He is nevertheless a brilliant phenomenon, the more interesting from the decidedly national stamp of his genius. He has Southern demonstrativeness and volubility, and kindles like a meteor by his own flight; when thoroughly fired, whether in epic or lyric, he is almost an improvisatore. Improvisation in an English poet would seem a tour de force at best, but it appears natural to the quick intelligence and musical speech of Italy.
Monti is thus a representative of his nation, and is no less true to the general spirit of his epoch: classic in aspiration, modern in sentiment, related to the Greeks much as Canova was related to Phidias. He was no interpreter of his age, but a faithful mirror of its successive phases, and endowed with the rare gift of sublimity to a degree scarcely equalled by any contemporary except Goethe, Byron, and Shelley. The descriptions in the Mascheroneide of Napoleon's descent upon Italy, and of the inundation of the Po, if not perfect models of taste, are almost Lucretian in their stormy and tumultuous grandeur. The frequent poverty, or at least shallowness of his thought is veiled by splendid diction; and in tact and felicity of encomium he recalls Dryden, whom he so strongly resembles in the character of many of his compositions, the versatility of his conduct, and the circumstances of his life. A further analogy may be found in the eminence of both as critics, Monti's disquisitions on Dante and the Cruscan vocabulary constituting as important a portion of his work as Dryden's prefaces of his. His dialogues, chiefly between deceased authors and grammarians recalled from the shades to discuss philological questions, are charming for their elegance and grace.
Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), the second eminent poet of
