MONTI, Vicenzo,the greatest poet which Italy has produced since the bright days of its literary glory, was born in Romagna, on the 19th of February 1754. His father was one of those small Italian landholders whose mode of life is peculiarly primitive and patriarchal, and the farmhouse, or villa, as it is called, which he occupied, was situated amongst the vineyards and agricultural country which lies between Fusignano and the Alfonsina, in the territory of Ravenna. In this rural retirement Monti passed several years of his boyhood, without receiving any instructions except from his parents; but the family having removed to Majano, he was sent to the seminary of Faenza, and there he acquired an extensive knowledge of the Latin language. His first attempt in Latin verse was singularly unhappy; but his attachment to the Roman poets amounted to a passion, and the second effort of his muse was regarded by his masters as a miraculous effort of precocious genius. By his father he was destined to follow the profession of agriculture; but yielding a reluctant compliance with the wishes of his parent, and continuing to evince a predilection for literature which was subversive of all manual application, the elder Monti sent the youthful poet to the university of Ferrara to study the legal or medical profession. Yet even these pursuits were found too abstract for a mind so highly imaginative and ardent, and ultimately Monti resigned himself wholly to the cultivation of literature and poetry. His first Italian poem was entitled The Prophecy of Jacob; and, although an unequal production, it contains some vigorous and even sublime passages. About this time, the perusal of Dante opened up to him new and splendid views of the grand and beautiful in the poetry of his native land, and henceforth the bard of the Divina Commedkι became his model and his master. His admiration of Dante bordered on idolatry, and catching a portion of the inspiration of his favourite, he wrote the Vision of Ezekiel, in which he displayed that grandeur of imagery and command of language which distinguish his compositions. Monti was at this time scarcely eighteen years of age.

His genius attracted the notice of Cardinal Borghese, who took him under his protection, and conducted him to Rome. Here he extended his knowledge of the classics, and his acquaintance with the learned, whose favour he secured by various efforts of his muse. But it was not until he attained his twenty-sixth year that public attention was directed to him, on the occasion of the celebration of the quinquennali of Pius VI. in 1780. The compositions which he recited drew forth such general applause that the Duke of Braschi, the pope’s nephew, made him his private secretary. Under this nobleman he continued several years at Rome, producing at intervals such occasional poems as kept alive rather than extended his poetic reputation. At last the fame of Alfieri inspired him with emulation; and burning with a desire to rival Virginia, which he had heard read by the poet in a circle of the most distinguished literati of the day, he composed his tragedy of Aristodemo. It was acted with the greatest success at Rome in 1787, and Monti was induced to write another drama, Galeotto Manfredi, which proved an entire failure. His genius was not dramatic, but lyrical; and highly-wrought imaginative rhapsodies were more in accordance with the natural bias of his mind than the concatenation of plots, and the delineation of human passion. About this period Monti married.

The French revolution had now begun to shake, as if by an earthquake, the time-worn and decayed governments of Europe; and the French, eager to extend the moral convulsion, and regenerate the whole world, despatched numbers of individuals to different countries, there to spread revolutionary tenets. Amongst those who had crossed the Alps for this purpose was Hugh Basseville, a person of considerable talents and some literary acquirements. He had been appointed secretary to the French embassy at Naples; and whilst thus employed he visited Rome, for the purpose of propagating revolutionary doctrines. This imprudence cost him his life. He was stabbed on the night of the 13th of January 1793, and died soon afterwards, overwhelmed with remorse, it is said, for having attempted to raise sedition against the pope. Monti being attached to the papal court, laid hold of this circumstance, and celebrated at once the repentance of Basseville, and the unfortunate tragedy acted in France almost at the same moment,^[1. Louis XVI. was beheaded on the 19th of January 1793. ] in a poem entitled the Basvilliana. This production is entirely'supernatural in its construction. The soul of the murdered man, like the body of Moses, is contended for by the angel of God and the enemy of mankind; and although the former is triumphant, yet the disembodied spirit of the republican is doomed for a certain period to hover about the banks of the Seine, and to witness all the atrocities which are there perpetrated. The subjectis treated in a powerful and happy manner, the imagery with which the poem is adorned being in the highest degree original and majestic. As a whole, it approached more nearly to the grandeur and sublime daring of Dante than any r thing which had been produced for centuries; and the fame of Monti rose above all rivalry. But the tide of French republicanism, having now rushed through the passes of the Alps, and overflowed the fertile plains of Italy, entirely changed the aspect of affairs in that country, and brought Monti into close contact with some of Napoleon’s generals. To this circumstance we must attribute the admiration which the poet began to entertain for the French hero, and the lively anticipations of good to be derived by his country from the new order of things which were awakened in his mind. But the Italian nobility eyed with extreme suspicion the masquerade of liberty in which theywere invited to play a part; and many of them, seceding from the offices of government, left these open to the ambition of meaner or less scrupulous aspirants. The enthusiasm of Monti hurried him away with the general current in which so many warm young hearts were borne along. In one of his letters, the poet observes, “I grew insane with the rest, and my conversion procured me patronage and grace ;” but it did not procure him either peace or [7:15:436]respect. By many of his own countrymen he was viewed with envy and aversion, whilst the republicans denounced, in the author of Basvilliana, the arch enemy of democracy, and Monti was ultimately dismissed from his office.

