patriotism as to offend the reigning powers, and breathing a superfluous prayer for prudence in his vocation. There was little danger; patriotism, though a genuine, was a weaker emotion with him than respect for dignities, as he sufficiently evinced by his obedience to the Austrian mandate to celebrate the expulsion of the French, although he never abased himself so far as to assail Napoleon. He lost his office of historiographer, and retiring into private life, devoted himself mainly to critical and philological work. He had a short time previously published a translation of the Iliad, commenced in 1790, highly admired by his countrymen, and certainly a remarkable performance when it is considered that he scarcely knew a word of Greek; whence Foscolo wittily called him gran traduttor dei traduttor d'Omero. So much more important to the translator is flexibility of mind than exactness of scholarship. Monti's later days, now embittered by controversies and pecuniary embarrassments, mitigated by the generosity of friends, now brightened by successful work on his unfinished Feronia, a youthful production in which he had celebrated the draining of the Pontine marshes, or by the production of some fine lyric, passed on the whole tranquilly until his death in 1828 from the effects of a paralytic stroke.
The eloquent but unspeculative Monti had nothing to teach but his almost inimitable art of verbal expression, and hence has founded no school. His reputation has declined, chiefly from the ephemeral character of the themes on which his genius was expended, and of which none but himself could have made so much. He can hardly be called a great poet, if for no other reason than that his impressionable imagination wanted tenacity; he tired of his own works, and left the majority of them incomplete.
