Chapter XIII: Part 13

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."