JEROME CARDAN. 
 
JEROME CARDAN.* 
 
 THE LIFE 
 
 GIROLAMO CARDANO, OF MUM, 
 
 PHYSICIAN. 
 
 BY HENBY MOELEY. 
 
 * 
 
 . IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 MDCCCL1V. 
 
 - 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 JEROME CARDAN, confident of being remembered by 
 posterity, desired that he should be fully known, and left 
 scattered about his writings much material for the bio- 
 grapher. The material so liberally furnished has not yet 
 been used. Encyclopaedists have for generations told the 
 student that the life of this philosopher was one of the 
 most curious on record, full of extremes and contradic- 
 tions, the most wonderful sense and the wildest nonsense. 
 They have adopted the near-sighted views of Gabriel 
 Naud^, have accepted sometimes gross errors of fact from 
 the Scaligers, and, when they have gone to Cardan him- 
 self for information, have rarely carried their research 
 farther than the perusal of a work or two. Commonly 
 they have been content with a reading of his book on his 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 own Life, which is no autobiography , but rather a garrulous 
 disquisition upon himself, written by an old man when his 
 mind was affected by much recent sorrow. 
 
 In that work Cardan reckoned that he had published 
 one hundred and thirty one books, and that he was leaving 
 behind him in manuscript one hundred and eleven. It is 
 only by a steady search among his extant works, and by 
 collecting into a body statements and personal allusions 
 which occur in some of them, assigning to each its due 
 place, and, as far as judgment can be exercised, its due 
 importance, that a complete narrative can be obtained, or 
 a right estimate formed of his Life and Character. Of 
 such collation this work] is the result; and, although it is 
 inevitable that there should be errors and omissions in it, 
 since the ground is new, the labour on it has been great, 
 and I am but a feeble workman, yet, forasmuch as the 
 book is an honest one, in which nothing vital has been held 
 back or wrongly told, except through ignorance, and no 
 pains have been grudged to make the drawback, on ac- 
 count of ignorance, as small as possible, I am not afraid to 
 put my trust in the good-nature of the reader who shall 
 detect some of its omissions and shortcomings. 
 
 The following sentences, from the notice of Cardan in 
 Tiraboschi's History of Italian Literature, fairly represent 
 
PREFACE. v 
 
 the common feeling with regard to him : " Brlicker 
 regrets with reason that nobody has written his life with 
 
 exactitude The wide scope of my own argument 
 
 does not permit me to make any minute researches ; I can 
 only say what will be enough to give some notion of this 
 most rare man. In the account that he gives of his own 
 character, he attributes to himself inclinations that it would 
 seem impossible to have co-existing in a single character, 
 and at the same time he speaks so much evil of himself, 
 that by this only one may see how strange a man he was. 
 .... Whoever would suppose that a man foolishly lost 
 behind judicial astrology .... a man more credulous 
 over dreams than any silly girl, observing them scrupu- 
 lously in himself and others a man who believed that he 
 had the friendship of a Demon, who by marvellous signs 
 warned him of perils a man who himself saw and heard 
 things never heard or seen by any other man a man, in 
 short, of whom, if we read only certain of his works, we 
 may say that he was the greatest fool who ever lived 
 who would suppose, I say, that such a man was at the 
 same time one of the profoundest and most fertile 
 geniuses that Italy has produced, and that he made rare 
 and precious discoveries in mathematics and in medi- 
 cine? Nevertheless; such was Cardan by the con- 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 fession even of those who speak of him with most con- 
 tempt." 
 
 Of that candour of self-revelation to which allusion is 
 made in the preceding extract, Jerome himself writes: 
 " What if I confess my vices; why marvel; am I not a 
 man ? And how much more human is it to acknowledge 
 than dissemble? What we cloak, we protect; what we 
 acknowledge, we confess and avoid. Let, therefore, the 
 most sweet love of truth and the most happy conscious- 
 ness thereof conquer all dread of infamy, all suspicion of 
 calumny 1 ." Elsewhere he says on the same subject and 
 we must remember that he did not live in cleanly times 
 " What if any one were to address the kings of the earth, 
 and say to them, c There is not one of you who does not 
 eat vermin and other worse filth of your servants?' In 
 what spirit would the speech be taken, though most true? 
 What is this but an ignoring of our condition, a determi- 
 nation not to know what we do know, to put a thing out 
 of our sight by force? So it is with our sins, and all else 
 that is filthy, vain, confused, and uncertain in us. Rotten 
 apples fall from the best tree. I tell nothing new ; I do 
 but tell the naked truth 2 ." Evident enough it is that 
 
 1 Geniturarum Exemplar (ed. 1555), p. 523. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, cap. xiii. 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 Cardan is determined to hide nothing, and it is not less 
 evident that he has been ill-rewarded for his frankness. 
 Over and over again all self-accusations have been accepted 
 and driven home against him, all self-praise has been called 
 vanity, and statements of his that appeared to be too 
 marvellous have been pronounced untrue. 
 
 But the man of profound genius sometimes wrote, we 
 are told, as if he were a fool. His folly may instruct us. 
 It belonged bating some eccentricities not to himself 
 alone. His age claimed part in it, and bought his books. 
 He was the most successful scientific author of his time; 
 the books of his that were most frequently reprinted 
 being precisely those in which the folly most abounded. 
 He was not only the popular philosopher, but also the 
 fashionable physician of the sixteenth century. Pope and 
 emperor sought him; kings, princes, cardinals, arch- 
 bishops were among his patients. There were other 
 physicians in those days wise enough to be less credulous 
 on many points, but greater wisdom did not win for them 
 an equal fame. Cardan obtained a splendid reputation 
 wholly by his own exertions, not only because he was a 
 man of power and genius, but because he spent much of 
 his energy upon ideas that, foolish as they now seem, 
 were conceived in the true spirit of his age. He belonged 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 completely to his time. Hence it is that, as a philo- 
 sopher, he almost perished with it ; and for the last hun- 
 dred years his reputation has existed only as a legend. 
 
 I was first attracted to the study of Cardan, from which 
 this work has arisen, by the individuality with which his 
 writings are all marked, and the strange story of his life 
 reflected in them. The book is twice as large as it was 
 meant to be, and still there was matter that might have 
 occupied another volume; for as I worked on, I found 
 that out of the neglected writings of this old physician it 
 was possible to re-construct the history of his career, with 
 much minuteness in the kind of detail that would make 
 it not only pleasant reading, but also, if rightly done, of 
 some use to the student of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Pains have been taken to confine the narrative within 
 the strictest bounds. There is not in it an incident, how- 
 ever trivial, which has been created or transformed by the 
 imagination of the writer. I have kept rigidly to truth, 
 and, as was necessary from the nature of the work, have, 
 in treating the main subject, referred in notes to the 
 authority for every statement. If here and there a little 
 fact should happen not. to be so authenticated, I beg to 
 assure the reader that it was not set down lightly. I 
 have even preserved to a very great extent in my own 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 writing Cardan's forms of speech. In support of those 
 parts of the book which discuss accessory matters, I have 
 thought it enough to indicate in the notes generally from 
 what sources information has been got, and, in particular 
 cases, to give the exact authority when for any reason it 
 has seemed desirable to do so. Citations from the works 
 of Cardan have been made, as far as possible, from editions 
 published in his lifetime. Of each work, the edition 
 used is stated when it is first named; and the paging 
 quoted afterwards always belongs to the same issue, if 
 no other is mentioned. Where no early copy was to be 
 had, reference has been made to the collected works 
 issued in 1663 at Paris, by Charles Spon, in ten volumes 
 folio. 
 
 London, March, 1854. 
 
 When the first sheets of this work were printed, I had not 
 seen Cardan's third horoscope of himself in the " Genitu- 
 rarum Exemplar." I therefore was obliged to conjecture his 
 mother's age, and the paternity of three children, whose 
 deaths are recorded in vol. i. p. 7. It was, at the same time 
 said in a note, that my opinion was insufficiently supported, 
 and that it might be wrong. From the horoscope just men- 
 tioned, it appears that Cardan's mother was not quite so 
 young as I had inferred, though there was still great dis- 
 
X PKEFACE. 
 
 parity between her age and that of Fazio. If her age at 
 Jerome's birth was, as he says, thirty -seven, the disparity 
 was of nineteen years. He adds, however, that she died on 
 the 26th of July, 1537, at the age of seventy ; and if the age 
 so given be accurate, she must have been thirty-four years 
 old when he was born, and twenty-two years younger than 
 Fazio. She was the widow of Antonio Alberio ; and of her 
 three children that died of plague soon after Jerome's birth, 
 Alberio was the father. They all died within forty days ; two 
 of them, within a week after their mother dreamt that they 
 had gone to heaven. On the same authority, it may be 
 added that Fazio and Clara had another child, a son, which 
 diecl at birth. 
 
 A remark upon a trivial point is suggested by the word 
 Clara that has just been used. There are few people men- 
 tioned in this narrative whose names would not admit of 
 being written in more ways than one. I have had to make 
 my choice in nomenclature among Latin forms, Latin Ita- 
 lianised, old or impure Italian, modern Italian, and Italian 
 Englished. In speaking of men not Italians there was often 
 a like difficulty. Yery much wishing to avoid pedantry, 
 and putting that wish foremost, I have endeavoured to use 
 in each case a form that would suit the temper of the book 
 without vexing the reader. 
 
CONTENTS TO VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 BORN TO SORROW 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN WHAT WAY THE CHILD EARNED A MOST HOLY AND MOST HAPPY 
 
 GODFATHER 10 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH ARE VANITY 21 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ILLS OF THE ELESH THE STIPEND OF THE HUNDRED SCUDI . 33 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JEROME CARDAN, GRADUATE IN MEDICINE His LIFE AT SACCO, 
 
 AND THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF HIS MARRIAGE . .55 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 WORK OF THE BRAIN . . . 87 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 THE STORY OF ALDOBELLO BANDARINI ILLS OF FORTUNE OF 
 THE PORTENT THAT AFFLICTED CARDAN AT THE BAPTISM OF 
 HIS ELDEST SON HUNGER IN GALLARATE POVERTY IN M.TT.AN 104 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER YIH. PAGE 
 
 LIFE AS A LECTURER IN MILAN How JEROME AT LENGTH FOUND 
 A MAN WILLING TO PRINT ONE OF HIS BOOKS THE ISSUE OF 
 THAT ENTERPRISE 129 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 PHYSIC AND PHILOSOPHY .148 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 ARITHMETIC AND CONSOLATION . 175 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR 199 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 OF THE GREAT ALGEBRAIC QUARREL THAT AROSE BET WEEN MJESSER 
 HIERONIMO CARDANO AND MESSER NICOLO TARTAGLIA WHAT 
 LETTERS PASSED, AND HOW TARTAGLIA FELT THAT IT WAS DUE 
 TO HIMSELF TO MAKE THE CORRESPONDENCE PUBLIC . . 207 
 
 CHAPTER XTII. 
 
 . THE REST OF THE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE TWO MATHEMATICIANS 
 
 IN THIS CHAPTER is CONTAINED AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE 
 AND FORTUNES OF LODOVICO FERRARI, CARDAN'S FOREMOST 
 PUPIL 254 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE CONQUEST OF AN ADVERSE WORLD . . . 277 
 
or rftt 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BORN TO SORROW. 
 
 IN the year 1501 1 , a woman, flying from the plague, 
 passed under the gate of Milan which leads out upon the 
 road to Pavia 2 . She was a young widow 3 , the daughter 
 of a studious man, Giacomo Micheria 4 , and she turned 
 her back not only on the plague, but also on a grave 
 
 1 De Consolatione, Lib. iii. (ed. Yen. 1542) p. 74. In the De Pro- 
 pria Vita Liber (ed. ex Bibl. Gab. Naudsei, Paris. 1643), cap. ii. p. 7, 
 he writes the date 1500 by misprint. The misprint has been some- 
 times followed, though facts stated in the same book (as is shown by 
 Bayle, who had read no other) correct it, and in every other place in 
 his works Cardan writes 1501. See especially the date and hour of 
 his birth given by him in his horoscope (Libelli V. De Supplemento 
 Almanach. &c. ed. Norimberg. 1547, p. 121), where they are stated to 
 be the 24th Sept/ 1501, at forty minutes past six in the afternoon. 
 Except the misprint, this coincides with his other statements on the 
 subject. See also De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda (ed, Basil. , 1561), 
 Lib. iii. p. 427. 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis eorumque Usu. Liber ultimus. Opera cura 
 Spon. Vol. i. p. 96. 
 
 3 Compare notes 1, p. 2, and 1, p. 6. 
 
 4 De Propr. Vit. Lib. (ed. cit.) cap. i. p. 6. 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 jurisconsult and mathematician, who was, at that time, 
 probably as much an object of aversion to her as the 
 plague itself his name was Fazio Cardan 1 . 
 
 Fazio Cardan was a man of note among the learned in 
 his neighbourhood, and was then fifty-six years of age 3 . 
 At the age of fifty-six he had already become toothless, 
 although strong of limb and ruddy of complexion. He 
 had good eyes; not in the sense of "Being beautiful, for 
 they were white, but in the sense of being useful ; for it 
 was said that he could see with them in the night time. 
 To his last days to the age of eighty Fazio Cardan 
 continued to see objects clearly with the aid of less light 
 than his neighbours needed, and required no spectacles. 
 As a doctor, both in law and medicine, and member of 
 the venerable college of men skilled in law, the white- 
 eyed, toothless, stuttering, and round-shouldered mathe- 
 matician clothed his healthy body in a purple robe. He 
 wore a black skull-cap, which he dared only remove for a 
 few minutes at a time, because his skull had suffered 
 
 1 "... natus essem Papise, grassante in urbe nostra peste, turn 
 etiam quod mater partum ipsum occultari volebat, nee illius affines 
 resciscerent. Pater enim meus, ut Senex ac Jurisconsultus, viduse 
 Matris meae pauperis publicas nuptias aversabatur : ipsa vero turpe 
 ducebat, quod diceretur non ex coDJuge peperisse." De Libris Propriis. 
 Liber ultimus. Opera cura Spon. Vol. i. p. 96. Cardan never defames 
 his mother. 
 
 2 He was born at twenty minutes to nine in the morning of the 16th 
 of July, 1445. See the date in his horoscope, Libelli V. De Suppl. 
 Almanach. &c. (ed. cit.) p. 106. 
 
PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN. 3 
 
 damage in his youth, and it had been found necessary to 
 remove some pieces of it. The skull may have been 
 broken in a fray, for Fazio Cardan was always hot of 
 temper 1 . There was also a quick spirit of humour in him, 
 but it was not genial; he was careless of money, and a 
 ready lender, but he made few friends 2 . He dwelt with 
 Euclid in a world of angles and right-angles, and he him- 
 self was angular; nevertheless, his heart had rounded 
 itself to the love of one man, very different in taste, 
 Galeazzo Rosso 3 . As a student, also, he delighted in the 
 ingenuity of Gianangelo Salvatico 3 , his pupil and house- 
 companion. Rosso, who was a smith, equalled the juris- 
 consult in a decided taste for mathematics, and delighted 
 him by the ingenuity with which he turned his know- 
 ledge to good practical account. 
 
 The knowledge of Fazio, at the same time, had not re- 
 mained idle. In the prime of life he had been deliberately 
 drawn into print by the booksellers of Milan, who desired 
 to publish something profitable to the learned, and applied 
 to Fazio Cardan as a man likely to produce for them 
 
 1 De Propria Vita (ed. cit.), cap. iii. p. 10, for the preceding details. 
 
 2 De Utilitate ex Adv. Capiend. (ed. Basil 1561) Lib. iii. pp. 428 
 430. 
 
 3 De Propr. Vit. cap. iii. p. 11. Galeazzo was by trade a smith. Op. 
 cit. cap. xv. p. 71. Salvatico a senator. The smith was an ingenious 
 man, who discovered for himself the screw of Archimedes before the 
 works of that philosopher had been put into print. He made also re- 
 markably well-tempered swords and shot-proof breastplates. De 
 Prop. Vit. p. 11. 
 
 B2 
 
4 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 judicious matter 1 . He resolved then to edit a work, at 
 that time, I think, known only in manuscript, treating of 
 rays of light, and of the eye, of reflection, and of allied 
 topics, in the form of propositions proved by the aid of 
 geometrical diagrams, of which the original author was 
 John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury. This book, 
 which really deserved promulgation Peckham's Perspec- 
 tiva Communis* Fazio took upon himself, as he tells us 
 in the dedication to his own edition, the great labour of 
 correcting, a work heavy enough for a learned man, most 
 heavy therefore for him. It was an arduous undertaking, 
 he said, calling for great knowledge of mathematics pre- 
 
 1 " Prospecti va Communi s d. Johannes Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis 
 
 .... ad unguem castigata per Facium Cardanum." Milan, 
 
 1480; p. 1 in the dedication. It begins thus: "In tanta laborura 
 cujuscunque generis copia, divino quodam imprimendi artificio com- 
 parata, appetentes hujus urbis impressores novi quidquam in medium 
 afierre quod esset studiosis non mediocriter profuturum : persuasique 
 rnea opera id effici posse : me illud efflagitantes convenerunt." 
 
 2 John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, born 1240, became a 
 minorite friar, and rose through sundry grades of Church preferment 
 to his crowning dignity. He bought it of the Pope for 4000 marks, 
 which afterwards he risked excommunication by not paying, or by 
 paying slowly. He was a man of taste, luxurious, accomplished in 
 the learning of the age, and liberal to all but Jews. The Jews he 
 persecuted. He died in 1292, and was buried in Canterbury Cathe- 
 dral. He left many .works which still exist in MS. Only two 
 have profited by the discovery of printing, namely, his Collectanea 
 Bibliorum, and his Perspectiva Communis. The last is interesting as 
 the first systematic work of the kind, and I find no trace of its having 
 passed out of MS. into print before it was published, with additions and 
 corrections, by Fazio Cardan. After that date it was re-issued fre- 
 quently by other editors at Leipsic in 1504, at Venice in 1505, and 
 afterwards at Nuremberg, and Paris, and Cologne. 
 
A BOOK. A BABY. 5 
 
 paratory to the correction of the original figures and the 
 amendment of the text. He knew, however, that a work 
 so difficult would at no time be undertaken ; not for 
 want of men learned enough Heaven forbid that he 
 should be so arrogant as to suppose it! but for the 
 trouble's sake, the work, though useful, would remain 
 undone. Therefore he, Fazio Cardan, had done it. On 
 the threshold of his task, however, since he had great 
 need of a patron's countenance, he committed his book to 
 one who was as grave as Camillus, as dexterous as Scipio, 
 and so on 1 . That was the book, and that was the manner 
 of dedication to the book published by "the excellent 
 doctor in the arts as well of medicine as law, and most 
 experienced mathematician, Fazio Cardano, of Milan, re- 
 siding in the venerable college of the Milanese juriscon- 
 sults." This offspring of the mind of Fazio was about 
 twenty years old 2 when Chiara Micheria, flying for re- 
 fuge from the plague to Pavia 3 , took with, her off- 
 spring of another kind, to which he also was the father, a 
 child yet unborn. 
 
 Whatever pains Fazio had taken to protect his literary 
 bantling against any risk of dropping dead into the world, 
 the care that preceded the birth of his true child was 
 
 1 Op. cit. In dedication. 
 
 2 Its date of 1480 is assigned on the authority of Burnet. The 
 copy in the British Museum has no title-page. 
 
 3 De Libr. Tropr. Ed. ultima. Opera cura Spon. Vol. i. p. 96. 
 
6 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 bestowed in a precisely opposite direction. Chiara (Clara) 
 Micheria was still very young 1 , passionate of temper 2 , and 
 had quitted Milan in the worst of humours. Medicine 
 refused, however, at her bidding or rather at the bidding 
 of her bad advisers 3 to fulfil an evil purpose; and at 
 Pavia, on the 24th of September 4 , in the year 1501, the 
 living child of Fazio Cardan was brought, after a three 
 days' labour 5 , through much trouble 6 , silently to light. 
 Considering that it was very nearly dead, the nurse 
 promptly immersed the infant in a little bath of wine 5 . 
 It had already a growth of long dark hair upon its head 5 , 
 and it very soon gave evidence of life and strength. That 
 it would not die very soon there was great reason, the 
 mother knew, to hope or fear, since it is certain that 
 longevity becomes often inherited, and she herself a 
 short, fat, healthy woman, of a lively wit 2 as well as the 
 geometrician, came of long-lived ancestors 7 . 
 
 Let me dwell for a few minutes on this question of the 
 
 1 "Matrem meam Claram Micheriam juvenem vidi, cum admodum 
 puer essem." De Consolatione (ed. Ven. 1542), Lib. ii. p. 41. 
 
 2 De Propr. Vit. Lib. p. 11. 
 
 3 " Medicamentum abortivum Alieno mandate bibit." De Ut. ex 
 Adv. Cap. (ed. 1561) Lib. iii. p. 427. 
 
 4 See Note 1 on page 1. 
 
 5 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. 
 
 6 " Per vim extractus ut meo supplicio matrem liberarem a morte," 
 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. 
 
 7 " Longsevi autem fuere majores nostri." De Propr. Vit. cap. iv. 
 pp. 5, 6, for the succeeding details. 
 
AN OLD FAMILY. 7 
 
 infant's probable longevity. The father of Clara lived 
 seventy-five years, and his brother, Angiolo, lived eighty- 
 five. In the Cardans, the habitual tenacity of life was 
 most remarkable. The grandfather of Fazio, the mathe- 
 matician, was another Fazio; he had three sons: Gio- 
 vanni, who lived to the age of ninety-four; Aldo, who 
 lived eighty-eight years; and Antonio, the father of the 
 second Fazio, who lived to the age of eighty-six. Gio- 
 vanni, the first of these, uncle to Fazio the scholar, had 
 two sons, Antonio and Angiolo, of which the former 
 lived to the age of eighty-eight, and the latter very nearly 
 reached a hundred. This Angiolo became known to the 
 young son of Fazio as a decrepid old man, who, at the 
 age of eighty, claimed paternity of two decrepid-looking 
 children, and regained his sight. Even of these children 
 one lived seventy years. To this enumeration must be 
 added Gothardo, a brother to the second Fazio Cardan, 
 and uncle of the child, who died eventually at the age of 
 eighty-four. Since several of these men were living in 
 the year 1501, Clara Micheria could take into her calcu- 
 lation a part only of these facts ; there was enough, how- 
 ever, in her knowledge to remind her that the unwelcome 
 son came of a long-lived stock, and that if he was to be 
 accounted a discredit, he would probably discredit her for 
 many years to come. 
 
 During the first month of the boy's life his nurse was 
 
8 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 seized by the plague, and died under its touch in a few 
 hours 1 . The infant did not pass unscathed, for there 
 appeared at the same time five carbuncles on its face; one 
 on the nose, the other four arranged around it in the 
 pattern of a cross. Although healing in a short time, it 
 was observed that three years afterwards these carbuncles 
 appeared again in the same places 3 . Deprived of his 
 nurse, and little aided by his mother, the son of Fazio 
 Cardan was received into the house of Isidore dei Resti 3 , 
 a noble gentleman, his father's friend. At that time the 
 geometer was burying in Milan all his other children 
 dead of plague. They were two boys and a girl, half- 
 brothers and half-sister to Clara's child 4 . In the house 
 of Isidore, the survivor says, speaking of the past out of 
 his after-life, and tincturing his words with the bitter- 
 ness of many griefs, " After a few days I fell sick of a 
 dropsy and flux of the liver, yet nevertheless was pre- 
 
 * De Propr. Vit. cap. iv. p. 12. 
 
 2 The page last cited and De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. 
 
 a De Propr. Vit. p. 13. De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. 
 
 4 De Consolatione (ed. Ven. 1542), p. 74. Their names were 
 Thomas, Ambrose, and Catilina. De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. The 
 passage in the De Consolatione, "jam trimestris duos fratres et unam 
 sororem perdidi : crassante in civitate nostra pestilentia . . . tune 
 audaci et pio facto Is. Kestse nobilis viri et amici paterni, manibus ejus 
 inter funera exceptus . . ." is my only textual authority for attributing 
 these children to Fazio. It is indecisive, and I may be wrong. They 
 may have been children left as consolations to the widow. If so, Clara 
 must have married very early. Had they belonged equally to Fazio 
 and Clara, one does not see why in the case of Jerome his mother 
 
PLAGUED. 9 
 
 served, whether through the wrath or mercy of God I 
 know not 1 ." 
 
 Thus environed by the plague-spots, physical and moral, 
 which belong to an unwholesome period of human- history, 
 began the life of which we are about to trace the current. 
 Out of the peace of our own homes let us look back with 
 pity on the child whose birth made no man happy, and 
 whose first gaze into the world was darkened by a mother's 
 frown. 
 
 should have endeavoured to keep a knowledge of his birth from her 
 relations, or why she should, in expectation of a fourth child, desire 
 abortion, and resent the fact that Fazio was not known to the public as 
 her husband. (See note 1, p. 2.) Besides, if her relations with Eazio 
 were thus of some years' standing, how old was her widowhood ? and 
 could she still be "juvenis" when Jerome was a boy old enough to be 
 told of her unhappiness, and of her wish (DeConsolatlone, p. 41) that 
 she had died when he was born ? 
 
 1 De Consolatione (ed. Ven. 1542), Lib. iii. p. 74. 
 
10 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 IN WHAT WAY THE CHILD EARNED A MOST HOLY AND MOST HAPPY GOD- 
 FATHER. 
 
 AFTER the death of its first nurse by plague, Clara 
 Micheria had returned for a short time to her infant 1 , but a 
 new mother having been hired for it, she again obtained 
 exemption from her burden. The nurse, who in the 
 second month of the child's life became the third to whom 
 it clung as to a mother, did not accept her charge without 
 due knowledge of the fact that it had been kissed by the 
 very plague itself, and bore the marks upon its countenance. 
 To the new nurse, therefore, the baby was delivered by 
 Isidoro dei Resti, naked and wet, out of a warm bath of 
 vinegar. With clothes, infection might have gone into 
 the poor woman's family so men 5 at any rate, believed 
 the clothes, therefore, were burnt ; vinegar, it was hoped, 
 would disinfect the child. 
 
 By this nurse the "child was taken to Moirago, a place 
 distant about seven miles from Milan, on the road from 
 Pavia to Binasco. The infant did not thrive under her 
 
 1 De Propr. Vit. Lib. (ed. Naudsei), pp. 12,"13, for the facts stated in 
 this and the succeeding page. 
 
MOCK MOTHERS. 11 
 
 care. It may have carried with it some seeds of disease ; 
 it most probably found little that was wholesome in the 
 squalid hut to which it was removed; perhaps, as they 
 who paid for the child said, the woman herself was not 
 competent to play the part of mother in a wholesome way 1 . 
 Certainly, the little body wasted, and acquired the hard 
 and swollen belly, which at that time in Italy, as it is 
 now in England, was too well known to the sight and 
 touch of men, who in vain sought to supply with drugs 
 the want of healthy homes among the poor. Though the 
 child was not loved, there existed in the mind of nobody 
 a criminal desire that it should die; and since, therefore, 
 it wasted at the breast of its third mother, a fourth was 
 hired, under whose care its health improved. With this 
 nurse the boy remained still at Moirago and by her he 
 was weaned in the third year of his life. In the next 
 year, Clara Micheria claimed him at last, and took the son, 
 who had learned to prattle at the knees of strangers, home 
 to her own sad lodging in Milan. The doubtful charac- 
 ter of Fazio's relation to her she a girlish widow, he a 
 toothless old geometer, aged sixty filled her life with 
 shame and sorrow, and a frequent theme of her discourse 
 to the child was a desire that she had died when he was 
 born 2 . 
 
 1 " Quod nutrix utero gereret." De Propr. Vit. p. 13. 
 
 2 De Consolatione, p. 41. 
 
12 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Clara Micheria was not at that time resident under the 
 roof of Fazio Cardan 1 . The laudatory verses sung in 
 honour of the literary offspring of the grave jurisconsult, 
 had ended with a distich in his praise, of which the literal 
 translation is, that " in this man the house of Cardan re- 
 joices. One man has acquired a knowledge of everything. 
 Our age has not his equal 3 ." Probably this man, who had 
 learned everything, was not, in the year 1505, acquainted 
 with the voice of his own child, that had been four years 
 in the world and never sat upon his knee. The rejoicing 
 of the house of Cardan was not great in the person of the 
 little fellow who, after his removal to. Milan, was perpetu- 
 ally beaten by his mother and her sister, Margherita, who 
 dwelt with her: "A woman," he says afterwards, "who 
 I believe must have been herself without a skin," so little 
 was her mercy for the skin of Clara's child 3 . 
 
