[268]. For Vico’s æsthetic, see, in addition to Professor Flint’s admirable Vico (Edinburgh, 1882), the very interesting Estetica of Signor Benedetto Croce (Part II. chap. v. pp. 228-243: Milan, Palermo, and Naples, 1902). This chapter, with some earlier ones, had been printed separately as a specimen the year before. I owe copies of both, with one of a still earlier series on La Critica Letteraria (Rome, 1896), to Signor Croce’s kindness; and the drift of the last named, which condenses[condenses] the inesattezza of the term “literary criticism,” had itself prepared me for the disapproval (not unmixed) which he expresses of the first volume of this work as “deprived of method and determinate object.” But as I still see, or seem to see, my own object quite clearly defined before me, as I have found no fault in the compass which I use, and feel the helm of my method quite solid and obedient in my hand, I fear I must hold my course all the same. I shall only say that the sketch of criticism or æsthetic before Vico which precedes the chapter above referred to, shows remarkable knowledge and faculty of statement.
[269]. The Scienza first appeared in 1725, but was practically transformed in its second ed., 1730. Its ideas on poetry were further developed later; but anticipations of them appear even earlier in the De Constantia Jurisprudentis of 1721, if not even in the still earlier Lectures—most of them but recently published—of 1699-1708.
[270]. Franciscus Baco in aureo de Aug. Sci. libello, &c., vol. ii. p. 5 of Ferrari’s Opere di G. Vico (6 vols., Milan, 1852). I owe the use of the copy of this, with which I have worked, to the kindness of Professor Flint.
[271]. Omnium scientiarum artiumque commune instrumentum est nova Critica. Ibid., p. 7.
[272]. P. 11.
[273]. Pp. 26-28.
[274]. Ed. cit., iii. 265 sq.
[275]. P. 275, note.
[276]. Ed. cit., iv. 161-245. The earlier books are not superfluous for our purpose.
[277]. I may observe that Vico, though an extremely consistent thinker in reality, is apt to lay such stress on the particular side of his thought prominent at the moment, that it may deceive the unwary and must furnish the unscrupulous with handles. Compare, as one example of many, the attack on the notion of poets being “natural Theologians,” at De Const. Jurisp. iii. 277, with the argument for their being “political Theologians” a few pages later (pp. 295, 296), comparing also with both his later passage on “Teologia Poetica” in the second Scienza (v. 155).