In a mythological poem entitled Musogonia, he paid court to Napoleon; and in a still finer production, Prome-teo, he enthusiastically celebrates the triumphs of the Gallic chief, at the same time pouring out the vials of his wrath upon England. This must doubtless have greatly delighted Bonaparte, and the poet was soon afterwards named commissary of the province of the Rubico; but in a short time he was obliged to resign his office. During the absence of the conqueror in Egypt, the Italian republics melted away like frost-work before the sun; and their partisans, amongst whom was Monti, were compelled to seek refuge beyond the Alps. The poet fell into a state of the most deplorable destitution; but the return of Napoleon, and his new victories in Italy, afforded Monti an opportunity of partially retrieving his fortunes. He returned to Milan, and there published his poem, the Mascheroniana, the chief object of which is to bind new wreaths of victory around the brow of Napoleon, already encumbered with laurels. Shortly afterwards, Monti produced a third tragedy, entitled Caius Gracchus; and, in 1802, an ode, in which he calls upon his military idol to place himself at the head of the Italian people, which, as is well known, Bonaparte did not long hesitate to do. The rewards of the poet were, first, a professorship at Pavia, and, a few years subsequently, a number of offices and honours at Milan. In 1805, when Napoleon was crowned king of Italy, the event was celebrated by Monti in a poem called II Beni-ficio. Indeed, every fresh victory and new conquest of the Emperor of France afforded a theme for the courtly muse of the Italian poet. The triumph of Jena resounded in his ode entitled the Spada di Federico the attempted usurpation of the Spanish throne was sung in the Palinge-nesi; and various other conquests were celebrated in numerous odes and hymns. Besides these works, he finished, in less than two years, a translation of the Iliad, which, without possessing much spirit, is considered as elegant and faithful.

The overthrow of Napoleon in 1814 deprived Monti of all his public employments; and after this period, although he composed an occasional poem, his labours were chiefly confined to prose. The principal of these are, considerations on the difficulty of properly translating the poetry of the Iliad, and several dialogues on the Italian language, full of wit and acute criticism. By an order of government to reform the national dictionary, his attention was still more entirely engrossed with the subject of language. The great question in Italy was, and still is, whether the pure and classical language, the only one not wholly barbarous and vulgar, is Italian or Tuscan. The academy Della Crusea espoused the latter view of the question, whilst Monti undertook a crusade against them, attacking their decisions with the utmost vigour, and no common success. He continued to reside at Milan, corresponding with various members of his family, and with the distinguished men of the day. In 1823 his imagination awoke again, and he once more turned his thoughts to poetry. He restored the true reading of the Convito of Dante, wrote an idyl on the nuptials of Cadmus, and then contemplated the completion of the Feroniade, a poem which he had begun many years before. In this production he celebrates the praise of the house of Braschi, for having, by a magnificent work, drained the insalubrious Pontine Marches. He had nearly completed his design, when death put a final period to his labours. In 1826 an apoplectic attack gave a severe shock to his frame; but he lingered more than two years, and expired on the 13th of October 1828, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

It has been said of Dryden, that if all the great chiefs of poetry surpassed him, each in his own peculiar vein, yet his native fire and originality gave him a place close beside them. It is much the same with Monti. He has neither the sublimity of Dante, nor the tenderness of Petrarch, nor the inventive flow of Ariosto, nor the epic conception and voluptuous grace of Tasso; but he has a fervour of feeling, a power of imagery, and an overflowing redundance of ideal thought, which mark the genuine poet, and entitle him to a place immediately after these great masters of the lyre. His genius was not that of a tragedian; lyrical and imaginative rhapsodies, rather than the concatenation of a plot and the representation of human passion, were adapted to the natural bent of his mind, and in these he chiefly excelled. It is more difficult to justify his character and conduct as a man than to vindicate his claims to the laurel. In times of less public excitement, he would have quietly cultivated lettersand poetry in retirement, and his faults would never have been dragged into notice. But, to atone for his political tergiversation and servile worship of power, he possessed the domestic virtues in the highest degree. He had great warmth of heart, was zealously attached to his friends, and grateful for benefits; generous, kind, and true in all the ordinary intercourse of life. A friend thus speaks of him: “In person 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 lively yet softened 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 that of a man of talent, and of one warmed and softened by the benevolence and affection of his disposition.” (r r. r.)