 The hands of three persons at Milan were against the 
 child, for Fazio Cardan, though not residing in one house 
 with Clara, now came into habitual communication with 
 
 1 De Propr. Vit. p. 13. Statements in this and the next page to 
 which no note is attached are dependent on the same authority. 
 
 2 " Magna ratis magno curanda est remige. Deerat 
 
 Navita. Nunc Facius talia damna levet. 
 Hoc Cardana viro gaudet Domus. Omnia novit 
 Unus. Habent nullum secula nostra parem." 
 
 Prospectiva Comm. d. Joh. Archiep. Cant, per 
 Fac. Cardan. Milan. 1480. Last page. 
 
 3 " Mulier cui fel defuisse existimo." De Propr. Vit. p. 13. 
 
UNDER THE ROD. 13 
 
 him, and administered a due share of the prickliest paternal 
 discipline. The ill-treatment of the neglected boy was not, 
 however, constant though the hands of his father and 
 mother were against him, their hearts were with him he 
 was, on the whole, treated less unkindly than before. His 
 parents had ill-regulated tempers, and the child became 
 the victim of the passions out of which he was unluckily 
 begotten 1 . Flagellation from his father and his mother, 
 and his pitiless aunt, Margherita, impressed upon his 
 memory three miserable years after his first arrival at 
 Milan. At the end of those years, when his age was 
 seven, and he had often been brought even to the point 
 of death by the results of too incessant punishment, a 
 respite followed. Father, mother, and Aunt Margaret 
 perceived that the weak child, who had up to this time 
 been suffering from a long series of bodily distempers, 
 could be knocked about no longer without certain danger 
 to his life; and so it happened, as the boy himself ex- 
 pressed it afterwards, that when he became old enough to 
 do things by which he could fairly merit blows, it was 
 found requisite to leave off beating him. 
 
 In that after-life, to which allusion has been made just 
 now, I ought to say at once, that the son is never to be 
 
 1 " Ambobus parentibus commune fuit iracundus esse, parum con- 
 stanter etiam in amore filii." De Propr. Vit. p. 11. 
 
 2 " Turn primum cum merito possem verberibus dignus haberi, a 
 yerberibus abstinendum decreverunt." De Propr. Vit. p. 13. 
 
4 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 found referring with unfilial bitterness to either of his 
 parents. He always avoids making any express statement 
 that would reflect positive dishonour on his mother 1 ; and 
 both of her and of his father he speaks often with a re- 
 verent affection 2 . He speaks more frequently, however, 
 of his father, whom he certainly preferred, although he 
 does not venture much beyond the remark made in an ir- 
 resolute way on one occasion, that " my father appeared to 
 me (if such a thing may be said) better and more loving 
 than my mother 3 ." 
 
 There was a rest then from blows for the sick child 
 when he had attained his seventh year, but sorrow only 
 laid aside one shape to reappear and vex him in another 4 . 
 When the boy had first been brought to Milan, he had 
 lodged with his aunt and mother in the Via dell' Arena 5 , 
 by the Pavian gate, and they had afterwards removed 
 
 1 See a curious example in page 2, note 1. He evades there and 
 everywhere the direct statement that his mother was married, but in 
 that passage leads up to the inference that she had been married pri- 
 vately. In the same spirit he says, when he relates his exclusion from 
 the College of Physicians on the ground of illegitimacy, that he was 
 rejected * suspicione oborta quod (tarn male a patre tractatus^spurius 
 essem." De Consolatione, Lib. iii. p. 75. That his tenderness was not 
 towards himself is shown by the whole tenor of his life. He would, 
 for himself, rather have taken a perverse pleasure in the proclamation 
 of a fact that rubbed respectability against the grain. 
 
 2 See especially De Util. ex Adv. Cap. Lib. iii. p. 430. 
 
 3 De Propr. Vit. p. 12. 
 
 4 "Mala sors minime me deseruit, infortunium commutavit non 
 sustulit." De Propr. Vit. p. 13. . 
 
 5 De Propr. Vit. cap. xxiv. p. 92. 
 
SON AND SERVANT. 15 
 
 into a street called Del Maino, opposite the citadel, where 
 they were in the house of Lazzaro Soncino 1 , a physician. 
 A physician was a very fitting landlord for the boy, at 
 any rate ; and it may possibly have been to the representa- 
 tions of Lazzaro Soncino that the child was indebted for 
 the resolve taken by his friends that he was to be flogged 
 no longer. Very soon after this resolve was taken, a great 
 change took place in the arrangements that existed among 
 the high powers that presided over the boy's worldly 
 destiny. Clara Micheria, with Margaret, her sister, 
 removed to a lodging in the Via dei Rovelli, which 
 they shared with Fazio Cardan 2 . Some semblance of a 
 home, as childhood is accustomed to interpret home, was 
 now, for the first time, placed within the knowledge of 
 the young pupil of sorrow. Father and mother dwelt 
 under one roof with him ; the home meant little more. 
 It was no place of laughter, or caresses, or of childish 
 sport. Fazio needed an attendant who should walk about 
 with him while he was engaged upon his daily business, 
 carrying his books and papers, or whatever else the 
 learned lawyer needed to take with him when he went 
 abroad. To this work the work of a servant Clara's 
 child was put without delay 3 . Margaret and Clara being 
 
 1 De Propr. Vit. cap. xxiv. p. 92. 
 
 2 De Propr. Vit. p. 13, comp. with p. 92. 
 
 3 " Inde" (ab octavo) " loco servi patrem ad decimum nonum annum 
 perpetuo comitabar." De Consolatione (ed. Ven. 1542), Lib. iii. p, 74. 
 
16 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 settled, to their satisfaction doubtless, in the lodging of the 
 great mathematician and jurisconsult, the fragile boy of 
 seven years old was ordered daily to attend upon his father 
 when he.went abroad; so young and weak of body, taken 
 from a life of close confinement to be put to work that 
 involved severe and constant bodily exertion 1 . With 
 weary limbs and throbbing head, the little fellow daily 
 toiled after his father, revolving in his mind such thoughts 
 as suffering and sickness teach to children who have been 
 trained in no school but theirs. 
 
 The boy I am compelled to speak of him as boy, or 
 child, or little fellow, because, though he had now lived 
 in the world for seven years, it does not appear that he had 
 yet been christened the boy was contemplative 2 . Minds 
 that are born rich, that possess a soil originally fertile, 
 gain very often by the griefs of a tormented childhood ; 
 these increase for after-seasons the producing power they 
 are as the torments of the plough. It is not so with the 
 barren-minded who are born to sorrow and neglect ; ? what 
 little growth there is in them the plough uproots, and 
 there is only a dry life year by year until the end. The 
 
 Yet how delicately he seeks often to veil the recollection of his father's 
 harshness ! As, for example, when he refers to it thus : " Ex hoc in 
 paternam, ut tune rebar, servitutem duram transii." De Ut. ex Adv. 
 Capiend. Lib. iii. p. 428. 
 
 1 De Propr. Vita Liber, p. 13. 
 
 2 " Caepi quam primum cogitare an via esset aliqua ut immortales 
 evaderemus." De Libris Propriis. Liber ultimus. Opera cura Spon. 
 Vol. i. p. 96. 
 
SORROW AND SICKNESS. 17 
 
 child of Fazio Cardan inherited much innate power: from 
 his father, aptitude for exact learning ; from his mother, 
 much vivacity of wit. During these years of early hard- 
 ship, though he sickened and suffered, he was forced into 
 communion with his own mind by the want of sympathy 
 abroad, and a development was taking place that was not 
 indeed healthy, but that had such charms in it as might 
 have been attractive even to the intellect of Fazio, if the 
 mathematician could have known how to work out the 
 problem that was offered to him in the spirit of his child. 
 He did not work it out ; and so, during the summer 
 days, under a southern sky, the bey struggled unnoticed 
 behind his father through the hot streets of Milan. 
 
 Intellect at seven years old rarely suggests to any child 
 that fruit should not be eaten until it is ripe ; and when 
 the child has a disordered stomach it will fasten upon 
 green things with the relish of a caterpillar. In the midst 
 of his fatigue and sickness, when his body was quite 
 ready for another outbreak of disease, the son, or foot-page, 
 of the learned Fazio Cardan, then commencing his eighth 
 year, at a time when an epidemic, if not pestilence, was 
 raging in the town, ate secretly a great feast of sour 
 grapes 1 . They supplied the one thing that was needed 
 to produce an outbreak of the fever that had long been 
 waiting for some slight exciting cause. Dysentery and 
 
 1 De Propr. Vita, p. 14.; 
 VOL. I. C 
 
18 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 fever seized the child, and between them they were kill- 
 ing it 1 . The old geometer he was then sixty-four years 
 old had learned to feel that there was something to be 
 valued in his boy, therefore both physic and divinity were 
 summoned to his aid. Two physicians, Barnabo della 
 Croce and Angelo Gira 1 , and one saint, St. Jerome, were 
 called into request. The old man was accustomed to 
 assert that he enjoyed a favour which had been conferred 
 on Socrates and others in being benefited by the society 
 and advice of a familiar demon 2 . He did not apply, 
 however, to the demon for a prescription in his son's case, 
 but more piously devoted him to the most holy and most 
 happy St, Jerome, whom he elected to be his godfather 
 and his tutelary saint, upon condition that St. Jerome, by 
 his intercession, would procure the boy's return to health 1 . 
 Why Fazio chose Jerome for his saint it is not possible to 
 tell; but it happened that he was lodging in the house of 
 one Ermenulfo 3 , who had Girolamo for his own baptismal 
 name, and I am inclined to think that Ermenulfo as men 
 in our day recommend to one another their own tea- 
 dealers or tailors recommended to the lodgers his 
 own patron saint. The boy recovered, and the father, 
 
 1 De Propr. Vita, p. 14. 
 
 2 He said it had attended him for thirty-eight years. De Ut. ex 
 Adv. Cap. p. 428. De Propr. Vit. p. 14. 
 
 3 De Propr. Vit. cap. xxiv. p. 92. There may he something to the 
 purpose in the fact, that there was a large religious house dedicated to 
 St. Jerome situated between the Pavian and Vercelline gates. 
 
VOWED TO A SAINT. 19 
 
 faithful to his promise, caused him to receive the name of 
 Girolamo, or Jerome 1 . This took place in the eighth 
 year of the boy's life. Up to my eighth year, says 
 Cardan, I had often beaten at the gates of death, but 
 those within refused to open to me 2 . He was newly risen 
 from his bed in May of the year 1509. In the same 
 year, on the 14th of the same month, the French gained 
 a victory over the Venetians near the Adda. Jerome 
 Cardan remembered afterwards that he was recovering 
 from that most serious attack when the French celebrated 
 their triumph at Milan for the battle of the Adda, and 
 that he was then permitted to go to the window and look 
 out upon the spectacle. 
 
 Thin, pale, and very thoughtful, little Jerome leaned 
 against the open window, and from the gloom of his own 
 chamber looked down on the helmets, swords, and banners 
 of the military pageant, glittering along the street under 
 the light of the May sun. While the noise of military 
 music and the tramping of the horses shook the whole 
 house in which they lived, how little did it come into 
 the thoughts of Fazio Cardan, Aunt Margaret, or Clara, 
 that the glitter and the bustle of the triumph out of 
 
 1 DePropr. Vit. p. 14. 
 
 2 De TJtiL ex Adversis Capiend. pp. 427, 428. The summary there 
 given is touching: " Inde lac prsegnantis hausi, per varies matrices lac- 
 tatus ac jactatus, hydrope, febribus, aliisque morbis conflictatus sum, 
 donee sub fine octavi anni ex dysenteria ac febre usque ad mortis 
 limina perveni; pulsavi ostium, sed non aperuerequi intro erant." 
 
 C2 
 
20 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 doors were but a parade of folly; that the recovery of 
 health by their weak boy would interest posterity much 
 more than anything that had been done or would be 
 done by the strong army out of doors. For war, that 
 can be noble, was in those days altogether witless, and the 
 pen-work even of the worst dunce among philosophers 
 could scarcely fail to display more sense than the sword- 
 work of the cleverest among the captains. 
 
HOLY MONITIONS. 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH ARE VANITY. 
 
 MARGARET of Austria : daughter of Maximilian ; sister 
 of the Archduke Philip; aunt of Charles, then Duke of 
 Luxembourg, afterwards Emperor Charles V; governor, 
 for her nephew, of the Netherlands ; widow of Jean of 
 Castille the son of Ferdinand ; widow also of Philibert of 
 Savoy: acting on behalf of Maximilian and Ferdinand, 
 had at Cambray concluded a league with the Cardinal 
 d'Amboise, who acted on behalf of the Pope and of the 
 King of France. By this league it was agreed to enlarge 
 the borders of the French king's Milanese territory, by 
 cutting off and appropriating the borders of the territory 
 of the too prosperous Venetian republic. In the year 
 1509 the head of the Church began the enterprise by 
 issuing monitions which bestowed the coveted lands on 
 the first neighbour who seized them. Louis XII, King 
 of France, entered Italy with thirty thousand men, and 
 was allowed to cross the river Adda by which his Milanese 
 duchy was parted from Venetian ground. On the other 
 
22 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 side a battle was soon fought near a village called Agna- 
 dol, the Venetians were routed, and without more contest 
 driven into Venice. The campaign, therefore, was soon 
 ended. This was the victory of the Adda celebrated by 
 a triumphal entry into Milan in the eighth year of Jerome 
 Cardan's life. 
 
 Louis XII, predecessor of King Francis I. of France, 
 was a monarch of whom it is just to speak respectfully. 
 He sought the welfare of his people. When, on the 
 occasion of this brief Venetian campaign, he found his 
 warfare so soon ended that he should not need the special 
 taxes he had levied, he remitted them, and left the money 
 in the pockets of his subjects. He detested all the arts 
 which darkened counsel by a multitude of words, and ex- 
 pressed frequently so great an aversion to the sight of a 
 lawyer's bag 1 , that had the little Jerome, when he saw the 
 king pass by under his window, known of the existence 
 of that strong point in his character, he would have spent 
 some part of his recovered health in lusty cheering. Who 
 had so full a right as little Jerome to cheer kings who 
 hated lawyers' bags ? 
 
