspeare as the first poets of the world; thus giving proof of the

justness of his taste, and demonstrating that originality and truth were

appreciated by him at their just value. Next to these three kings of the

art he placed Virgil, whom he loved as the friend of his boyhood. He

preferred Tacitus and Livy among the Latin prose writers, and

Machiavelli among the Italians. His opinions on these subjects were

delivered without arrogance, and without presuming to institute an

unappealable decision.

The count and countess Perticari resided principally at Pescara; but

they held frequent intercourse with Monti at Milan. In the winter of

1821-22, Perticari having made some stay at Milan, Monti accompanied

him on his return home. Several of his letters to his wife written

during this excursion are published; and we cannot resist the temptation

of giving them to the reader, affording as they do demonstrations of his

affectionate heart, and of the pleasure he took in the society of his

amiable relative. The first of these is dated from Verona, 7th October,

1821.

"I never made a merrier journey. We were six in company: a Brescian, a

Veronese, a Paduan, Mercandante, and us two. Day had scarcely dawned,

when we began to examine each other, and snuff-boxes went their amicable

round. An instant confidence sprung up among us, which led to much chat

and pleasantry. So gay were we, that we did nothing but laugh in chorus

till we arrived at the gates of Verona. Perticari and I ordered that our

luggage should be carried to the inn; being determined to remain free.

But the signore Mosconi, and Persica, had already left word at the best

inns that there was no room for Perticari and Monti; and, at the moment

when we arrived in the diligence, the countess Clarina and her daughter,

and the count, got into their carriage to meet and run away with us, as

if we had been two beautiful birds. Poor Mariano, who was accompanying

the porter with our luggage to the hotel, was pounced upon by the son of

the countess, ordered to turn right about and to follow him, he knew not

whither; not daring to resist, and fearing that his commander was a

custom-house officer. In short, it was not possible to resist the gentle

violence put upon us, and the cordial entreaties of my dear friend the

countess; and here we are welcomed, feasted, and honoured beyond

measure.

"It was our intention only to remain three days at Verona, but we have

been obliged to promise not to go till Sunday. The countess means to

accompany us half-way on the road to Vicenza, where we shall arrive by

noon, and on Monday evening we shall be at Bassano, three hours' journey

only from Vincenza; thence to Passagno, and on to Padua, whence you

shall hear from us."

"Venice, November 20. 1821.

"Not to leave you any longer waiting for news of us, I seize a moment

when every one is asleep (it being only five in the morning) to tell you

that yesterday we arrived safely at Venice. It would be a too

long-winded egotism to relate to you the kindness, the politeness, the

friendly contests, with which we have been every where welcomed. We had

been expected here for several days with impatience, and, at the moment

of our arrival, chance brought us into immediate contact with the baron

Tordero, who embraced us with indescribable delight. It being known that

we were going to call on the countess Albrizzi, an assembly gathered

together there; nor can I describe to you the demonstrations of joy with

which we were welcomed by that celebrated lady, and all her agreeable

friends. We remained till eleven, and should have staid longer had not

hunger (for we had not dined) recalled us to our inn; that, and the

circumstance that our friends, who had accompanied us from Padua, were

waiting for us. The merriment at table was prolonged till one in the

morning; so you see I have barely had three hours' sleep, and yet I

never was so well in my life."

"Pesaro, December 7. 1821.

"At length, yesterday, at the stroke of the ave-maria, we arrived, safe

and sound, at Pesaro, to the immense joy of our Constance; a joy,

nevertheless, mingled with bitterness, because her mother had not chosen

to accompany us: a circumstance which grieves me also, because I fear

that the severity of the winter, at Milan, which is here mild, may be

injurious to you. But, since you have been pleased to disappoint our

hopes, at least take particular care of your health, and do not expose

yourself to cold.

"Surrounded by visits and compliments, I have no time at present for

more. Let it suffice that my health is flourishing, and that I hope that

yours is the same. Constance and Giulio embrace you fondly. Addio,

addio!"

The following letter does not concern personal topics; but gives so

lively a picture of Italian manners, that it is well worthy to be

extracted:--

"Pesaro, January 12. 1822.

"You have reason to complain of the infrequency of my letters, but I

study and write continually; and when I am buried among my books, with a

pen in my hand, you know how difficult it is to draw me away, and ought

to forgive me.

"I am delighted to hear that, notwithstanding the clouds and snow that

infest Milan at this season, your health had not yet suffered. I entreat

you to take the greatest care of it. Mine is perfect. I never enjoyed so

benignant a winter. It is so mild, that I am dressed now as I am

accustomed to do at Milan in October.

"For the sake of making a longer letter, I will relate an anecdote which

will make you laugh.

