of Rome, Pisa, Padua and even Germany, Holland and England: he sent a copy to Isaac Newton.[46] Generally, however, these gifts were received in contemptuous silence. At most, Vico acquired the reputation of a scholar among hundreds of scholars, a man of letters among thousands of similar men; a learned man, but nothing more. Among the modest, the insignificant, and the young, Vico no doubt had strong admirers. Among these were the poet, later a sacred orator, Gherardo de Angelis, Solla and Esteban whom we have mentioned, the monk Nicola Concina of Padua, and some more. But though their affection was strong their intelligence was weak. Even Concina admitted while rhapsodising his enthusiasm that he did not very clearly comprehend his master: "Oh, what fruitful and sublime lights are here! If only I had the talent to make use of them, to comprehend their depth and the wonderful art of which I seem to catch a glimpse!"[47] The best service that these friends could do him was to soothe with kindly words Vico's embittered spirit, if they could not do so by following his inmost thoughts. This is what Esteban does at the close of the letter in which he excuses himself for his foolish remark on the funeral speech of Angela Cimini in phrases he must have gathered from the master's lips: "Be confident, Sir, that Providence, through channels unimagined by yourself, will cause to spring up for you a perennial fountain of immortal glory!"[48] The Jesuit Father Domenico Lodovico, who wrote the couplet inscribed beneath Vico's portrait, on receiving the _Scienza Nuova_ sent to the author with much sound sense a little wine from the cellar and a little bread from the oven of the Jesuit house of the Nunziatella, together with a graceful letter begging the author to accept "these trifles, simple as they are, since the infant Jesus himself did not refuse the rude offerings of pastoral peasants." He suggested too that at the side of the alphabet in the symbolic frontispiece to the work a little dwarf should be added in the posture of one dumb with astonishment like Dante's mountaineer, and that beneath him should be written, "with a significant diaeresis," the name Lodo-vico![49] Among the young men of his school there were some who, nourished upon his doctrines, were ready to defend their master with their swords;[50] but we all know the value of these youthful enthusiasms. If these scholars had really assimilated Vico's doctrines or any part of them, we should have found traces of it in the literature or culture of the next generation after Vico; but such traces are entirely absent. Hardly a single one of his formulae, his historical statements, or conceptions even superficially understood is to be found in Conti at Venice, Concina at Padua, Ignazio Luzan in Spain--though the last named was living at Naples when the _Scienza Nuova_ was published;[51] or even, within the author's own neighbourhood, in Genovesi or Galiani.