Hugh Basville was the French Envoy who was put to death at Rome by the people, for attempting, at the beginning of the Revolution, to excite a sedition against the Pontifical government. Monti, who was then the poet of the Pope, as he has since been of the Republic, supposes that, at the moment of Basville’s death, he is saved by a sudden repentance, from the condemnation which his philosophical principles had merited. But, as a punishment for his guilt, and a substitute for the pains of purgatory, he is condemned by Divine Justice to traverse France until the crimes of that country have received their due chastisement, and doomed to contemplate the misfortunes and reverses to which he has contributed by assisting to extend the progress of the Revolution. An angel of heaven conducts Basville from province to province, that he may behold the desolation of his lovely country. He then conveys him to Paris, and makes him witness the sufferings and death of Louis XVI., and afterwards shows him the Allied armies prepared to burst upon France, and avenge the blood of her king. The poem concludes before the issue of the contest is known. It is divided into four cantos of three hundred lines each, and written in _terza rima_, like the poem of Dante. Not only many expressions, epithets, and lines are borrowed from the Divine Comedy, but the invention itself is similar. An angel conducts Basville through the suffering world; and this faithful guide, who consoles and supports the _spectator-hero_ of the poem, acts precisely the same part which is performed by Virgil in Dante. Basville himself thinks, feels, and suffers, exactly as Dante would have done. Monti has not preserved any traces of his revolutionary character--he describes him as feeling more pity than remorse--and he seems to forget, in thus identifying himself with his hero, that he has at first represented Basville, and perhaps without foundation, as an infidel and a ferocious revolutionist. The _Basvigliana_ is, perhaps, more remarkable than any other poem for the majesty of its verse, the sublimity of its expression, and the richness of its colouring. In the first canto the spirit of Basville thus takes leave of the body:-- “Sleep, O beloved companion of my woes, Rest thou in deep and undisturb’d repose; Till at the last great day, from slumber’s bed, Heaven’s trumpet-summons shall awake the dead. “Be the earth light upon thee, mild the shower, And soft the breeze’s wing, till that dread hour; Nor let the wanderer passing o’er thee, breathe Words of keen insult to the dust beneath. “Sleep thou in peace! Beyond the funeral pyre, There live no flames of vengeance or of ire; And midst high hearts I leave thee, on a shore Where mercy’s home hath been from days of yore.”