Vincenzo Monti, the poet who was at one time acclaimed as the legitimate successor of Dante in virtue of his poem La Basvigliana, upon a personage of the French Revolution. In 1816 Monti was sixty-two years of age: he died in 1828. Though sufficiently Italian in his tone of mind and sentiment, he was not a consistent Italian patriot, but was eminently susceptible of inflation by a series of conflicting winds—anti-revolution, revolution, Napoleonism, and even Austrianism. Not indeed that he was sordidly self-interested in his various gyrations. As Dr. Richard Garnett has said: "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."]
Brema related that a friend of his, Porro, asked for a passport to Rome: refused, and asked for documents to prove his business. Gave what proved he had business at Maurata and relatives at Rome. Refused. Went to Swarrow, who told him he could not give it. Porro said: "Why do the Austrians think the Italians are always making conspiracies?" Swarrow said that they did not know, but, now that they had the upper hand, they cared not; and at last that, if Porro would give his word of honour not to visit any of the foreign embassies, he should have
