that great poet." Never was this to be
erased from memory: the stifled resentment of MONTI vehemently broke forth
at the moment the French carried off Pius VI. from Rome. Then the long
indignant secretary poured forth an invective more severe "against the
great harlot," than was ever traced by a Protestant pen--MONTI now invoked
the rock of Sardinia: the poet bade it fly from its base, that _the last
of monsters_ might not find even a tomb to shelter him. Such was the curse
of a poet on his former patron, now an object of misery--a return for
"placing him below Metastasio!"

The French Revolution affords illustrations of the worst human passions.
When the wretched COLLOT D'HERBOIS was tossed up in the storm to the
summit of power, a monstrous imagination seized him; he projected razing
the city of Lyons and massacring its inhabitants. He had even the heart to
commence, and to continue this conspiracy against human nature; the
ostensible crime was royalism, but the secret motive is said to have been
literary vengeance! As wretched a poet and actor as a man, D'Herbois had
been hissed off the theatre at Lyons, and to avenge that ignominy, he had
meditated over this vast and remorseless crime. Is there but one Collot
D'Herbois in the universe? Long since this was written, a fact has been
recorded of CHENIER, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the horrid
tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to doubt from its
enormity. It is said, that this monster, in the revolutionary period, when
he had the power to save the life of his brother Andre, while his father,
prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent
brother, remained silent; it is further said that he appropriated to
himself a tragedy which he found among his brother's manuscripts.
"Fratricide from literary jealousy," observes the relator of this
anecdote, "was a crime reserved for a modern French revolutionist."[A]
There are some pathethic stanzas which Andre was composing in his last
moments, when awaiting his fate; the most pathetic of all stanzas is that
one which he left unfinished--

Peut-etre, avant que l'heure en cercle promenee
Ait pose, sur l'email brillant,
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornee,
Son pied sonore et vigilant,
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere--

At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet summoned to the guillotine!

[Footnote A: _Edinburgh Review_, xxxv. 15