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628 628 Vice. his Latin style he meditated at last to renounce even the study of the Greek,^ refused to learn French, and as he had observed that the appearance of commentators and lexico- graphers in literature was simultaneous with the loss of purity, he determined to read the classics without the aid of either, using only the Nomenclator of Junius for technical terms. These things are characteristic of that love of independence, and that selfreliance, to which his principal works owe their peculiarities both of matter and of form. " Per tutte queste cose il Vico benedisse non aver lui avuto maestro nelle cui parole avesse egli giurato e ringrazio quelle selve, fralle quali, dal suo buon genio guidato, aveva fatto il maggior corso de suoi studj, senza niuno afFetto di setta, e non nella Citta, nella quale come moda di vesti si cangiava ogni due o tre anni gusto di lettere^.*^" In 1697 Vico was chosen to the Professorship of Rhetoric, a post of small emolument, of which he eked out the scanty receipts by giving instruction in Latin. It gave him, how- ever, the opportunity of promulgating from time to time his views on various topics of literature and philosophy. In an oration delivered in 17O8, at the commencement of the course of studies in the University, he contrasts the ancient mode of cultivating all sciences in common, as exemplified by Plato, with the modern method of pursuing each branch as if independent of all the rest, and recommends that all divine and human knowledge should form one body, and be animated with one spirit. The same principle was applied to Juris- prudence in his works, De Universi Juris uno Principio, and De Constantia Jurisprudentis, published in 1720, and on which he was then employed. After the publication of these works, and after so long and disinterested a fulfilment of the duties of his office, Vico thought himself entitled to become a candidate for a vacant chair of jurisprudence in the University; but notwithstanding the applause which attended the lecture which he gave as a specimen of his powers, not being able to stoop to the personal applications which other candidates used, he found that he should be unsuccessful, and retired from the contest. That he deeply felt the dis- 3 Vita di O. B. Vico, p. 26. ^ Ibid.