 The great delicacy of health which followed the child's 
 illness procured for him exemption from the task of carry- 
 
 1 " Kien n'offense plus ma vue que la rencontre d'un procureur charge 
 de ses sacs." Words of Louis XII, quoted by Anquetil from Claude 
 Seyssel, Bishop of Marseilles, a subject who was much in the king's 
 company. 
 
WOUNDED IN ALL WAYS. 23 
 
 ing the bag of Fazio, and from all serious labour for a time 1 . 
 During this period of convalescence, when he was living 
 in the street Dei Maini, the weak boy fell from a ladder 
 with a hammer in his hand, and was taken up with a 
 serious wound, in which the bone was injured at the upper 
 part of his forehead, on the left side 2 . The scar left by 
 the wound remained visible throughout the whole of his 
 after-life 2 . He had recovered from this blow, when one 
 day, as he was sitting on the threshold of his father's door, 
 a tile fell from the roof of a high adjoining house, and 
 wounded him on the top of his head, again on the left 
 side 3 . When Jerome was in tolerable health, his father 
 fagged him ; when sickness gave him liberty to idle, these 
 accidents disturbed his rest. He had no breast at home 
 that he could lay his head upon in perfect peace ; he saw 
 passions at work about him, or felt them at work upon him 
 from the first, chafing his fresh heart, and checking the 
 free outward current of his thoughts. His wit was of the 
 quickest, and his nature sensitive ; he felt every slight, and 
 soon began to brood over the wrongs he suffered, to pre- 
 serve in stillness his own thoughts of impatience at in- 
 justice, and acquired that unwholesome self-consciousness 
 that is too often forced into the minds of clever children, 
 not only by too much praise, but also by unjust neglect. 
 
 1 De Propr. Vit. p. 14. 
 
 2 De Util. ex Adr. Capiend. p. 428. De Propr. Vit. pp. 14, 15. 
 
 3 De Propr. Vita Liber, p. 15. 
 
24 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 He who was mocked so often, he would beat through the 
 bands they tied about his heart, he would do some great 
 thing that should command the homage due to his nature, 
 not the less because he was a child. At the beginning of 
 Jerome's tenth year 1 , his father moved to another house in 
 the same street, which he occupied for three years, and 
 during those three years Jerome again carried the lawyer's 
 bag, Fazio insisting upon the use of the child's service 
 with great pertinacity, the mother and the aunt con- 
 senting 1 . 
 
 The position of young Jerome was, however, about this 
 time improved ; his father had certainly grown kinder 1 , 
 warmed very probably towards him by the signs of intel- 
 lect that he exhibited, and by ,the readiness with which 
 he picked up information, even about the geometrician's 
 darling studies 2 . There came also two nephews of Fazio, 
 one after the other, who shared Jerome's labour, either 
 serving in his place, or lightening his work, so that some- 
 times he was not called upon to go abroad at all, or, if he 
 went, he would not have so much to do 1 . Then there 
 were other changes of abode 1 ; first to the Via del 
 Cusani, and afterwards, until the completion of his six- 
 teenth year, Jerome lived with his father in the house of 
 a relation, Alessandro Cardan. 
 
 1 DeFropr. Vita Liber, p. 15. 
 
 2 De Ut. ex Adv. Capiend. Lib. iii. p. 429. 
 
THROBS OF THE HEART 25 
 
 It was at the time when, as Jerome tells us, the first 
 down was coming on his chin 1 , that the premature death 
 of a young relative, Nicolo Cardan, gave a fixed object 
 to the tumult of his thoughts. Nicolo died at the age of 
 thirty 3 , and his place knew him no more. The young 
 philosopher began, therefore, to reflect upon the shortness 
 of life, and to inquire by what means he might be able to 
 provide something worthy to be remembered by posterity ; 
 it pained him to think that, after a life spent without 
 pleasure in the flesh, he should go down into the grave 
 and be forgotten 2 . When he had recovered from the 
 terror into which he had been thrown by witnessing the 
 young man's death, he occupied himself in the writing of 
 a treatise On the Earning of Immortality 2 . 
 
 The sense of power, without which no genius can bear 
 fruit, was rooted firmly in Cardan. The slights and sor- 
 rows that had made the outer world in childhood and in 
 youth seem vanity, had driven him to contemplation of 
 that inner world from which there was no pleasant voice 
 to call his thoughts. Self-contemplation, constantly pro- 
 voked and never checked, acquired a feverish intensity. 
 After the death of his friend Nicolo, when Jerome, with 
 warm passions, found himself at home but half a son, and 
 
 1 " Cum adhuc ephebus essem." De Sapientia Libri V. &c. &c. (ed. 
 Norimb. 1543) p. 420. 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis (ed. Lugd. 1557), p. 10. 
 
26 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 out of doors regarded as a questionable comrade 1 , a young 
 man with no lawful parents and no prospects, hearing his 
 mother reproached coarsely for his birth 3 , holding the posi- 
 tion of a servant, with no visible means of escape from it, 
 we feel that there is something touching in the pride of 
 loneliness on which his heart depended for its solace: 
 "As much as it was permitted me," he tells us afterwards, 
 "I lived to myself; and, in some hope of future things, 
 despised the present 3 ." 
 
 Jerome had been instructed by his father 4 in reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, in geometry, in some astrology, 
 and had learnt also in the same company to chatter Latin; 
 but he was nineteen years old 5 before Fazio consented to 
 his earnest wish that he might study thoroughly that 
 language then the only tongue used by ] the learned 
 and endeavour to make use of his abilities. The taste for 
 mathematics communicated to him by his father, Cardan 
 always retained. When in his fresh youth he became 
 eager to obtain a name that should not die, and must 
 
 1 But, he says : " Ubi adeptus literas Latinas, statim etiam in urbe 
 nostra cognitusTuL" De Vita Propria, cap. xxxii. p. 138. 
 
 2 " Apud patrein longam servitutem sustinui, et pro spurio ab illo 
 jactatus, etiam indecora matri simul audiebam." Dial, de Morte. 
 Opera, Tom. i. p. 676. 
 
 3 "Itaque quam licuit vixi mihi; et in aliqua spe futurorum praesen- 
 tia sprevi." De Propr. Vit. cap. ix. p. 42. 
 
 4 De UtiL ex Adv. Capiend. p. 428. De Propr, Vit. cap. xxxiv. 
 p. 155. 
 
 5 De Libris Propriis (ed. Lugd. 1557), p. 9. 
 
BOY- AUTHOR. 27 
 
 needs sit down at once to write a treatise, and so make 
 the best beginning that he could of the career to which 
 his aspirations tended, there was no subject that lay 
 nearer to his mind than the geometry he gathered from 
 his father's teachings and his father's books. The boy, 
 therefore, worked diligently at a little book in his own 
 language, since he could write no Latin, wherein he 
 taught how and why, the latitude and longitude of two 
 places or stars being known, their true distance from each 
 other may be calculated 1 . This little treatise was divided 
 into chapters, and was chiefly founded on a book of 
 Geber's 1 . Having achieved this his first work, Jerome 
 was rather proud to lend it to a friend, Agostino Lavi- 
 zario, of Como. To the disappointment of posterity, and 
 the chagrin of the author, Lavizario died of plague, and 
 Jerome's manuscript could never be recovered 3 . 
 
 But the zeal of the young aspirant for immortal honours 
 had not been content with labour on a single work 3 ; 
 another book had been commenced about the same time, 
 more original in its design, and more ambitious, more 
 peculiarly characteristic. As Cardan grew, his restless- 
 ness increased. He felt aggrieved when, at the age of 
 eighteen, full of strong powers and strong passions, he 
 still found himself compelled into a half-menial position, 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis (ed. Lugd. 1557), p. 9. 
 
 ~ De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), pp. 9, 10. DeL.P. Liber ult. Opera, 
 vol. i. p, 96. 
 
 3 De SapientiaLibri V. &c. &c. (ed. Norimb. 1543) p. 431. 
 
28 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 and denied the education for which he was thirsting. 
 His want of proper standing had become more obvious, 
 and the reason of it, with a galling frequency, was on the 
 lips of his companions. His health was bad, his home 
 was uncongenial, out of doors he was in a wrong position. 
 He had become proud, and so sensitive, that his spirit 
 suffered pain from any but the gentlest touch. Worldly 
 advancement seemed impossible, restlessness became reck- 
 lessness, and the neglected youth turned all the energy that 
 was not spent in nursing his ambition upon games of 
 chance. He brought his acquired taste for mathematics 
 to the gaming-table, and calculated nicely probabilities in 
 cards and dice 1 . When, afterwards, a sure object in life 
 presented itself, quitting the company of gamblers, he 
 pursued it steadily; but in the hopeless, miserable years 
 of energy that saw no outlet, and of reckless discontent, 
 there was no game played in his day with dice at which 
 Jerome Cardan did not become proficient. Meanwhile, 
 the philosophic bias was not weaker than the passions of 
 those miserable years. The young gambler's experiences 
 were all treasured for a philosophic use, while scientific 
 calculations were submitted to the test of practice; for 
 this other work, begun in early youth, and finished at the 
 age of twenty-three, was nothing less than an original 
 and elaborate treatise on the science that belongs to 
 
 1 De Propria Vita, p. 16. The authority remains the same for all 
 succeeding facts, until its change is indicated by another reference. 
 
DICE. A LOST LEGACY. 29 
 
 games of chance. The idea was a shrewd one, and the 
 execution of it curiously brought into play all the charac- 
 teristic features of its author's life. It displayed much 
 of the knowledge he had acquired from the old geome- 
 trician Fazio, the philosophic powers that had grown 
 and strengthened in the midst of all misfortune and 
 neglect, and the love of dice that represented the im- 
 patient and ill-regulated spirit that so much want of 
 sympathy had by this time begotten. 
 
 We who have seen the growth of this one child from 
 the knees of its hired mothers, and the hand of its hard 
 Aunt Margaret, up to a youth of galling servitude, refuse 
 to be harsh judges now. If we could trace back the stories 
 of the men who sin against us or before us in the world, 
 perhaps we should refuse to be harsh judges ever. There 
 is no truth in scorn, and there is no sadder aspect in the 
 life of Jerome Cardan than the feeling which impelled 
 him to say, " I have lived to myself, and in some hope of 
 future things I have despised the present." 
 
 A rare example of the contempt of things present was 
 offered during Jerome's youth by Fazio, his father. Fazio, 
 who was, it should be remembered, seventy- four years old 
 when his son's age was eighteen, had two nephews, sister's 
 sons, little younger than himself; and of these, one was a 
 Franciscan friar, and the other a tax-gatherer; one a 
 Pharisee, the other a publican. The friar, seventy years 
 
30 JEROME CAEDAN. 
 
 old, was named Evangelista ; the other nephew, Ottone 
 Cantone, the tax-gatherer, was very rich, and when on 
 his death-bed offered to bequeath his wealth to the young 
 Jerome. It was the one worldly gift that fortune offered 
 to him in his early life, a bequest by which he would have 
 been enabled to obtain for himself education, and to carry 
 out his most ambitious schemes of study. Fazio, however, 
 acting on his son's behalf, refused the legacy, declaring that 
 the money was ill-gotten. The despised publican died, 
 therefore, intestate, and his property passed into the hands 
 of his surviving brother, the friar, who, being forbidden 
 to acquire wealth for himself, of course devoted it to pious 
 uses. 
 
 The geometer's contempt of wealth did not include a 
 contempt of the homage he might earn to himself from 
 younger relations, as a man who would leave one day a 
 will behind him 1 . Jerome's health being delicate, it 
 pleased his father to excite the reverence of other young- 
 men in the family, by telling them that in the event of 
 his son's death this or that one of them would be his heir. 
 It was a weak way of boasting, and hazardous withal; 
 for in those days, although it was not much more likely 
 than it is now that young men would allow generous 
 blood to take a jaundice from exposure to such influ^ 
 encing, yet there were thousands of calculating fathers 
 1 De Util. ex Adr, Capiend. p. 429. 
 
DOMESTIC DISCORD. 31 
 
 not indisposed to carve out a fortune for themselves or for 
 their children with the knife of the assassin, or to find 
 quiet means of hastening the decease of any sickly youth 
 by whom their way was cumbered. This manner of 
 talking, therefore, on the part of the old man, not only 
 vexed Jerome, but also seriously alarmed his mother, and 
 was the occasion of much violent altercation between 
 Fazio and Clara. They even agreed to separate. In one 
 of these quarrels the passionate woman fell down in a fit, 
 striking her head violently against a paving-stone, and 
 lay for three hours insensible, and foaming at the mouth 1 . 
 The son diverted the attention of his parents from the 
 dispute, of which he was the centre, by simulating a 
 religious zeal, betaking himself to the Franciscans 2 , and 
 making suddenly a bold push to secure for himself proper 
 instruction. His mother, however, would not suffer that 
 he should hide himself from her under the monk's cowl 3 . 
 Having denied to him that easy opportunity of getting 
 forward in the world which the legacy of Ottone Cantone 
 would have afforded, it would have been cruel indeed had 
 Fazio continued to withhold from his son those elements 
 of education that were necessary to his labour for his own 
 subsistence. Jerome had learnt no trade or profession, 
 
 1 De Util. ex Adv. Capiend. p. 429. 
 
 2 Ibid. De Consolatione, p. 74. 
 
 3 " Metuentis matris orbitatem precibus exoratus pater," De Con- 
 solatione, p. 74. 
 
32 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 and both from his nature, and from the imperfect training 
 he had hitherto received, it was evident that he could 
 earn his living only as a scholar. The old man also had 
 not failed to recognise the good abilities his boy possessed, 
 while it was certain that his quick wit could be turned to 
 no account, that he might as well not think at all among 
 philosophers, while he was unable to write his thoughts 
 in Latin. At length, therefore, when he was nineteen 1 
 years old, he was, for the first time, released from bondage 
 in his father's house, and sent to study at a university. 
 
 1 De ConsoL p. 74. De Propr. Vit. p, 16. 
 
MIND AND MATTER. 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ILLS OF THE FLESH THE STIPEND OF THE HUNDRED SCUDI. 
 
