Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/352

334 a literary adventurer, and by his splendid tercets on the Beauty of Nature and other lyrics adapted for recitation, sang himself into the good graces of the Papal court. He took a yet higher flight in his fine, rather lyrical than dramatic, tragedy of Aristodemo (1787), as superior to Alfieri in versification as inferior in virile energy. The subject is one of the most pathetic, the grief of a father for having slain his daughter. The Galeotto Manfredi (1788), partly inspired by private circumstances, is interesting as one of the first Italian examples of romantic tragedy. One of the characters is copied from Iago.

It was not until 1793 that Monti took rank as the first epic poet of his time by his Bassvilliana, a poem on the murder of the French diplomatist Bassville, who had perished in a tumult provoked by his own imprudence. Never since the tentmaker of Tarsus was caught up into the third heaven was an obscure person elevated so mightily as this insignificant Bassville, of whose remorseful spirit Monti's ardent imagination makes a new Dante, guided by an angel to behold the atrocities of the French Revolution as a penance preliminary to its entrance into Paradise. In the whole compass of literature there is perhaps no other instance of so close and successful a copy as Monti's of Dante, combined with so much impetuous vigour, and other qualities not usually associated with imitation. It revealed Monti as the most impressionable of poets in his equal subjugation by Dantesque influences and by the passions of the hour. Such a man must needs move with the times. Ere long the Papal courtier was the friend and guest of the French generals, inditing thundering odes against superstition and fanaticism; soon he held office under the Cisalpine Republic, and