Here Basville confesses the crime which brought him to his end, and lauds the vengeance of Rome and of the Lion of Judah. But the above quotation suggests another remark, which will be found more or less true of all Monti's works; namely, that he has not scrupled to insert the ideas and the turns of expression of former poets in his best verses. The beginning of this canto reminds us of that of Dante's Ugolino.

"La bocca sollevò dal fero pasto

Quel peccator

Poi cominciò: Tu vuoi

and the last verse is evidently from Petrarch,

"Son del Cesare mio: nessun mi tocchi."

Monti indeed regards it as a portion of his art, and a proof of his talents, successfully to employ the fine thoughts and the phrases of the great writers. No modern author has, perhaps, so freely imitated others as Monti; but no modern author has so frankly confessed his obligations and his gratitude. His notes abound with the passages from which he has borrowed, and he has the praise of sometimes improving upon his originals, and of always introducing them in proper time and place. So far from accusing him of plagiary, we are rather agreeably surprised by the new aspect which he gives to beauties already familiar to every reader.

The fourth canto of the poem prepares us for the war of the coalesced potentates to revenge the death of Louis XVI. The soul of Basville is condemned by the poet to expiate his crime, by beholding the horrors of the Revolution, and by wandering without the precincts of Paradise until France shall have received the punishment of her regicide:

"Finchè non sia di Francia ultro il delitto."

According to this plan, Monti had opened an unbounded field for his exertions, and by merely following the progress of events, he would have avoided those difficulties

with which the necessity of inventing and arranging a series of fictions, has embarrassed the greater part of all poetical writers. He would only have had to select the most remarkable traits in the astonishing history of our times, and to divide them, according to the rules of his art and the power of his genius, into pictures which should command the delight and wonder of posterity. The difficulty of handling a contemporary topic was not too great for the capacity of Monti, and had he continued his Basville to the victory of Waterloo, he might have occupied, next to Dante, that place which Virgil possesses not far from Homer.

The voyage of the angel with the shade of Basville is taken from that of Dante with the spirit of Virgil. The terze rime, a metre perfected by the father of Italian poetry, was, in the true sense of the word, ennobled (ingentilito) by Monti. It is true that he has not the same harmonious variety, nor the same boldness of expression, nor the same loftiness of thought as are found in his model. But he is more equal, more clear, more finished in every part: his images have not only the stable grandeur, but even the glossy whiteness of Parian sculpture; and although they succeed each other with astonishing rapidity, and force, and boldness, preserve an elegance peculiar to themselves, more especially in the terze rime, which no one has ever employed with the same success. It is probable that Monti will never be surpassed in this metre: but in the heroic stanza he could not come into the field against Ariosto and Tasso; and in blank verse, Cesarotti, Parini, and Foscolo have been more adventurous and more successful.

Monti had scarcely published the fourth canto of his poem (which, such as he left it, does not amount to 1500 lines) when the French conquered Lombardy. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was interest, or more likely still inclination, that seduced him from Rome, and settled him in the capital of the new Cisalpine republic. On this occasion he quitted the service of the Duke of Braschi, the nephew of Pius VI. Prelates, cardinals, and even popes,

had begun by being secretaries like himself; but Monti was a married man--he was a poet, and he was not besides in the good graces of his Holiness. He one day presented Pius with a magnificent edition of his poetry, and the Pontiff condescended to accept it: but added, at the same time, after quoting some verses of Metastasio, "No one, now a days, writes like that great poet."

Monti was now the poet of the popular assemblies, of the armies, of the democratic dinners, which rose together at the institution of the new republic; and his patriotic hymns have, almost alone, survived the innumerable copies of verses, inspired by occasions so animating. But he did not confine himself to songs; he wrote with sober severity against the priests: such are his Superstizione,' and his Fanatismo,' and his Visione,' in which the shade of Louis XVI. is changed from the martyr of his Basville into a hideous spectre. Neither his labours nor his devotion could, however, obtain for Monti the confidence or even the pardon of the friends of the revolution. We learn this from his own lips; for he complains of it, and leaves nothing untried to convince his fellow citizens of his sincerity, and begs at least for pity, in the opening of one of his poems, in which he brings himself upon the stage, and assumes the imploring pathetic attitude of the father of a family.

