After this period Monti's labours were chiefly confined to prose, and he is considered in this manner to have greatly benefited the literature of his country. The chief among these are the considerations on the difficulty of well translating the poetry of the Iliad, and several dialogues on the Italian language, full of acute criticism and wit. A circumstance turned his attention still more entirely to the subject of language. The government of Lombardy, wishing to show some encouragement to literature, had ordered the Royal Institute of Milan to occupy itself in the reform of the national dictionary; and Monti was requested by his colleagues to publish his observations on the subject. He obeyed with alacrity. His son-in-law, count Perticari, had devoted much attention to this subject, and he became Monti's associate in the task.
The great question in Italy is, whether the pure and classical language, the only one not wholly barbarous and vulgar, is Italian or Tuscan; a mixture drawn from the various dialects of the peninsula, or solely founded on Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio, and other early Tuscan authors. The academy Della Crusca espoused the latter side of the question, and, forming a dictionary, expunged every word not to be found in the authors named the Trecentisti. Monti, on the contrary, attacked the ipse-dixits of this academy, and, pointing out innumerable errors in their dictionary, undertook, as he called it, a crusade against the Della Crusca.
This is a question that has divided all the talents of Italy, and in which it appears presumptuous in a foreigner to express any decision. Still we may reason from general grounds, and from analogy. Every portion of Italy has a distinct dialect. Immediately on leaving the precincts of any town, an acute ear will detect in the person who lives outside the gate a difference in the form of speech and pronunciation. Many of the towns use a mere patois, which has never been written. The Neapolitan, Romagnole, Genoese, and Milanese, each have a dialect, devoid of grace, cacophonous, truncated of vowels, and unintelligible to any but themselves; the Venetian being the only one distinguished for its own peculiar charms. To a stranger the language of the Romans has a great charm: the bocca Romana, or Roman pronunciation, is clear, soft, and yet emphatic. Their language is unidiomatic, and therefore easily comprehended. You enter Tuscany, and come upon those terse and idiomatic forms of speech which enraptured Alfieri, and which give so much energy and animation to the expression of sentiment, so much clearness and precision to narration or reasoning. But even these are not admitted by the Della Crusca. The Florentine is still a dialect—the Pisan and the Siennese fall under the same denomination: the principal difference is that the grammar of all the Tuscans is pure, and that you may form your speech on that of the peasantry and servants, without running any risk of falling into errors and vulgarisms. Alfieri used to mingle in the crowds assembled in the market-place of Sienna, there to imbibe from unlearned lips the purest modes of the Italian language. The dictionary Della Crusca was founded therefore on Tuscan, omitting its peculiarities, and carefully registering any innovations that had crept in since the era of the Trecentisti. It is obvious, under this tutelage, that the Italian became, when written, virtually a dead language. No author could adopt the forms of speech he made use of in the common conversation. The language that they heard and spoke when moved by joy, by grief, by love, or anger, was to be modified, corrected, and, so to speak, translated, before it could be put in a book. The living impress of the soul was to be taken from it, and, instead of putting down the word that rose spontaneously to the lips, and ought to have flowed as easily from the pen, the author hunted in the Della Crusca dictionary for authorities, which shackled the free spirit of inspired genius with chains and bolts forged from the works of the old writers, who themselves wrote as they spoke, and created a language, simply by putting down the forcible and graceful expressions then in colloquial use.
Still a great difficulty arises from any deviation from these rules. Was then the Florentine dialect, or the Siennese, or the Pisan, to be the written language of the country? Each city would have rejected its neighbour's, and still more would Lombardisms be regarded with disdain by the inhabitants of the south. Language, pronunciation, idiom, all form a habit to the eye and ear, which, beginning with our very birth, cannot be afterwards discarded. No Tuscan ever would or even could tolerate the introduction of any of the words or phrases belonging to other dialects; and they endure the mistakes of foreigners with less disgust than the uncouth pronunciation of their countrymen of the north and east of the peninsula. Nor will they allow that even the well educated among these use classic modes of speech. This is the point of contention; for their antagonists insist, that they are in as full possession as the Tuscans of pure Italian, drawing it from the same sources— namely, the best writers of the country; and assert that they are as well able to originate new modes of expression, and to turn with as much elegance and force those already in use.
Monti and Perticari both entered heart and soul into this dispute, which speedily roused every literary person in Italy to take one side or the other. The Tuscans, headed by the Della Crusca, were furious that their long-acknowledged supremacy should be questioned; while Monti, resting the merits of his opinion on the great authority of Dante, did not hesitate in his attack. Several letters to his friend Mustoxidi display his earnestness and sincerity in the cause. We extract passages from them, as explanatory of his ideas and characteristic of the man.
"The necessity of relaxing a little the intensity of the labour I have in hand, led me for a few days among these mountains, where yours of the 2d found me. To fulfil my duty towards government, I have been obliged to publish my remarks on the Della Crusca vocabulary, and the great distinction of which it is necessary to remind the Italians; the distinction I mean between the plebeian dialects, and that dignified language spoken by all the well educated in the country, from the summit of the Alps to the Lilybæum promontory. Founding my opinion on the authority of Dante, in which both Petrarch and Boccaccio concur in a surprising manner, I have undertaken to advocate that dignified Italian which is not spoken but written; and to vindicate the rights of fourteen provinces of Italy against the pretensions of a single one, which, contrary to the principles of the great father of Italian literature, has endeavoured to substitute the language in use in a single city, in short a peculiar dialect, which, however beautiful, is only a dialect, and can never fill the place of that universal language of which the country has need. I do not know whether I shall treat this great cause worthily; but I am convinced that whoever impugns the principles which I establish, must begin by proving that Dante and the other two were mad. I dare not believe that I have obtained a complete victory; but I have laid the foundation-stones on which others of greater talent may one day erect and finish the edifice."
To another friend he writes:—"The treatise of Perticari on the language of the Trecentisti, which will soon be published, is a chef-d'oeuvre, displaying great philosophy and acute criticism. I promise you that it will make a great sensation, and that the Crusca with drooping head, caudamque remulcens, will not know what to answer."
"Grassi has written an excellent parallel of the Della Crusca dictionary with that of Johnson and the Spanish academy, which are similar in their plan; and you will perceive the Gothic condition of our vocabulary in comparison with others. Assistance and support reach me from all parts of Italy, even from Tuscany; so that I may say that the whole nation sides with me."
With more moderation he writes afterwards,—"We do not wish to rule; but neither reason nor honour permit us to continue slaves. We only desire the right to have a voice in the defence of national rights against municipal pretensions: for the rest, we will take the law from them."
In fact, Monti must have felt the extreme difficulty of the question. In England and France it is just to say, that the language of the well educated all over the country may serve for authority as to language. But the nobility and higher classes in Lombardy and Romagna all speak their unintelligible dialects among themselves; it is only with strangers, and when they write, that they have recourse to Italian. It is impossible, therefore, that what they compose by rule, after study and practice, can be the living language of a people in opposition to a dialect, if you will, which, with few omissions and some change of pronunciation, is the admiration of all who can appreciate the true beauties of style; which is remarkable for passion and fervour combined with concision and sweetness; for idiomatic phrases that realise and stamp as it were the thought, instead of a periphrastic expression which speaks of an idea or notion rather than giving expression to these themselves. Monti was right in throwing aside the classical shackles of the Della Crusca; but there is token in his letters that, in his heart, he at last acknowledged that there was more of the living spirit of true Italian abroad in the colloquial idiom of Tuscany, than in all the well-turned sentences and set phrases of the well educated of the rest of Italy.