"There is an ancient custom still existing at Fano, ten miles from

Pesaro, of celebrating a bull-fight at this season; to which a great

concourse of people resort from the surrounding towns. A few days ago

the first celebration took place. A truly ferocious bull was turned into

the arena. It is a law, that whoever chooses to attack the animal may

descend into the lists. No one dared expose himself to this infuriated

creature, and all the dogs who ventured to assail him were tossed and

killed. At length a peasant presented himself, and, to the wonder of

all, approached the tremendous animal. He boldly went close to him; and

the bull became quite mild, allowing himself to be patted and stroked,

while he licked the hand that caressed him; every one was astonished,

when, all of a sudden, a fellow among the spectators starts up, and

calls out, 'The man is a sorcerer!' 'A sorcerer! a magician!' exclaimed

several others in a fury. 'Burn the magician! burn the magician!' every

one exclaims. The president of the games is also persuaded that this

prodigy can only be the work of the devil; and he sends four soldiers,

who seize on the magician, drag him from the lists, and throw him into

prison. The poor fellow asked the cause of this violence; he was told,

'You are a magician; you will be hanged and burnt!' 'What are you saying

about a magician?' cried the man; 'does not his excellency and his

reverence know that the bull let me touch him because he knew me? I am

his master.' This testimony, being confirmed by several who knew the man

to be the master of the bull, and who took oaths to this effect, ought

to have cured the president of his folly; but the poor magician is still

in prison, and they are still disputing what to do with him."

At the same time that Monti writes thus to his wife, his letters to his

other friends are equally full of the pleasure he enjoyed at this time.

"You will like to know," he writes to one, "how I am passing my life.

Most happily; but not in idleness. Happily, because I am with my

children; and enjoy a season so mild and serene, that winter resembles

the opening of spring. Not in idleness, because I pursue my studies, and

mean to give a last, short, critical treatise."

But a few months after, in the July of the same year, 1822, Monti again

visited Pesaro, in circumstances that form a painful contrast with the

tranquil and domestic happiness that occasioned him so much pleasure

during his former one. Perticari had died, suddenly, and Monti went to

assist and console his sorrowing daughter. He thus writes, on this

occasion, to his friend Mustoxidi, in a letter dated Pesaro, 30th July,

1822:--

"You will have heard from my wife the pitiable state in which I found my

poor Constance. My arrival has produced a happy change in this

unfortunate creature: my coming was like a sunbeam on a flower beaten

down by the tempest. But, again, her mind is distracted, sleep flies

from her eyes, and her health suffers dreadfully. I must applaud the

kind attentions of her mother-in-law, who is an angel of goodness. But I

perceive that the only way to preserve her from the most dangerous

consequences of excessive grief, is to take her from a place too full of

shocking associations. And I would not delay my journey, but for the new

regulation of the pontifical police, which does not permit any one to

leave these states without a passport countersigned by the Austrian

ambassador at Rome. As soon as I obtain this I shall set out, and

conduct this dear object of my compassion to the arms of her mother."

This was a wound not easily healed, and never to be forgotten. In the

spring of the following year Monti still alludes to his loss with the

keenest grief. "Your letter," he writes to a friend, "afforded me

infinite pleasure and consolation. For a long time I have lived a

wretched life under the rod of adversity; and it is only when I enjoy

the society of some person dear to me, or hear from them, that I become

a little cheerful, and my spirits revive. Such has been the effect, dear

friend, of your letter to your poor Monti--poor indeed in every way, and

very unhappy. Unhappy in the death of Giulio; unhappy in the ill health

of Constance, who is wasting away with grief; unhappy in myself, as I am

deaf, old, and almost blind. For my eyes, owing to my over-use of them

in reading and writing by candle-light, are fallen into their old

state."

The last volume of the "Proposta" was published in July, 1823; and, this

last prosaic labour finished, the imagination of Monti awoke again, and

he turned his thoughts once more to the composition of poetry. He

restored the true reading to the "Convito" of Dante, which he prized as

the basis and authority of his own theories concerning the Italian

language. He wrote, also, the idyl on the nuptials of Cadmus; and then

contemplated the completion of his poem of the "Feroniade," which he had

begun many, many years ago at Rome. When he was secretary to don Luigi

Braschi, duke of Nemi, and nephew of Pius VI., he was accustomed to

accompany his patron in his hunting expeditions: the usual course of

these excursions was the Pontine marshes, near Terracina, a spot

abundant in game. There is a fountain in that neighbourhood, supposed to

be that anciently dedicated to the Diva Ferronia, at which the hunters

were accustomed to drink to refresh themselves. The sight of that

insalubrious marshy tract of land, the drainage of which had just been

undertaken by the pope, for the purpose of restoring it to agriculture,

awoke in Monti the idea of paying his debt of gratitude to the house of

Braschi, by commemorating this munificent work; he instantly began his

task, and named his poem from the guardian genius of the place. The

circumstances of the times interrupted his design: it became more

profitable to celebrate the ambition of Napoleon than the piety of a

captive priest; and the work was neglected, thrown aside, and almost

forgotten. During the last years of the poet's life, his friends

solicited him to finish it. Perhaps, when many years and many changes

had made much of his past life appear like an unconnected dream, the

memory of his early years came before him with all that charm and

vividness which youth often assumes in the eyes of age; and he was glad

to recur to a forgotten monument of bygone times. He yielded, therefore,

to the request of those about him, and had almost finished, when first

disease, and afterwards death, put an end to all his designs. It was

early in the year 1826 that he had thus renewed his poetic existence,

resolving not again to abandon it while his imagination remained

vigorous; but in the very opening of this enthusiasm, while every fear

was distant, and his active mind gladly met, each morning, the series of

duties and labour which he imposed on himself, he was seized by an

illness, through which every scheme and every hope was calamitously

overthrown.

