and it may be remarked, that, while the countess has been censured for recording her name so prominently, Alfieri, in the epitaph he himself composed for her, makes it her chief praise that she was "quam unice dilexit," the only love of the poet. This account of the life of a man who was endowed with the chief attribute of genius,—that of spontaneously forming and manifesting itself, despite every obstack or adverse circumstance, may be concluded by the quotation of the sonnet in which he describes his own person; a faithful translation of which, which we also append, appeared, some years ago, in "The Liberal." It may be quoted with the more propriety at the end of his life, since it was written when time had robbed him of the graces of youth; giving instead those characteristic marks stamped by the action of his disposition and pursuits. "Sublime specchio di veraci detti Mostrami in corpo e in anima qual sono, Bianca pelle, occhi azzurri, aspetto buono, "Or duro, acerbo, ora pieghevol mite, La mente e il cor meco in perpetua lite, Or stimandomi Achille, ed or Tersite; Uom, se' tu grande o vil? Muori, e il sapral."* "Thou lofty mirror, Truth, let me be shown Hair plainly red, retreating now behind; A meagre body on two stilts of bone; Fair skin, blue eyes, good look, nose well design'd; "Now harsh and crabbed, mild and pleasant soon; My head and heart and I never in tune; Man, art thou great or vile ?- die, and thou 'It know." 303 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 soul-less, 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 - 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 abbéa 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."* 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 * Maffei; Storia della Litteratura Italiana. each felt to transcend his rivals in a sonorous and turgid system of words, in which neither passion nor thought appeared.* 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 culti vated 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 * Bonetti. 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 |