 THE spirit of the young Cardan, housed within its 
 temple of the flesh, suffered, in contact with the world 
 about it, such discouragements. The story of his outer 
 life up to his nineteenth year is told in the preceding 
 chapters. We must now put a finger on his pulse. The 
 day may come when somebody shall teach us how to 
 estimate the sum of human kindness that proceeds from 
 good digestion and a pure state of the blood the dis- 
 putes and jealousies that owe their rise entirely to the 
 livers of a number of the disputants or how much fret- 
 fulness, how many outbursts of impatience, how much 
 quick restlessness of action, is produced by the condition 
 of the nervous matter. Such calculations, though we 
 cannot make them in the gross, we make, or ought to 
 make, instinctively when we become intimate with indi- 
 viduals. The physical life of a man cannot be dissociated 
 fairly from his intellectual and moral life, when we at- 
 tempt to judge him by the story of his actions. In the 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 case of Jerome Cardan, it is more than commonly essen- 
 tial that we know a little of the body that he carried to 
 his work, for its unsoundness influenced his conduct and 
 caused many a wise man to shrug his shoulders, both 
 among contemporaries and long afterwards, and even to 
 this day, over the question, " Had he not madness in his 
 composition 1 ?" 
 
 As there are few, even of the rosiest among us, who 
 have bodies absolutely free from all trace of disease or 
 malformation, perfect health of body being a most rare 
 condition, so it is with perfect health of mind. Every 
 excess of one class of ideas over the just proportion in- 
 volves loss of balance. Before reasoning can master the 
 
 1 " Verum extremes amentia fuit, imo impiae audaciae," reported 
 Thuanus, in the History of his own time, Lib. Ixii. Tom. iii. p. 462, ed. 
 Lond. 1733. Gabriel Naude', a famous bookworm, wrote an elaborate 
 but shallow criticism on Cardan, which he prefixed to the book de Vita 
 Propria, first edited by him in 1642. As an analyst of character Nau- 
 daeus does not shine ; but this criticism, based on a minute knowledge 
 of his whole works, being bound up with the only one of Cardan's books 
 usually read, has been taken for just by, I think, every succeeding 
 writer. He says, speaking of ..." gravissimorum virorum judicia, 
 qui Cardanum miras de seipso fabulas concitasse, et insanienti proximum 
 vixisse. Et hercle non video quid aliud existimari possit de homine 
 qui" . . . qui . . . qui . . . &c. The quotation down to " qui denique " 
 would be a page too long. Bayle, gathering his information about 
 Cardan from other writers, and without having read more than a single 
 book, which forms about a hundredth part of Cardan's works, delivers 
 judgment thus: "We must not say of him that his great Wit had a 
 mixture of Madness, but, on the contrary, that his Madness had a mix- 
 ture of great Wit. His Wit was only an appendix, an accessory to his 
 Madness." For my own part, I decline to affirm of any man that he is mad 
 or not mad. Strange things are said and done all over the world daily. 
 
PHYSICAL LIFE. 35 
 
 unknown, or wit can dazzle us before there can exist a 
 Howard or a Milton a mind must have swerved out of 
 that horizontal line on which all faculties stand written 
 at an equal altitude. That Cardan's mind was not well 
 balanced we have already seen while noting its relations 
 in the days of youth with the surrounding world. Much 
 of the eccentricity displayed in it was caused, un- 
 doubtedly , by the condition of the frame in which it had 
 been set. That part of our history his physical life up 
 to the year in which he joined a university, we therefore 
 proceed now to consider. 
 
 In infancy, Cardan was fat and red; in boyhood, lean, 
 with a long, white face, and reddish hair. He grew fast, 
 so that he had attained at the age of sixteen his full 
 stature. Of the plague that caressed him at the breast of 
 his first nurse mention has been already made. His health 
 was at all times infirm. He was born with a slight ente- 
 rocele, inherited from Fazio, his father. Throughout life 
 he was vexed by the occasional outbreak of cutaneous 
 eruptions and by nervous itchings 1 . Between his fourth 
 and his seventh year 2 the excitement of his nervous sys- 
 tem caused a condition perhaps not altogether rare in 
 children: phantoms haunted him. On account of his 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. vi. and li. for the preceding details. 
 
 2 De Vita Propr. cap. xxxvii. p. 160. Sprengel attributes to his 
 early illnesses the vividness of imagination by which Cardan was 
 always characterised. 
 
 D2 
 
36 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 weak health, and specially in consideration of the fact 
 that during those years, and for some time afterwards, his 
 legs from the knees downwards never became warm in 
 bed until the morning 1 , he was not required to rise; in- 
 deed, he was required not to rise until the end of the 
 second hour after sunrise 2 . Fazio himself, it should be 
 observed, was not himself then out of bed 3 . .; .During the 
 last hour or two of morning rest, lying awake, the boy 
 commonly saw figures, that were colourless, and seemed 
 to be built up of rings of mail, rising out of the right 
 corner of the bed 4 . The figures, following each other in 
 a long procession, were of many kinds houses, castles, 
 animals, knights on horseback, plants, trees, musical in- 
 struments, trumpeters in the attitude of blowing, groves, 
 woods, flowers, and wild shapes that represented nothing 
 he had ever seen before these figures rising out of the 
 right-hand corner, and describing an arch, descended into 
 the left-hand corner, and were lost. Jerome had pleasure 
 in this spectacle, and made a secret of it. On one occa- 
 sion, when his eyes were fixed intently upon the proces- 
 sion, his Aunt Margaret asked whether he saw anything; 
 but he believed, he tells us, that if he revealed the mys- 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap, xxxvii. p. 29 and pp. 161, 162. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 11 and p. 160. 
 
 3 ' Somno matutino indulgere permisit, nam et ipse ad tertiam diei 
 horam decumbebat." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 428, 
 
 4 De Vita Propr. p. 160. 
 
GOBLINS. 37 
 
 tery, whatever caused the spectacle would be offended, 
 and that he should see the show no more 1 . Therefore he 
 did not answer her. Between his seventh and twelfth 
 year 2 the child, who slept between his mother and Aunt 
 Margaret, disturbed them almost nightly with his crying, 
 caused by severe palpitation of the heart, which ceased 
 when he advanced in years 3 . The coldness of his ex- 
 tremities sometimes gave place to a profuse sweat. The 
 nervous irritation endured by the delicate boy, who was 
 rudely exposed all day long to the harsh exactions and 
 unruly tempers of his old father, the lawyer, and the 
 women who had charge of him, marred his unwholesome 
 sleep with vivid dreams 2 . As often as a hundred times 
 there came before him in his dreaming, night after night, 
 at intervals, a cock with red wings, at whose appearance 
 
 1 " Quamvis adeo puer, mecum cogitabam, si fatebor indignabitur 
 quicquid causam praebet hujus pompae, subtrahetque hoc festura." De 
 Vita Propria, cap. xxxvii. p. 161. This account fits accurately to my 
 own experience. During the same period of childhood I rarely fell 
 asleep till I had received the visit of a crowd of visionary shapes that 
 were not by any means agreeable. I had also, during that period, holi- 
 day phantoms, in the beauty and the mystery of which I took delight, 
 and concerning which I had in the strongest degree the same childish 
 belief that is mentioned in the text, that "si fatebor indignabitur 
 quicquid causam praebet hujus pompac, subtrahetque hoc festum." I 
 add this note because there are some autobiographical statements in 
 the writings of Cardan touching upon what used to be considered 
 supernatural matters that are liable to question by the sceptical, or 
 misinterpretation by the credulous. It would be unjust not to employ 
 the best means that I have of proving in this place the good faith of 
 Cardan's statements. 
 
 2 De Vita Propr. p. 29. 
 
38 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 the child trembled with the fear that it would speak, until 
 it did speak, in a human voice, threatening words that 
 took no hold upon his memory 1 . 
 
 There were none by to understand the beatings of the 
 young heart and the ponderings of the excited mind. 
 Sometimes the child was labouring in the diseased heroic 
 vein; at seven years old aweary of the world and cogi- 
 tating suicide. Cardan, when he confesses this in after- 
 life, adds a suspicion that the same has occurred to other 
 men, although they do not like to tell it in their books 2 . 
 There were none by to understand the vague emotions 
 that were, even in youth, to grow into the form of hunger 
 for undying fame; the busy brain, that was perpetually 
 cogitating many and large things, revolving also things 
 that were impossible 3 . 
 
 The aspirations of the fevered mind were mingled 
 
 1 De Vita Prop. p. 162, 
 
 2 " Laboravi interdum amore Heroico, ut me ipsum trucidare cogi- 
 tarem; verum talia etiam aliis accidere suspicor; licet hi in libros non 
 referant." De Vita Propria, p. 31. The preceding sentences make it 
 probable that Cardan applies this statement to his whole life; the 
 sentence before which it is placed favours, however, the belief that he 
 is referring to his childhood only. I adopt the latter view, because I 
 know that in the early years of childhood this feeling is connected 
 closely with the physical condition already described. There is 
 nothing in it but a wild love for the mystery of death. I can call to 
 mind no instance of suicide committed by a child. 
 
 3 "Cerebri calidi, addictus cogitationi perpetuo: multa ac maxima, 
 et etiam quae esse non possunt revolvens." De Vita Propria, cap. xiii. 
 p. 58. 
 
FEVER. 39 
 
 always with some fear of early death. His mother never 
 thought he would live long 1 . In youth, to all the other 
 ailments Jerome suffered, there was added a dull, red 
 swelling on the left breast, which occasioned for some 
 time a dread of cancer 3 . In the year before his departure 
 for the university, when he was eighteen years old, he 
 suffered also a dangerous attack of illness. He had been 
 rambling through an August day among the suburbs and 
 gardens of Milan, and when he came home falsely ac- 
 counted for his absence by saying that he had dined with 
 a friend of his father's, Agostino Lanizario. It is the 
 same Lanizario who played the part of friendly critic upon 
 Jerome's early writings. After this walk the youth was 
 seized with a violent attack of illness 3 . For three days he 
 was in a fever, having only water for his food, and medi- 
 cine compounded by his father, who was not only lawyer 
 but physician also, which medicine he was to take four 
 times a day. An anthrax formed and broke over the 
 first false rib on the left side 4 . He thought in his de- 
 lirium that he was on the bed of Asclepiades, rising and 
 falling constantly between the floor and ceiling. He be- 
 came possessed of the belief that he should die. His 
 malady was closed by a violent sweat that resulted in the 
 youth's recovery, but his health, as I before said, re- 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. p. 29. 2 Ibid. p. 31. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 28. * De Util. ex Adversis Cap. p. 431, 
 
40 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 rnained always infirm ; it was best when he was troubled 
 with a cough 1 . 
 
 Jerome Cardan, whose stature was completed at the 
 age of sixteen, was, at the age of nineteen, when he went 
 to Pavia, of the middle height and somewhat narrow- 
 chested. He had a fair complexion, with a slight tinge of 
 red on his white, small and oblong face, yellow hair, with a 
 strong growth of it in beard under the chin, small, intent 
 eyes, a projecting under lip, large upper front teeth, and a 
 harsh voice, which, although loud, was not distinct at any 
 distance. The hind part of his head was narrow 2 . Cardan 
 tells us that when he became famous, and painters came 
 from a distance to take his picture, his features proved to 
 be so commonplace, that it was impossible to express 
 them in a way that would enable any one to know him 
 by his portrait. That is a very modest method of putting 
 the incompetence of artists who omit the animating 
 spirit when they paint the form, but Jerome was only too 
 completely free from any pride either in his own form or 
 in its coverings. In his mind he had pride, which he 
 took no trouble to conceal. His character was fixed in a 
 contempt of money, a disregard not only of surrounding 
 trifles, but even of the more important furnishings of 
 
 1 "Turn maxime sanum me existimera, cum tussi rauceclineque 
 laboro." De Vit. Propr. p. 26. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 24, 25, for this and the next fact. 
 
ASPIRATION. 41 
 
 life, and his whole energy was bent upon the working ] 
 out for himself with his mind of glory after death 1 . Boy 
 as he was, he was at work upon his treatise on the 
 Earning of Immortality; upon his treatise on the True 
 Distances of Objects, based upon an old volume of 
 Geber's, upon Triangles, that he had found among 
 his father's books ; upon his treatise on Games of Skill 
 and Chance ; and upon other youthful undertakings 2 . 
 From the first he was unable to confine his mind to 
 labour on a single topic. He did not sit down to \vork 
 out his immortality of fame by writing a great book ; he 
 began at once with three or four books. He was never 
 throughout life checked in the commencement of a new 
 literary labour, by the reflection that he might have four 
 or five unfinished works already in hand 8 . Book- writing 
 was pleasure, and he could not easily deny himself any 
 addition to a pleasure that he loved. 
 
 Though miserably trained into impatience, there was 
 a strain of youthful joyousness in Cardan's mind when 
 he arrived at manhood. The most prevailing of his 
 sensual pleasures was a love of music 4 . He was not 
 
 1 " Conternptor pecunise, glorias post obitum cultor, mediocria etiam 
 nedum parva omnia spernere solitus." 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 10. 
 
 3 "Multa et varia scrips!, neque enim mens tandiu intenta uni 
 negocio esse potest." De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 12. 
 
 4 " Laetus, voluptatibus deditus, Musicae praecipue." De Vita Propr. 
 cap. li. 
 
42 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 physically bold, but he had from the beginning practised 
 himself in sword exercise, then an art necessary to all 
 men who desired long life, and he had exercised his 
 body well in running and leaping. He could not ride 
 decently, nor swim, and was afraid of fire-arms. Abso- 
 lutely a coward he was not, for in his restlessness it was 
 one of his favourite amusements to face at night the 
 dangers of the street, wandering about, contrary to law, 
 armed, having his face concealed by a black woollen 
 veil 1 . 
 
 Firm in the midst of all his restlessness, determined 
 resolutely to mount upwards, not in worldly circumstance 
 but in the ranks through which only intellect can rise, 
 his spirit ever burning with an inextinguishable desire 
 for an immortal name 2 , Jerome Cardan left Milan to 
 commence his university career. Agostino Lanizario had 
 faith in the young author, and besought his aged father 
 to consult the future prospects of the youth. Clara Mi- 
 cheria added her prayers to the same effect, stimulated 
 by her son's declared intention, for the love of study, to 
 become a monk if he might become a student in no 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. viL p. 32, for the preceding details. 
 
