It was not without a struggle that he stooped to these abject submissions, and several events first intervened. The hatred of the democrats, then the rulers of the Cisalpine republic, caused them to pass a law which decreed that no one should be permitted to hold any public employment who, since the year 1 of the French republic, had published any books tending to throw odium on democracy. Monti's poem was the principal object of this law; and one of his adversaries exclaimed, "Let us get rid, not of the author of some foolish sonnet in praise of kings, but of those who, with powerful enthusiasm and Dantesque imagination, have inspired a hatred for democracy." This law being passed, Monti lost his situation. He had published other poems since the "Basvilliana;" but even these were not considered sufficiently democratic. The "Musogonia," or Birth of the Muses, is almost entirely mythological; but, in the concluding verses, he apostrophises Bonaparte. He implores him to be at once the Alexander and Numa of Italy: he beseeches him to bestow laws upon her, and to unite her scattered members; and, with a noble voice, he calls upon the Italians to cultivate concord and unanimity. "Brothers!" he exclaims, "bear the voice of your brother! What do you hope from divided opinions and counsels? Ah, let there be in our country, in its danger, one mind, one courage, one soul, one life!" The republicans perceived a hankering for royalty and tyranny in his dislike of their measures. The "Prometeo" is a finer poem, or rather fragment, for but few of the cantos are written. The subject of it is the history of Prometheus; but we have only a small portion of it in the poem as it stands. It opens with the foolish act of Epimetus. Jupiter had sent to him a casket containing the various intellectual attributes and moral qualities, to be distributed among the new creation on earth. Epimetus begins by bestowing various qualities on animals, and is so prodigal of his gifts, that when he comes to man he finds the casket empty. On this, he has recourse to his wiser brother Prometheus, who reprimands him for his folly. This opening is the weaker part of the poem. Lyrical outbursts were more accordant to Monti's genius. The appearance of Constancy before Prometheus is sublime, and the hero's prophecy of the future state of man is full of fire and grandeur. It ends, however, by a prophecy of Napoleon, on whom is heaped every epithet that admiration or adulation could suggest. Jupiter gives him his lightning, which loses none of its terrors in the young hero's hands. He shakes the bolts over Germany, and the Rhetian Alps resound with the hoofs of the Gallic cavalry. One after the other, Prometheus celebrates the glorious victories achieved in Italy, and hails with enthusiasm French Liberty, as the mother of heroes who shiver the chains that bound Ausonia, and wipe the tears from universal Europe--obstructed in its beneficent career only by the English robber.