The Edinburgh Magazine, October 1820, pages 298-301
ITALIAN LITERATURE.
MONTI.
(From Sismondi's Litterature du Midi.)
Vincenzio Monti, a native of Ferrara, is acknowledged, by the unanimous consent of the Italians, as the greatest of their living Poets. Irritable, impassioned, variable to excess, he is always actuated by the impulse of the moment. Whatever he feels is felt with the most enthusiastic vehemence. He sees the objects of his thoughts, they are present and clothed with life before him, and a flexible and harmonious language is always at his command, to paint them with the richest colouring. Persuaded that poetry is only another species of painting, he makes the art of the poet consist in rendering apparent to the eyes of all, the pictures created by his imagination for himself, and he permits not a verse to escape him which does not contain an image. Deeply impressed by the study of Dante, he has restored to the character of Italian poetry those severe and exalted beauties by which it was distinguished at its birth; and he proceeds from one picture to another with a grandeur and dignity peculiar to himself. It is extraordinary, that, with something so lofty in his manner and style of writ-
