 In his own time Vico’s work was largely neglected and generally misunderstood-he describes himself living as a “stranger” and “quite unknown” in his native city (Vita, 134)-and it was not until the nineteenth century that his thought began to make a significant impression on the philosophical world. However, Vico’s thought never suffered from complete obscurity and its influence can be discerned in various traditions of European thought from the mid-eighteenth century  onwards.[2]  In Italy, Vico’s impact on aesthetic and literary criticism is evident in the writings of Francesco De Sanctis and Benedetto Croce, and in jurisprudence, economics, and political theory, his influence can be traced from Antonio Genovesi (one of Vico’s own pupils), Ferdinando Galiani, and Gaetano Filangieri. In Germany, Vico’s ideas were known to Johann-George Hamman and, via his disciple J.G. von Herder, to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Vico’s ideas were sufficiently familiar to Friedrich August Wolf to inspire his article “G.B. Vico on Homer.” In France, Vico’s thought was likely known to Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and some have seen his influence in the writings of Denis Diderot, Etienne Bonnot, abbé de Condillac, and Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre. In Great Britain, although Vichian themes are intimated in the philosophical writings of the Empiricists and thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, there is no direct evidence that they knew of his writings. The earliest known disseminator of Vico’s views in the English-speaking world is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was responsible for much of the interest in Vico in the second half of the nineteenth century.