On the 9th of April, at about eleven o'clock, when he had retired,

rather to study than repose, a sudden apoplexy attacked him; and no

medical aid, nor any care, could restore him again to health. He lost

the use of his left side, and the vital powers appeared mortally

attacked. The news spread through Milan, and struck every one with

grief; the population crowded round his door, and this public

demonstration of kindness sensibly affected him. His mind remained clear

and strong throughout the attack, nor was he without sanguine hopes of

recovery. In the April succeeding his first seizure, we find him writing

to a friend: "I burn with a desire to revisit Florence before I die;

consequently I have resolved, next June, to go to the mud baths of

Albano, near Padua, whence I hope to receive a renewal of my strength

sufficient for my journey." These mud baths, however, were pronounced

hurtful instead of beneficial to his disorder, and he never went. Still

hope was alive, and he lingered on until the autumn of 1828, his life

being consumed in a slow martyrdom: his death-bed was attended by his

wife and disconsolate daughter, whom, even to the last, he sought to

cheer by words of affection, and by smiles when he could not speak. He

expired on the 13th of October, 1828, at the age of seventy-four.

The genius of Monti would, in times of less public excitement, have

adorned his name with the highest praise; and his faults would never

have been called into view. The studious and imaginative bent of his

mind would have led him to cultivate letters and poetry; and we should

glory in the exalted fancy of a creative poet, without any shame for the

man. His domestic character was amiable; he was zealous for his friends,

grateful for benefits; generous, kind, and true in all the ordinary

intercourse of life: but neither reverence for genius, nor attachment to

the man, ought to blind us to his political tergiversation, or to

suppose that there is virtue in that inborn slavishness of spirit that

could see no degradation in praising those whom he reprobated in his

heart, and in commemorating with applause acts the most injurious to the

common cause of humanity. There is retribution in our own consciences

for all our faults, and Monti felt this: his love of glory was great,

and he was often pained by being reminded of his political apostacies;

but too often, when irritated by censure, he was willing to cast the

blame upon others, instead of admitting his own want of rigid public

integrity.

But take away this error, and, as a private character, Monti merited the

affection and esteem of all. The only fault of his disposition was

irritability and an inclination to anger; but he redeemed it by the

candour of his acknowledgments, and the uprightness of his conduct.

Warmth of heart and warmth of temper are too apt to be united in the

same disposition; but the kindness of his nature was rendered even more

apparent by this defect of temperament. He was sensitive to injury, and

his indignation was proportionate to his quick sense of injustice; but,

though his anger took the appearance of sternness and severity, it never

led him to injure another, but evaporated in words, and might be said to

agitate the surface, but never penetrated into the depths, of his mind.

He was never guilty of an act of revenge,--on the contrary, he often

benefited those who injured him. His mind was, in short, of a uniform

texture; and what it wanted in dignity and grandeur was compensated for

by gentleness, tenderness, and ready sympathy with the sufferings of

others. He was beyond measure charitable to those in distress; and

infinite and unwearied compassion, we are told by one who knew him well,

was his prominent characteristic. The poor gladly celebrated the

charities he strove to conceal. This virtue sprung, doubtless, from

early habits acquired under the roof of his benevolent parents. He was

simple as a child in the midst of worldliness, and the good faith and

sincerity of his friendships were without a flaw.

"In person," the same friend informs us who has furnished the public

with the principal documents on which this memoir is founded, "he was

tall and handsome: his forehead ample; the shape of his face regular;

and his eyes, gleaming from beneath his arched and full brows, shone at

once with a vivacious and soft light, which commanded both affection and

respect. An air of melancholy was diffused over his countenance, to

which the habits of reflection would have given a severe and even

disdainful expression, had not the sweetest smile illuminated it with

the gracious light of love. His carriage was dignified, his mien

serious, and his whole aspect was that of a man of talent, and of one

warmed and softened by the benevolence and affectionateness of his

disposition."

We may conclude with this description of the outward man, emanating from

one who revered and loved him as a preceptor and a friend. The world, in

the days succeeding to those of revolution and preceding those of

reform, was much divided between those who despaired and those who

hoped. The latter now triumph; but Monti died before the milder light

dawned on the world, and while change appeared inevitably accompanied by

bloodshed and misery. His compassionate heart preferred the peace of

submission, both for himself and others, to the suffering attendant on

defeated struggles; and errors springing from so humane a source may be

forgiven, even by those whose ardent natures lead them to overlook the

toil and danger of the journey, in the hope of attaining the

accomplishment of their desires.

[Footnote 52: Maffei; Storia della Litteratura Italiana.]

[Footnote 53: Bonetti.]