 2 " Hoc umim sat scio, ab ineunte setate me inextinguibili nominis 
 immortalis cupiditate flagrasse." De Libris Propriis. 
 
 " Cupiditas mea gloriae, inter tot et adversa et impedimenta, stolida 
 non tantum stulta. Non tainen unquarn concupivi gloriam aut ho- 
 nores, imo sprevi : cuperem notum esse quod sim, non opto ut sciatur, 
 qualis sim." De Vita Propria, cap. ix. p. 42. 
 
SENT TO THE UNIVERSITY. 43 
 
 other way 1 . Jerome, ill-trained as he had been, with all 
 his oddities and faults, was a good son. The life of 
 Fazio was now declining ; Clara was much younger than 
 the old geometrician, and must turn naturally after the 
 old man's death to her son Jerome for protection. Let 
 him, therefore, before it was too late, be enabled 
 to earn bread. Fazio, though he had acquired some 
 property, was far from being rich. He had lent money 
 too carelessly, and been but too indifferent a steward of his 
 own resources. The main prop of his income as a juris- 
 consult was a stipend of a hundred scudi, from a lecture- 
 ship in Milan, which could one day be obtained also by 
 Jerome, if he were qualified to take his father's place 3 . 
 Clara had, therefore, good reason for backing with her 
 prayers Jerome's demand for education. Jerome declared 
 obstinately that if he were not sent to Pavia for instruc- 
 tion, he would run away from any situation into which 
 he might be put ; and thus the old man was at length 
 entreated and compelled to yield 3 . 
 
 1 " Dii boni! florem liunc universum setatis, et sine voluptate, et sine 
 studiis transegi. Cum vero neque patrem cogere possem, nee fraudare 
 honestum ducerem,nec praecibus impetrare valerem : religion! tandem, 
 amore studiorum, tradere me volui. Inde metuentis matris orbitatem 
 prcccibus exoratus pater, in Gymnasium dimisit." De Consolatione, 
 Lib. iii. p. 75, 
 
 2 De Vita Propr. cap. x. p. 48. 
 
 3 " Atque ita precibus matris et amici praedicti, minisque meis, ut 
 qui omnino abire quoquo destinaveram, discessum in Academiam 
 sequent! anno impetravi." De Libris Propriis. 
 
44 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Jerome Cardan, therefore, being as well or as ill-fitted 
 for the career lie sought as may be supposed of a youth 
 minded as he was, and troubled as he was with fleshly 
 ailments, set out at the age of nineteen for Pavia, provided 
 in an ungrudging way by his father with respectable re- 
 sources 1 . So far as studies were concerned, the exact 
 curriculum of his preparatory education may be briefly 
 told. In addition to reading and writing, Fazio had 
 taught him rudiments of arithmetic when he was a little 
 boy, and had instructed him, when he was nine years old, 
 in some of the world's mysteries, magical lore very pro- 
 bably, whence obtained Jerome never discovered. Soon 
 afterwards the geometrician taught his son some principles 
 of Arabian astrology, a kind of study that must have done 
 much to confirm the little fellow's dreaminess of nature, 
 and then finding that his recollection of dry facts was 
 bad, endeavoured to instil into him a system of artificial 
 memory, in which endeavours he did not succeed 2 . After 
 Jerome's twelfth year, he had been taught to say by heart 
 the first six books of Euclid, not to understand them, and 
 he had been aided carelessly with a few books and scanty 
 verbal information and advice in the study of geometry 
 and dialectics 3 . At the cost of his mother, who had a 
 
 1 " Honesto cum viatico." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 429. 
 
 - De Vita Propr. cap, xxxiv. p. 155. De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 428. 
 
 3 "Pater jam ante concesserat ut Geometric et Dialectic opera 
 darem, in quo quanquam praeter paucas admonitiones, librosque, ac 
 licentiam, nullum alium auxilium praebuerit." De Consol. p. 75. 
 
PREPARATORY TRAINING. 45 
 
 woman's appreciation of such matters, Jerome had also 
 received instruction in music, which, as a social amuse- 
 ment, consisted in those days chiefly of part singing and 
 choruses. This Clara had furnished to her son without 
 his father's knowledge 1 . Fazio himself, who had no lack 
 of power for facetious conversation, and was great among 
 his friends as a teller of anecdotes, fables, and marvels of 
 all kinds, being particularly full of stories about demons 2 , 
 and claiming an especial demon of his own, aided the con- 
 stant growth of superstitious feeling in the apt mind of his 
 pupil. Other things Jerome had learnt for his own plea- 
 sure. With his father's help he had become so well versed 
 in dialectics, that before he went to Pavia he earned some 
 pocket-money for himself by giving private lessons in that 
 study 3 . Of Latin he knew no more than he had acquired 
 in conversation with his father ; but to write Latin, as I 
 have said before, was the great object of his young desired 
 At Pavia, Cardan was placed under the care of Giovanni 
 Ambrosio Targio, in whose house he resided without any 
 companion. At the close of the academic year he re- 
 turned to Milan. He- had made good use of time, for in 
 the succeeding year after his return to Pavia, where he 
 
 1 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 429. 
 
 2 " Conversatio sua baud aspernanda, facetus, jucundus, miraculomm 
 et fabularum recitator, multa de daemonibus recitabat, qure quam vera 
 essent nescio, certe ea historia et admirabilis et pulchre conficta, 
 mirum in modum me oblectabat." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 429. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
46 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 again lodged with Targio, he disputed publicly with very 
 great success, and was a teacher in the Gymnasium of the 
 first books of Euclid. He even undertook for a few days 
 to discourse upon dialectics in the place of the appointed 
 teacher, Brother Romolo Serveta ; and afterwards he took 
 for a short time a class of elementary philosophy on 
 behalf of a physician named Pandolfo 1 . He was evi- 
 dently working hard, learning to read and write Latin, 
 not by the ordinary way of grammar rules, but by prac- 
 tice and by native tact, with books and dictionaries 2 . 
 
 The years of study now commenced were years of 
 happiness to the young student. He worked hard, 
 partly to make up for lost time, partly in fear that he 
 might be recalled by his father if ill-tidings of him 
 were sent home 3 . At Pavia he was master of him- 
 self, and between the sessions, when he went home to 
 Milan, he assumed the right of managing his own affairs. 
 His mode of studying was suited to his tastes, though 
 perhaps not exactly orthodox. The common course of a 
 day's study was as follows 4 : After a morning's work he 
 walked in the shade outside the town- walls ; then he 
 dined ; then he gave up his time to music. The young 
 philosopher then took his fishing lines and went a-fishing 
 under shelter of the groves and^ woods not far beyond 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. p. 16, for the preceding details. 
 
 2 Ibid. cap. xxxiv. 3 De Consol. p. 75. 
 4 De Vit, Propr. cap. xl. 
 
 - 
 
STUDENT AT PAVIA. 47 
 
 the gates of Pavia. A philosopher who means to be 
 immortal must needs think as well as read and write. 
 Cardan could either think or read while he was fishing. 
 He took out with him also into the woods writing 
 materials, and so studied and worked under the thick 
 green leaves, among the wild flowers, throughout the 
 summer afternoon, dreaming ambitious dreams, and fairly 
 striving to fulfil his best desires. At sunset he returned 
 into the town, where his behaviour was not always 
 orderly. Dice and the draught-board had their charms 
 for him ; a restless night spent wandering about the streets 
 after a day of music was, in his view, a simple kind of 
 relaxation. In this way Cardan worked hard, and made 
 rapid progress. Having embraced medicine as his profes- 
 sion, he had begun a treatise on the DifFerings of Doctors 1 . 
 In the year following his second academical course, re- 
 maining at home in Milan because the presence of war 
 caused the schools of Pavia to be closed 2 , he wrote fifty 
 sheets of mathematical Commentaries. These sheets, I may 
 here add, he lent to Ottaviano Scoto : Ottaviano lost them. 
 Jerome Cardan had embraced medicine as his profes- 
 sion. What was to become, then, of the stipend of the 
 hundred scudi ? He had thrown it aside as dust in the 
 balance of his thoughts. The choice of a profession was not 
 
 
 1 De Sapientia, &c. &c. p. 420. 
 
 2 " Tertio anno Mediol: mansi bello impeditus, quo ne Academia fre- 
 quentaretur prohibitum est." De Sapientia, &c. p. 421. 
 
48 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 to him a money question. Regarding it, however, even in 
 that light, when his father and Clara pleaded to him the 
 importance of this lectureship, and the honours and 
 emoluments that were to be attained by all good juris- 
 consults, the youth felt that his father's standing in the 
 world was but a bad endorsement of their plea. Juris- 
 prudence, he remarked, had done but little for his father 
 Fazio 1 , though he had been lauded as the knower of all 
 things in that book of his on Peckham's Perspective To 
 that book, and the laudation in it, Jerome refers, noting 
 how very false the praise was, since his father's knowledge 
 was confined to few ideas, and none of those his own. 
 Law studies had contracted his rnind not enlarged it. 
 Eager, therefore, for the best kind of mental cultivation 
 as the basis of his future immortality, the young philoso- 
 pher, after he went to Pavia, was not long in determining 
 that he would never follow in his father's steps. 
 
 Medicine had recommended itself to Cardan as the 
 pursuit most likely to beget a philosophic mind. As a 
 physician, he could not only keep over his own feeble 
 health a reasonable guardianship and he desired long- 
 life but he should also be more fairly on the path to an 
 immortal fame. The studies that belong to medicine, he 
 reasoned 2 , stand upon surer ground than studies that 
 
 1 " Parum ilium etiam absque impedimenta profecisse viderem." De 
 Vit. Propr. cap. x. p. 49. 
 
 2 Nothing could be saner than this reasoning: "In eo instituto a 
 prima aetate mansi, ut vitae consulerem: studia autem medicinse magis 
 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 49 
 
 belong to law. Law treats of local custom, medicine of 
 truths common to the whole world, and to all ages. 
 Medicine is the nobler as well as the safer ground, he 
 said, on which to build a lasting fame, since its inquiries 
 are concerned only with pure reason, with the eternal law 
 of nature, not with the opinions of men. Swayed by such 
 arguments the bold student determined to give up every 
 design of following upon his father's track, and abandoned 
 expectation of his stipend of a hundred scudi. 
 
 Fazio, failing now in health, withdrew his opposition, 
 and Jerome, having missed one academic course while 
 the armies concerned in the quarrel between Charles V. 
 and Francis I. were creating more than common tumult 
 in the country, went in the next year, he being twenty- 
 three years old, not again to Pa via, but to Padua. 
 
 Absence had softened the feelings of old Fazio towards 
 his son 1 . Very soon after his first departure, reconcilia- 
 tion had been effected between Fazio and Clara; and al- 
 though the old man, during the four last years of his life, 
 maintained a morose countenance 2 , his last days proved 
 
 huic proposito conducebant quam legum: et ut propiora fini, et ut 
 orbi communia toti, et omnibus saeculis : tamen ut candidiora, ac quae 
 ration! (seternse naturae legi) non hominum opinionibus inniterentur : 
 ideo haec ipsa amplexatus sum, non jurisprudentia." De Vit. Propr. 
 p. 47. 
 
 " Desiderium augente absentia mortuus est pater." De Consola- 
 tione, p. 75. 
 
 3 " Supervixit quatuor ferine annis, msestus semper vixit ut declara- 
 Terit quantum me amaret." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 430. 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 that he regarded his boy with a real affection. It was in 
 the beginning of the year 1524 that Jerome first went to 
 the University of Padua, and early in August of the same 
 year he returned with a fellow- townsman, Gianangelo 
 Corio, to Milan 1 , where the old jurisconsult was languish- 
 ing in mortal illness. Jerome, since he had become a 
 Latin scholar, had acquired social respect among his 
 fellow-townsmen 2 , and his father was then so much in- 
 terested in the progress of his studies that he would not 
 suffer him to wait upon the sick bed. Plague was in the 
 town, and the youth's life was precious 3 . Jerome, he said, 
 was on the point of taking the degree of bachelor in arts 4 , 
 and Fazio, though near death, commanded him to go 
 back ; declaring, indeed, that he should feel the happier if 
 he did not detain him from his studies 5 . The youth, 
 therefore, went back to Padua. He must have gone back 
 to vacation work, for he had remained a month at Padua 
 after the close of the academic session on the 30th of 
 June, and the long vacation did not end until All Saints'- 
 
 1 De Vit. Propr. p. 16. 2 Ibid. p. 138. 
 
 3 De Consol. p. 75. 
 
 4 De Vit, Propr. p. 17. Such a degree was not much favoured in 
 Italy. It was sought in Cardan's time chiefly by those who could not 
 afford much expense or trouble, and in the next century was rarely 
 sought at all in Padua, after the establishment of " the Venetian 
 College," by which the doctorate was made readily accessible to 
 all poor scholars. Gymnasium Patayinum J. P. Tomasini, p. 200 
 and p. 194. 
 
 5 De Vit. Propr. p. 17. 
 
DEATH OF FAZIO. 51 
 
 day, the 1st of November 1 , when the learned Paduans 
 opened the academic year with great solemnity and pomp. 
 Soon after his return, Jerome received news of his 
 father's death. Fazio died of old age, after eight days of 
 abstinence from food, upon a Sabbath-day, the 28th of 
 August 3 . His son, who was warm-hearted, had loved 
 him ; but there is more of literary vanity than filial love 
 in the epitaph, of course a Latin one, with which he 
 marked his grave. Thus the sense of the inscription ran : 
 
 To FAZIO CARDAN, 
 
 JURISCONSULT. 
 DEATH IT WAS THAT I LIVED, LIFE IT WAS DEATH THAT GAVE, 
 
 THERE REMAINS THE MIND ETERNAL, CERTAIN GLORY, REST 3 . 
 He died in the year 1524, Oct. 28, in the eightieth year of his age. 
 JEROME CARDAN, PHYSICIAN, TO HIS PARENT 
 AND POSTERITY. 
 
 1 See J. P. Tomasini Commentar. de Gymn. Patavin. Lib. i. pp. 
 150 4, for the complete University Calendar, formerly regulating 
 work-days and holidays at Padua, 
 
 2 De Vit. Propr. p. 17. Dialogus Tetim. Opera, Tom. i. p. 672. 
 " Tetim. At Pater, quomodo obiit ? Ram. Honeste, et ex senio." 
 