"Stendi dolce amor mio, sposa diletta,

A quell' arpa la man, che la soave

Dolce fatica di tue dita aspetta!

Svegliami l'armonia ch' entro le cave
Latèbre alberga del sonoro legno,

E de' forti pensier volgi la chiave."

These were to Monti days of humiliation, and of bitterness, and of danger. The legislative council passed a severe and unjust law against those who, before the Italian Revolution, had written in favour of tyranny; and it was seen that this law was directed more particularly against the author of the Basvilliana.' The low retainers of literature, under the pretext of patriotism, now gave vent to their

jealousy, and assailed Monti with scurrilities equally violent and mean.

His friends had procured him a place in the commissariat of Romagna but he was accused of peculation and carried before a tribunal.-The calumny was proved, and the defendant acquitted, but no steps were taken to punish the calumniators.

Such were the dangers of his position, or such was the inconstancy of his soul, that Monti disgraced himself beyond the wishes of his rivals. Pius VI. was carried off from Rome by the French, and the poet chose this forced migration of his former master for the occasion of an invective imitated from that ode of Horace in which the Roman republic is compared to a ship tossed by the wind and waves, and steering for the harbour. No protestant pen has ever traced invectives more severe against the Great Harlot than are poured forth by the repentant Secretary.

"Di mala merce e di dolor vai carca,

O Nave, che dal Tosco al Sardo lito
Porti il gran Pescator, che in infinito
Mar di colpe ha di Pier rotta la barca:

Vedi come t'insegue e il dorso inarca
L'onda irata? de' venti odi il ruggito?
Prendi porto, sollecita il pentito

Remo e di tanto peccator ti scarca."

Dante had before called upon the islands of Capraja and Gorgona to block up the mouth of the Arno, and drown the inhabitants of Pisa for their cruelty to the children of Ugolino; and Monti now invoked Sardinia, and told it to fly away, that the last of monsters might not find even a tomb to shelter him.

"E dritto fora

Non dar di tomba nè d'arena un velo
All' ultimo de' mostri."

Monti at least revenged himself of Pius for placing him below Metastasio.

It was but a short time afterwards that Suvaroff and the Austrians made themselves masters of Italy. Monti fled

to France, and the distresses of his exile gave a new vigour and a dignity to his exertions.

Mascheroni, a mathematician, much esteemed in Italy, and a writer of verses admired for their elegance, had distinguished himself for his enthusiastic love of liberty, and, what was much more rare, by his noble integrity of character and purity of manners. He also had escaped, on the same occasion, to Paris, where he died. Monti thought this a good opportunity for writing another poem, which he called The Death of Mascheroni' (In Morte di Mascheroni), on the plan of his Basville. The spirit of his hero is in like manner made to traverse the earth, and in his view of the changes of Italy beholds the advantages of liberty and the pernicious effects of popular licentiousness. The political aim of this poem is more useful, and the subject is better handled, than in the Death of Basville; but the author could not refuse himself the satisfaction of consigning to perpetual infamy the names of his demagogue persecutors.

The Italians discover a greater variety and interest in the scenes presented to the notice of Mascheroni than in those of Basville. They think the style less pointed, but more rich and more graceful, and they look upon the terze rime as less monotonous and more hormonious than any of his former specimens. The plan was equally vast with that of his first poem, and it was, like Basville, also stopped at the fourth canto: for Bonaparte became Emperor of the French and King of Italy, and Monti hastened to publish six cantos of another poem; these were to be the first part of a long work which he called The Bard of the Black Forest' (Il Bardo della Selva Nera).

It must be owned that the conception of this poem is vastly puerile. The author is obliged to imagine that there are bards who deal in verse and prophecy yet to be found by those who look for them; and just such a one as Cæsar and Lucan saw in the depths of Germany is discovered by Monti in 1805, hidden somewhere in the Black Forest. This bard has a daughter, Malvina, who is sur