Page:The Oxford book of Italian verse.djvu/28

INTRODUCTION him is again and again lost in the fanatic; so that his dramas, the first tragedies in Italy, too often become special pleas against priests and oppressors, and the intricate action of character on character had little interest for his impatient soul. But his defects as a dramatist were his strength as a lyric poet; his intense, one-sided individualism finds true expression in his shorter verses, and the melancholy which seems forced and unnatural in the plays becomes real and profound. He has been reproved by professors of literature for his style, but as de Sanctis, a very wise professor, has pointed out, the asperity of his diction is exactly appropriate to the surging fury of emotion that it releases; it is convulsive, harsh, and intensely full of vitality. His epigiam against the pedants who derided his verses is the conclusion of the whole matter:—

Vi paion strani? Saran Toscani. Son duri duri, Disaccentati... Non son cantati. Stentati, oscuri, Irti, intralciati... Saran pensati.

Monti, the student and imitator of Dante, is in every respect the opposite of Alfieri. He possesses an extra-ordinary power of language, but mentally he is the plaything of every wind that blows, and, though he is the enthusiast of liberty, his formula for that desirable gift of Heaven changes incessantly. His Bassvilliana, which assails France with every species of vituperation, is followed by panegyrics on Napoleon, and, when Napoleon 28