 3 These two motto lines are in the original a bad hexameter and a 
 pentameter; the whole inscription being: 
 
 " Facio Cardano, 
 
 I.C. 
 Mors fuit id, quod vixi, vitam mors dedit ipsa, 
 
 Mens seterna manet, gloria tuta, quies. 
 
 Obiit anno M.D.XXIV. iv. Kal. Sept. Anno JStatis Ixxx. 
 
 Hyeronymus Cardanus, Medicus, Parenti 
 
 Posterisque." 
 
 The inscription is given by Tomasini (Elog. part i. Patav. 1630) 
 from the church of St. Mark, in Milan. Jerome himself was eventually 
 buried under it beside his father, as is testified by Tomasini and 
 Thuanus. 
 
 E2 
 
52 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Until there shall be one trumpet sounded over all the 
 graves, we shall most likely continue to blow trumpets of 
 our own in this way. A clever man must be more pious 
 than clever who omits the temptation, when he has the 
 power, to display his cleverness upon a tomb. By Cardan, 
 who was more clever than pious, no such omission would 
 be made. How should his piety prevail? The holiness 
 of home, all sacredness of motive and true worthiness of 
 action, had been unknown to the little Jerome when he 
 was a child. He had grown up contemned and neglected, 
 seeing much of evil passion, trained as a child in astro- 
 logy, and strengthened in every tendency to superstition. 
 The religion of his time was ceremonial and full of super- 
 stitious practices. Jerome was superstitious. He was 
 careful to perform religious rites ; he prayed to God and 
 to the Virgin Mary, but more particularly to St. Martin, 
 whom he was taught by a dream to regard as a protector 
 under whom he would enjoy a somewhat quieter and 
 longer life 1 than he could have obtained under any other 
 saint. There can be no doubt that this was a direct 
 slight offered to St. Jerome. Cardan was not behind his 
 age, but he was not before it, when, as he tells us, he was 
 accustomed from childhood to look up to heaven with this 
 prayer: " Lord God, of Thine infinite goodness, give me 
 long life and wisdom, and health both of mind and body 2 .'' 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. xxii. p. 87. 2 Ibid. p. 66. 
 
KELIGIOX. 53 
 
 His body was ailing, his mind wanted health; he feared 
 lest, by a premature close to his life, he might be pre- 
 vented from leaving to posterity such proofs of wisdom as 
 might win for him undying praise. He sought praise as 
 the end of his existence, and exercise of intellect as the 
 most worthy means to such an end. Ambition to produce 
 the utmost good, to develop every talent and apply it 
 carefully to that work in which it would do all that it 
 could be made to do in aid of the real progress of humanity, 
 glorified the life of the obscure French potter, Bernard 
 Palissy 1 , really the best of Cardan's philosophical contem- 
 poraries. Cardan, who won to himself in his own lifetime 
 world-wide fame, was conscious of no higher motive to 
 exertion than anxiety to be remembered as a great phi- 
 losopher. But that was no mean care. 
 
 Because the superstition of Cardan did not at all times 
 take an orthodox complexion, he has been ranked on 
 more than one occasion among atheists. Thus, for ex- 
 ample, he was set down by Theophilus Raynaud, in his 
 treatise on good and bad books 2 , as the first atheist of the 
 
 1 " Je n'ai trouve rien meilleur que de suivre le conseil de Dieu . . 
 II a command e a ses heri tiers qu'ils eussent a manger le pain au labeur 
 de letir corps et qu'ils eussent a multiplier les talens qu'il leur avoit 
 laissez par son Testament. Quoi considere je n'ay voulu cacher en 
 terre les talens qu'il luy a pleu me distribuer," &c. Palissy to the 
 Marshal Montmorenci. 
 
 2 " Homo nullius religionis ac fidei, et inter clancularios atheos se- 
 cundi ordinis a3vo suo facile princeps." Father Reynaud De bonis ac 
 malis Libris, quoted by Bayle in his Dictionary. 
 
54 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 second order. He records, however, emphatically among 
 the experiences of his life the acquisition, even through 
 trouble, of a firm trust in the wisdom of the divine dispo- 
 sition of events. He had observed, he says, the efficacy of 
 prayer, and recognised the importance of invoking aid 
 from God out of the Scriptures, and of seeking, he adds 
 I quote his exact words " that He would teach me to 
 do His will, because He is my God 1 ." As a religious 
 sentiment, at least, this thought lay at the bottom even of 
 those blind superstitions or clear-sighted comments which 
 the orthodox disdained and set aside as pagan. 
 
 1 De Vit. Propr. cap. xxiii. p. 90. 
 
LEGACIES AND LAWSUITS. 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JEROME CARDAN. GRADUATE IN MEDICINE HIS LIFE AT SACCO, AND 
 THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OP HIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 FAZIO CARDAN left a house and some provision for 
 his son, although it seems to have been very small, and 
 liable to much dispute 1 . He had been too ready to allow 
 to other men the use of his possessions. Part of his little 
 store, placed in the hands of insolvent people, had been 
 lost; part, supplied to princes and great men, was to be 
 re-demanded only at great risk, and hardly to be recovered 
 after endless labour. When recovered, it was always re- 
 paid without interest 3 . Litigation, however, was then 
 common ; and we are carried back fairly into the spirit of 
 the time when we read that after his father's death Jerome 
 had first a lawsuit with Alessandro Castillione for some 
 woods, afterwards with members of his father's family, 
 and then with the Counts Barbiani. Jerome eventually 
 gained his point against Castillione, who had one of his 
 
 1 " Patrimoniurn quod minimum erat." De Consol. p. 75. De Vita 
 Propr. cap. xxviii. 
 
 2 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 428. 
 
56 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 own relations for a judge, and compelled him, after a long 
 struggle, to pay all the money about which a question had 
 arisen. The dispute with the Barbiani was continued 
 over many years 1 . 
 
 To Clara Micheria there remained also, after the death 
 of Fazio, so much provision for her maintenance as would 
 enable her to buy a house 2 . She could also in some way 
 earn money, for it was by her industry and solicitude 
 incredible solicitude her son entitles it that Jerome, when 
 left by the death of his father poor and helpless, was main- 
 tained at the university 3 . It does not appear that Jerome 
 and his mother were at all times happy in each other, but 
 that Clara, notwithstanding all her sins of temper or of 
 principle, had a woman's power of self-sacrifice, and a 
 mother's strength of love for Jerome, is what I think does 
 appear, not indistinctly. Towards his father, Jerome's 
 heart yearned many years after the old man had passed 
 away, when the son could look back into his youth, for- 
 getting for a time its deprivations, remembering only the 
 gentle words and deeds of the geometrician, who had, he 
 thought, been kinder to him than his mother. Of him he 
 could then write, when the feeling rose naturally in his 
 heart, words of emotion full of a love and gentleness, with 
 
 1 Dial, de Morte. Opera, Tom. i. p. 676. 
 
 2 De Vit. Propr. p. 92. 
 
 3 " Ipse inops, ac auxilio omni destitutus, diligentia et solicitudine 
 matris incredibili sustentabar." Dial, de Morte. Opera, Tom. i.p. 676. 
 
PARENT AND CHILD. 57 
 
 which he seems to have been able to regard his father only. 
 " My tears arise," he says, " when my mind ponders upon 
 his good-will towards me. But, father, I will give what 
 satisfaction I am able to your merits and your piety. 
 And while these leaves are read, your name and virtue 
 shall be honoured. For he was incorruptible and truly 
 holy 1 ." At other times, in softened mood, we find him 
 speaking of his old relation to his father during childhood, 
 as " what I at that time thought to be hard servitude." 
 At other times he writes the simple truth, but not re- 
 sentfully. 
 
 Matthew Curtius, a physician of some note in his day, 
 v> r as professor of the theory of medicine in Padua, be- 
 tween the years 1524 and 1530 3 . He encouraged Car- 
 dan greatly with his kindness, even condescending to hold 
 public disputation with him. A compliment dear to the 
 
 1 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. pp. 349, 350. 
 
 2 Riccoboni de Gymnas. Patavin. Lib. i. p. 21. Cardan de Vit. Propr. 
 cap. xxxiv. p. 155. Curtius of Pavia taught also at Florence, Bologna, 
 and Pisa. He wrote on Venesection in Pleurisy, on the quality of 
 water, and also, among other things, edited Mundinus, the peg-book 
 upon which anatomists had hung comments for years, until Vesalius 
 achieved a revolution in their science. Curtius was fifty years old, 
 and in the height of his reputation, when Cardan studied under him. 
 His salary at Padua had been twice raised. He died in 1544, aged 
 seventy. Brief details are given concerning him by Tomasini and 
 Papadopoli in their records of the University of Padua, and more by 
 Ghilini, whom I know only as cited in a work invaluable for the infor- 
 mation it gives about forgotten men who were in any degree famous in 
 the sixteenth century, " Zedler's Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaf- 
 ten und Kiinste." 
 
58 JEKOME CARDAN. 
 
 young man at the outset of his medical career, was the 
 exclamation of the president before whom he argued some 
 forgotten thesis against a forgotten doctor. The president, 
 struck by Cardan's acuteness, asked who the youth was, 
 and being told, exclaimed, " Study, O youth, you will 
 excel Curtius 1 ." 
 
 At the close of the year made memorable by his father's 
 death, Jerome Cardan obtained from his university the 
 honour of being appointed Rector of the Gymnasium 2 . 
 He very truly says, that the seeking of that office by him 
 was a most desperately foolish deed 3 . The office was, in 
 fact, the lordship of the university, a post so costly to the 
 holder, that in those days of wars and taxes, and of social 
 disorganisation in North Italy, nobody could be found 
 willing to hold it. It was in abeyance at the time when 
 Jerome Cardan, a clever, penniless, disreputable young 
 scholar of twenty-four, maddened by difficulties, and by 
 a belief that he was impotent for life (his sorest care), 
 plunged desperately into its responsibilities, willing to 
 drown one care in another. 
 
 The University of Padua, founded in the thirteenth 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis : " Stude, o juvenis, Curtium superabis." 
 Stupebant omnes, adds Cardan. 
 
 2 De Libr. Propr. (ed. 1547) p. 11. Lib. Ult. Op. Tom. i. p. 97. 
 
 3 " Stulte vero id egi, quod Rector Gymnasii Patavini effectus sum, 
 turn cum inops essem, et in patria bella maxima vigerent et tributa 
 intollerabilia. . . . Deus! quid te ad hoc compulit? Ira certe et 
 insania . . ." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 430. 
 
STUDENT AT PADUA. 59 
 
 century, had been supported by the Princes of Carrara till 
 their power rotted. Then the Gymnasium was placed, 
 together with the town, in 1405, under the shield of 
 Venice, the town keys and seal being presented in that 
 year to Michael Steno. The liberality of the Venetians 
 caused the university to prosper greatly, and it owed much 
 in the first years of its dependence upon Venice to the 
 liberality of rectors 1 . Until the year 1550, there were 
 two rectors yearly appointed, who held divided rule, the 
 university itself being divided between artists (followers 
 of theology, philosophy, and physic) and jurisconsults. 
 As the affairs of the two classes were separate, each had 
 its rector. Jerome, we have seen, joined the artists, not 
 the jurisconsults, who had then for their own use a distinct 
 
 1 The best accounts of the University of Padua in its good old times 
 are, I believe, the six books of Commentaries on the Paduan Gymna- 
 sium, by Antonio Riccobone (Patavii, 1598), the Paduan Gymna- 
 sium, in five books, by the Bishop J. P. Tomasini (Utini, 1654), and 
 the History of the Paduan Gymnasium, by Nic. Comn. Papadopoli 
 (Venet. 1726). I have used these as my authorities, Riccobone lived 
 partly in Cardan's time, but Tomasini's work is more serviceable, in- 
 asmuch as it is full of those minute details which give life to our 
 knowledge of the past. It is quite the best work of the three. The 
 two volumes of Papadopoli, Abbot of St. Zenobius, and Professor at 
 Padua of Canon Law, are of great service as an elaborate appendix to 
 the others. He made it his business not only to compile afresh (drily 
 enough), but to supply from the university records the omissions that 
 occurred in the lists of rectors, professors, &c., published by the two 
 first-named writers. He gives also a brief account of every Paduan 
 who had been famous, including, of course, Cardan. Cardan's name, 
 however, as of one who had held office in the university, does not occur 
 in any of the lists given by these chroniclers. 
 
60 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 university building. After the year 1550 an union was 
 effected, and the university was governed by one rector, 
 chosen alternately, if possible, from among the artists and 
 the lawyers 1 . It was not possible always to maintain a 
 strict rotation ; it was even sometimes necessary to look 
 abroad for a man "illustrious, provident, eloquent, and 
 rich," by whose munificence the university could profit. 
 The rector was, indeed, the chief magistrate of the 
 university, who decided judicially disputes among the 
 students and professors on fixed court days, who over- 
 looked the working of the entire system, and saw that the 
 teachers did their duty properly; but his administrative 
 labours were lightened by the aid of a pro-rector, who did 
 the real work, while of the rector himself no more was 
 required than to be munificent. Scholars who would be 
 dukes hereafter were the men thought most proper for the 
 office. So indeed they were, for often rich men, daunted 
 by the heavy demand made by it upon their purses, used 
 the right of refusal granted to them. In the next century 
 the rectorate was shunned so universally, that the office 
 ceased almost wholly, the chief dignitary being the pro- 
 rector, of whom work was required rather than money. 
 
 For seven years before the year 1515, wars in the 
 district had caused the closing of the University of Padua. 
 
 1 Papadopoli Hist. Gymn. Pat. Lib. i. cap. v. p. 7, for preceding de- 
 tails. Tomasini, Lib. i. ch. xix. to xxii. for those next following. 
 
