Weekly national intelligencer., 1854-11-11
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS. =

JOHN BAPTIST VICo, born in Naples about th
middle of the seventeenth century, deserves to b.
counted among the noble company and fellowship
af the worlds sages. A profound scholar and indie
pendent thinker, he was man of whom his age ant
country were not worthy. His was one of those
call and commanding ntellects of which Macaulay
speaks as being the first to catch and reflect light
which to the mass of mankind is yet below the lori
zon just the sun Eliminates the hills before it
Eightens up the level plain and sunken valley. 1t
as not too much to say that he was at least century
ahead OF his contemporaries; and we are almost
ready to give him place among the Platos and
-Aristotles, the Newtons and Gaileos, of literary
and scientific history.
In these latter days, so rife with speculation re-
spectng and his relations to God the world and his
fellows, recall scarcely single branch Of discus
zion which do find darkly adumbrated clearly
rsected from the mind Of the erudite and
subtle Neapoltan of the seventeenth century That his
wews always accurately defined do not pretend to
assert that his peculaons always sound specous
aaven, do not for moment affirm; that the glare of
psradox and love of system building often dazzle and
gntor his keen and steady eye do hesitate ad
INIT competent critc-we allude to Monti-has well
sd of Vcos Ssnsa Nuopa that it like dry and saw
uge mountain ntersected with veins of gold, His works
remind the student of the old Roman walls into which
were sometimes built unshapey stones and fragments of
4ae souptors featured marble that the torso Of
Apollo Venus might be found imbedded by the side
ar tho unwrought refuse of the quarry.
And his literary style is one of the worst conceivable
rs is hard to tell in what tongue the Scnza Nuopa writ
His Italian is Latinzed patois peculiar Naples
at the time in which he lived The gua poare Of Italy
indeed at this period in unfxed and unsettled
state Learned men angriy debating whether the
I parar tOscano the language of Dante and Petrarch
whose rhetorike SO swete
Enlumined all Italie
should be secuted from the schools or admitted on an
squal footing with the Latin In his earlier days vico
met with Laurentius Vala pedant of the first
by whom his attention first directed to the study
and imitation Of the old Latin writer's He began at once
~ devote by turns day to Boccaccio and to Cicero
day each to Dante and Virgil, to Perarch and Horace
Gis style became half Latin and half Italian in its
structure though it is easy perceive that he affects the
Idom Of Cicero that of "story-teing Boccace."
The ruggedness and obscurty of his dicon have doubt
Esss repeed many from the study of Vcos New Science
fGr it is not enough to read volume like ths you must
search for the hidden in this dry and savage
ounain" and you must be content to find its gold in
combination with much quartz-like rock and earthly
rubbish.
If Vico was, as we have represented him. of those
who have projected their mental vision far beyond the
readers viii be prepared to believe when we
that he possessed emnently suggestive mind This
think, his great characteristic. Whatever fell
1pon his mind like good seed sowed on good soil it
Drought forth hundredfod His acquisitions were not
suffered to remain capm norum to be deposited in
Che charnel-house of memory Some mems minds would
to resemble garnshed sepulchre in which are laid
The !" mighty dead like so many swathed mummes, all
ranged and ticketsd in some Egyptian catacomb Such
have the form Of knowledge without its power the
swell Of the muscle without its vgor the show of intel
zsctua life without its functions. Reading says Bacon
makes full but if the digestive faculty be wanting
there is little hope that examining will do than
puff up the glutton without increasing his strength His
reading will perish with him. There others who
TO be happily endowed with the faculty of formulating the
seminal principles Of knowledge they drop into their
znnds To such hint often grows pregnant with
Of thought that destined to convulse age and
continent The smallest of seeds will find in such per-
genial soil, and shoot up into great tree like the
xeoble banian, which
In Maabar or Ocean spreads her arms,
Branching SO broad and long that in the ground
The bended twigs take root and daughters grow
About the mother tree, pilar'd shade
High overarch'd, and echoing walks between.
Vco belongs to the latter class In age when every
Cnnd have been trammeed by the deta Of the
books and the schools, he emancpated himself from the
sslfmposed shackles which crippled and cramped not
only his countrymsn, but his contemporaries throughout
Europe. He not willing to invest himself with the
az old clothes" of the ancients with the readymade
and secondhand garments of Italian pedagogues He al
ways claimed to think for himself His mind in its con-
sact with knowledge, living and moulding faculty.
not sluggish and void capacity; it was en- agent
with which to do, and not passive bucket" in which
- contain what pumped into it. Did he study the
doctrines Of the Reaiss in philosophy? 1t jump
from the landing place of his teachers into the deep
profound" Of Patonc idealism Did the doctors of the
obonne instruct him in the mysterious cooperation of
he divine decree and mans freewill taught by st.
augustine He proceeded to think for himself the
development Of society, subject like the individual man.
20 the fixed law Of divine and universal Providence but
ahe working of which law yet suspended on the will
and acts Of its Does Plato lead him to
plate in the universe and in the emanations Of the
Rirst Good and First Fair? 1t is that Vico may dream
the dream Of mans perfectibty of his restoration on
earth to the divine image and beattude from which he
has vsibly lapsed
But let glance little closely and scan more
narrowly these tokens of Vcos acuteness and far
have overrated his perspcacty and order also to
test the accuracy Of his words when he says we
have occupied ourselves with these things he specula
dons Of his science only things heretofore said
by nobody and Of which it is reasonable to say
concsdu, let them be yielded to the occupant docs
this last clause furnish the earliest assertion
''squatter sovereignty applied to literature y
About twenty-five ago that copous Of read