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. 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 20l. "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.