MONTI, VINCENZO, an eminent Italian poet, was born in the Romagna on the 19th of February 1754. He received his elementary education at the seminary of Faenza, where he acquired an extensive knowledge of the Latin language, and became passionately attached to the Roman poets. By his father he was destined to follow the profession of agriculture; but as he continued to evince a predilection for literature, the elder Monti sent the youthful poet to the university of Ferrara to study law or medicine. Young
Monti ultimately 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 old style of his native land, and henceforth the bard of the Divina Commedia became his model and his master. His admiration of Dante bordered on idolatry, and catching a portion of the inspiration of that great poet, he wrote the Vision of Ezekiel, in which he displayed that grandeur of imagery and fluent 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 conducted him to Rome. Here he extended his knowledge of the classics, and his acquaintance with the learned; but it was not until 1780 that public attention was directed to him. The compositions which he recited on the occasion of the celebration of the quinquennali of Pius VI. drew forth such general applause, that Don Luigi Braschi, the Pope's nephew, made him his private secretary. His next composition of any importance was his tragedy of Aristodemo, written, it is said, to rival the Virginia of Alfieri, which he had heard the poet read before a literary club. The very great success of his Aristodemo induced Monti to write another drama, entitled 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.
Monti being attached to the papal court when the revolutionary Basseville was stabbed in the streets of Rome, laid hold of this circumstance, and celebrated at once the repentance of Basseville and the decapitation of Louis XVI. 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 subject is treated with great power, and the imagery with which the poem is adorned is in the highest degree original and majestic. As a whole, it approached more nearly to the grandeur and sublime daring of Dante than anything which had been produced for centuries; and the fame of Monti rose above all rivalry. But the tide of French republicanism having now set in upon 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. The enthusiasm of Monti hurried him away with the general current in which so many ardent young hearts were borne along.
In a mythological poem entitled Musogonia, he paid court to Napoleon; and in a still finer production, Prometeo, he enthusiastically celebrates the triumphs of the Gallic chief, at the same time pouring out the vials of his wrath upon England. On the decay of the Napoleonic influence in Italy, Monti was compelled to seek refuge beyond the Alps, where he fell into a state of the most deplorable destitution. The return of Napoleon, however, 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. 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 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 Il Beneficio. 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 Palinogenesi; 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 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 for a time engrossed with the subject of language. He undertook a crusade against the Della Cruscani, attacking their decisions with the utmost vigour and no common success. He continued to reside at Milan; and in 1823 he once more turned his thoughts to poetry. He restored the true reading of the Convito of Dante, wrote an idyll on the nuptials of Cadmus, and then contemplated the completion of the Feroniade, a poem which he had begun many years before. He had nearly accomplished his design when death put a final period to his labours on the 13th October 1828, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. (J.P.S.)