Although Monti brought forward this disingenuous plea to excuse his celebration of the hero of the age, he was sincere in one feeling,--an attachment to the offspring of his brain, and in the indignation he felt against those who depreciated his poetic merits. The "Sword of Frederic" was attacked by the critics with great asperity, and he replied with still greater acrimony. He had been charged with mannerism and sameness, especially in the machinery of his poems, in which visions, spectres, and cloudy spiritual essences play for ever a principal part. He would not allow this to be a defect, and railed at the unimaginative minds who conceived it to be such. He tries to be jocose in his indignation, but his laugh is bitter; and he heaps the accusations of ill faith and envy, as well as of ignorance and bad taste, on those who attack him. There may be justice in this, but there is no dignity. There is always a degree of degradation in noticing the enmity of a race of ephemera, and not calmly relying on the award of the public.
Besides the poems above mentioned, Monti wrote several other poems in praise of the conqueror. "The Jerogamia" and the "Api Panacridi" were compositions which, whatever their apparent subject might be, turned, after all, on the praise of the emperor. They maintained, if they did not increase, the poet's fame. His best works were already written; and these may be named to be the "Aristodemo," the "Basvilliana," passages in the "Prometèo," the "Mascheroniana," and the "Palingenesi" and of his shorter odes, that to Bonaparte, on occasion of the Cisalpine congress, and his hymn on his return to Italy.
Years began to tame the fire of his imagination, and he felt the spirit of original composition fail him. His active mind turned to other subjects on which to exercise it: his love of classical learning led him to works of criticism and erudition, and he wrote "Remarks on the Winged Horse of Arsinoe." A want of knowledge of the Greek language must, however, have been a great drawback to this species of study; but we must regard with still greater wonder, considering this defect, his next enterprise, which was the translation of the Iliad. He had been looking out for a subject, and meditating in what way he could employ his powers, when a word, spoken by chance by Ugo Foscolo, at once awoke in his mind the desire and the energy requisite for so arduous a task. Not being acquainted with Greek, he applied himself to every kind of literal translation, and was, besides, mainly assisted by his friend Mustoxidi, who explained passages, compared his version with the original, and bestowed a degree of labour which, barren as it was of reputation to himself, must be regarded as a singular proof of disinterested attachment. Monti applied himself so vigorously to the task, that, in spite of all his disadvantages, in less than two years he brought it to a conclusion.