knows no more about him than might have been picked up from some stray Bordeaux mariner who had navigated Canadian waters. In his account of early Roman history he follows implicitly Livy and Florus, and of Beaufort's critical investigation he does not seem to have heard. Nor is there any evidence of his having read or having been influenced by Vico, that solitary, mystical, suggestive Neapolitan thinker, who seemed to live out of due time, and whose significance was not appreciated until the following century. He had heard of the Scienza nuova at Venice, where the first edition was much in demand, and made a note of it as a book to be purchased at Naples, but there is nothing to show that the purchase was made[1]. And in the main his method of procedure is unhistorical. He takes more account of the surroundings of laws than of their antecedents. He sees laws of different periods all in the same plane. He conceives of the state as a condition of equilibrium which is to be maintained. He realizes the possibility of its decay, but the notions of progress and development, which are to figure so largely in Turgot and Condorcet, are foreign to his mind.
On the influence exercised by Montesquieu's great book, a substantial volume could be written. It was far-
- ↑ See Voyages de Montesquieu, i. 65. The first edition of the Scienza nuova was published in 1725. Vico tells us in his autobiography that the Venetian ambassador at Naples had orders to buy up all available copies from the Neapolitan publisher, Felice Mosca. See 'Vita di G. B. Vico' in Opere di Vico, iv. p. 456 (ed. by G. Ferrari, Milan, 1876). It may be that when Montesquieu reached Naples he found that the edition had been sold out. The relations of Vico to Montesquieu are discussed by Prof. Flint in his little book on Vico.