RECTOR. 61 
 
 After it was re-opened, the prevalent confusion and dis- 
 tress made it impossible to find men who would add to all 
 their other worldly loss the burden of the rector's office. 
 For about ten years after that date, therefore, says a 
 chronicler of the university 1 , there were no rectors. In 
 1526 there is set down the name of one, and there was 
 one in each of the two succeeding years. In 1529 there 
 was again a rector for the jurisconsults, and another for 
 the artists. The year, therefore, of Cardan's rectorate, 
 1525, is considered blank, and although Jerome, after two 
 ballots, by a majority of one 2 , obtained leave to assume the 
 responsibilities which every wise man declined, he took 
 none of the honours of the office. It entitled him at once 3 
 to the degree of doctor without trouble or expense,, but 
 the degree was shortly afterwards refused to him. I do 
 not think that he was enrolled as a citizen of Padua, and 
 I am sure that he was not admitted at Venice into the 
 equestrian order. He seems, in fact, to have received 
 none of the rector's privileges, and he was accounted 
 nobody by the university, his year of office being called 
 
 1 Papadopoli, vol. i. pp. 95, 96. The list of rectors is there interrupted 
 thus at the year 1508. "Re Gymnastica intermissu ob Cameracense 
 bellum, mox restituta anno MDXV, a restitutione per annos circiter 
 decem Rectoribus caruit Gymnasium." The list is then resumed at the 
 year 1526. 
 
 2 Cardan de Vit. Propr. p. 17. 
 
 3 The succeeding particulars concerning the office of Rector of the 
 Gymnasium at Padua in the sixteenth century, are from Tomasini's 
 first book, ch. xix. to xxii. 
 
62 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 the last of the ten years in which there was no 
 rector. 
 
 We may feel assured, also, that the bishop and the 
 local magistrates, and his brother the town rector, did not 
 come in state to visit the new dignitary, and that he did 
 not go with due solemnity as a true rector ought to go 
 after his election to the cathedral, escorted by two 
 hundred spearmen, accompanied by the officials of the 
 university on horseback, and by fife-players, and whatever 
 else is noble. I even doubt whether they clothed him as a 
 rector should be clothed in summer robes of scarlet silk, 
 and winter robes of purple silk and hung the badge over 
 his back, covered with gold and precious stones. If all these 
 forms were properly gone through by the learned Paduans 
 in honour of the young adventurer who undertook to 
 preside over them, that journey of the desperate young 
 Jerome, clothed in purple and gold, and surrounded by 
 spearmen, to the solemn hearing of high mass, would form 
 as odd a picture of times out of joint as any man could 
 easily imagine. 
 
 That the professors and dignitaries of the university 
 came solemnly to dinner at Cardan's expense I can believe. 
 That the students flocked together to the great inaugural 
 entertainment he was bound to give them, and to any of 
 his other little official dinners, I am sure. Wild dinners 
 they must have been, for Jerome looked back upon the 
 
RECTOR. 63 
 
 year when he was rector as a year of " Sardanapalan life," 
 a blot upon his past for which he had to make atone- 
 ment 1 . And who found the money to support him in his 
 false position who paid for the mock-majesty of Rector 
 Sardanapalus ? The widow at Milan. His mother we 
 do not know how worked for him, and by her self- 
 denial and solicitude he was enabled 2 to sustain the charges 
 that he had so foolishly and recklessly incurred. Perhaps 
 she was proud of his distinction, unsubstantial as it was, 
 but proud or not, she was his mother. Except his 
 mother's help, he had no means of income but the gaming- 
 table 3 . 
 
 Cardan had not at the university a large circle of 
 friends. Except when he sought wild pleasure in a game 
 of chance, or men with whom to sing, he was, in his 
 studies and his recreations, almost a recluse; he thought 
 that few who might be his companions were virtuous, 
 none truly learned, and with a false cynicism he regarded 
 social intercourse as waste of time. Yet he had formed 
 in his youth a friendship, based upon community of tastes 
 
 In chapter xiii. p. 59 of the De Vita Propr. Liber, he speaks of 
 ance due " ut vita Sardanapalece quam anno quo praefui Gymnasio 
 tavino egi, flagitia purgaverim." 
 
 2 " Matris tamen sollicitudine effectum est, ut pondus impensarum, 
 quamvis segre, sustinuerim." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 430. 
 
 3 " Studentium Rector creatus, nihil prius cum haberem, totum tamen 
 illud nihil consumpsi. Nee ullum mihi erat reliquum auxilium, nisi 
 latrunculorum ludus." De ConsoL p. 75. 
 
64 JEROMD CARDAN. 
 
 for dice and music, with one Ambrose Varadeus; after- 
 wards he had found a friend at Pavia in Prosper Mari- 
 non. A pallid youth, Ottaviano Scoto, of Venice, who 
 lost fifty sheets of Cardan's early efforts as an author, was 
 a friend with whom the young student was upon familiar 
 terms of lend and borrow as to books anil money 1 . This 
 was his closest intimacy ; out of it sprang one of the 
 leading events in his after-life. Another of his close 
 friends was Gaspardo Gallearato. Love of pleasure coun- 
 teracted, in a great degree, Jerome's desire to play the 
 misanthrope. In society he had also the satisfaction of 
 rasping any tender point in a discussion. As much 
 through love of argument as malice he perversely advo- 
 cated the opinions that were most distasteful to his com- 
 pany 2 , and loved a single combat of the tongue, in which 
 it appears that he never failed to silence his opponent, for 
 he could bring into play not only a quick wit and a rare 
 amount of ready knowledge, but he could assume also a 
 tone so rude and overbearing that few who had contested 
 with him once would court a second battle. 
 
 Though the natural gifts and acquirements of Cardan 
 were disfigured by harsh feeling towards others and an 
 obtrusive consciousness of self, it is curious to observe how 
 
 1 De Vit. Propr. cap. xv. p. 68. 
 
 2 " Illud inter vitia mea singulare et magnum agnosco, et sequor, ut 
 liberitius nil dicam quam quod audientibus displiceat, atque in hoc, 
 sciens ac volens, persevero." De Vit. Prop. cap. xiii. p. 60. 
 
ESCAPE FROM DROWNING. 65 
 
 in his mind the vanity of the scholar was combined with, 
 and perhaps, indeed, formed but a part of, a most rare 
 candour in self-confession. Desiring and expecting an 
 immortal fame, Jerome was thoroughly determined to 
 enable all posterity to know what manner of man he was. 
 Revelations of himself are to be found scattered through- 
 out the huge mass of his writings : those revelations are 
 collected here into a narrative, and we have had reason 
 already, as we shall have more reason hereafter, to wonder 
 at the unflinching way in which the Milanese philosopher 
 must have performed self- dissection, when he laid bare so 
 much that was corrupt in his own. nature to the public 
 gaze. To nobody was he so merciless as to himself; he 
 scorned the men who, being dark within, study to show a 
 brilliant outside to the world, and going over, as he 
 always did, into a state of bold antagonism, he hung out 
 every one of his misdeeds, and all that he found rotten in 
 himself, for popular inspection. 
 
 Readily confessing cowardice, Cardan tells of a storm 
 on the Lago di Guarda, in which he was nearly drowned. 
 It was in the year in which he was rector, at a time when 
 he was forced by want of funds to make an expedition 
 homeward 1 . He had pushed off into the lake, unwillingly 
 enough, with a few companions, and they had on board 
 
 1 *' Pecuniarum exigendarum causa." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 430. 
 To make work for his mother. 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 the boat some horses. Their sail was torn, they had their 
 mast broken, lost also their rudder and one of their two 
 oars, when night came on. At last they came ashore at 
 Sirmione, when they were all despairing of a rescue, 
 Cardan most of all. They came ashore in good time, for 
 very few minutes afterwards, when they were housed 
 safely in their inn, a fierce burst of the storm arose, which 
 their disabled boat could by no chance have weathered. 
 The iron hinges of the windows in the inn were bent by 
 it. Jerome, who had been out of doors a confessed 
 coward, tells philosophically how all his valour came to 
 him when a fine pike was brought to table, and he supped 
 joyously, though his companions could not eat. The only 
 youth, except Cardan, who had an appetite, was he whose 
 rashness led the party into danger, and whose courage 
 found a safe way out of it 1 . 
 
 But the scholar who was bold over his supper, and 
 cared little for the howling of the wind outside, may 
 have lost something of his boldness when the lights were 
 out and the loud wind at night hindered him from sleep- 
 ing. His philosophy had comprehended studies that 
 gave strength to superstition. Astrologers had predicted 
 from his horoscope that he would not live to be older 
 than forty or forty-five ; and he, believing them, took no 
 pains in the management of his inheritance to reserve any 
 1 De Vit. Propr. cap. xxx. p. ill. 
 
SPIRIT-KNOCKING. 67 
 
 provision for old age. Illusions of the senses, to which 
 he was subject, strengthened his belief in supernatural 
 appearances, and his own nervous, dreamy nature caused 
 him to convert at times the memory of common events 
 into some hazy impression of the wonderful. I have 
 not thought it Avorth while to collect together all the 
 stories of this kind related by Cardan ; but two may serve 
 here as examples. At Pavia, one morning while in bed, 
 and again while dressing, Jerome heard a distinct rap as 
 of a hammer on a wall of his room, by which he knew 
 that he was parted from a chamber in an empty house. 
 At that time died his and his father's friend, Galeazzo 
 Rosso 1 . The disciples of certain impostors who in our 
 own day have revived a belief in spirit-knockings in 
 New York, may be referred to the works of Cardan for 
 a few enunciations of distinct faith in such manifestations. 
 A more curious example will occur hereafter. In the 
 present instance, Cardan, who is never destitute of philo- 
 sophic candour, owns that he was unable to prove any 
 strict correspondence of time between the death of Eosso 
 and the knockings in his room. It is enough for us 
 
 1 De Vit. Propr. cap. xliii. p. 222. I quote the passage for the 
 benefit of Rappists: " Quod mihi accidit dum studerem Papise, ut mane 
 quodam, antequam expergiscerer ictum in muro senserim; vacuum 
 erat habitaculum quod loco illi erat contiguum: et dum expergiscerer, 
 et postea alium, quasi mallei, et quod eadem hora resperi intellexerim 
 obiisse Galeazium de Rubeis amicum singularem, et de quo tarn multa, 
 non id referam in miracula," 
 
 F2 
 
68 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 simply to note how frequently the ear as well as the eye 
 is deluded, when the nervous system is in a condition 
 that appears to have been constant with Cardan. The 
 sounds heard by him at Pavia portended no more than 
 is meant by the flashes of light which sometimes dart 
 before our weaned eyes. 
 
 We do not find greater difficulty in perceiving with 
 how much ease Jerome may in lapse of time have fallen 
 into the belief that a supernatural event marked his first 
 experience in Latin. " Who was the man," he says, 
 u who sold me a Latin Apuleius when I was, I think, 
 about twenty years old, and instantly departed? I bought 
 it without judgment, for its gilded binding ; but the 
 next morning found that I could read it. Almost at the 
 same time I acquired the power of understanding Greek, 
 Latin, French, and Spanish, that is to say, so that I 
 could understand books in those languages, though un- 
 able to speak them and ignorant of their grammar 1 ." 
 There is nothing in this superstitious suggestion incon- 
 sistent with the record left by Cardan of the time spent 
 by him in acquiring languages and studying their gram- 
 mar. In his early college days he bought a Latin 
 Apuleius. He had been superficially practised in Latin 
 by conversation with his father, and the language differs 
 not so greatly from Italian as to make it wonderful that 
 1 De Vit. Propr. p. 225. 
 
THE MAGIC APULEIUS. 69 
 
 any youth of quick and ready wit should find that he 
 could make out at once the general sense of a Latin 
 story. Any shrewd man acquainted with Italian can 
 scramble at first sight through the meaning of a Spa- 
 nish book, and of French, another allied tongue, young 
 Jerome must have picked up a great number of hints 
 from the French armies that overran his native district. 
 
 After the purchase of his Apuleius, the student may 
 have prided himself much on the discovery of the great 
 deal that he could extract from books in these languages, 
 before they had become, or when they had not long 
 become, matters of systematic study. The seller of the 
 Apuleius could be looked back to at last from a distance 
 of time as though he had been one of the legendary 
 beings who come into the market-places to sell magic 
 books, and then are seen no more. The impression would 
 accord well with his superstitious fancy ; he himself would 
 very soon believe it, and could easily let Greek slip in- 
 sensibly into the list of tongues miraculously placed within 
 his power. It is no proof of deliberate untruth that 
 Cardan has put down among the mysteries of life this 
 vague impression in one place, but does not the less 
 candidly relate elsewhere the pains with which he toiled 
 along the usual paths of study. 
 
 Those paths led him, at the beginning of the year 1526, 
 to the attainment of one object of ambition. He was in 
 
70 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 that year laureated Doctor of Medicine. His admission 
 to the dignity was not, however, easily accorded/ Having 
 been presented by his teachers, and proved himself before 
 the bishop orthodox and loyal, it was the duty of Cardan, 
 as of any other candidate, to defend publicly four theses, 
 two of them selected by himself. His opponents in dis- 
 cussion were, as usual, the junior doctors; afterwards he 
 himself, with those by whom he was presented, having 
 withdrawn, his admission or exclusion was determined by 
 a ballot 1 . Jerome had been at first rejected, in spite of 
 his rectorship perhaps even because of it by a compact 
 body of forty-seven dissentients. On account of his birth, 
 disgrace attached to his name; his love of dice, and 
 various irregularities, must certainly have brought him 
 into much disfavour, while his obstinate and disputatious 
 method of asserting his opinions, and his contempt of 
 custom, must have scandalised many of the magnates of 
 the university. He was rejected twice; but when he 
 made his third effort, the adverse voices were reduced to 
 nine 2 , and he was admitted Doctor of Medicine, and re- 
 ceived with due solemnity the open and shut book, the 
 barette, the ring, and the kiss. The open book signified 
 things known to him that he was authorised to teach ; the 
 closed book signified the knowledge that it yet remained 
 
 1 The details concerning the installation of a doctor here given are 
 from Tomasmi, Lib. i. cap. xlvii, pp. 159, 160. 
 
 2 De Vit. Propr. p. 17. 
 
DOCTOR OF MEDICINE. 71 
 
 for him, and was his business, to acquire. The barette 
 was of an ecclesiastical form, and signified that he was 
 consecrated as a priest to science, and by its name 
 (bi-rect), twice right, some thought it also signified that 
 teachers ought to be correct in practice as in theory. By 
 the ring he was espoused to his profession. The kiss was 
 the symbol of the brotherhood to which he was admitted, 
 and the peace and harmony that should prevail among all 
 fellow-labourers in art or science. Then in the cathedral 
 he was ushered by the bedel formally from a seat by his 
 presenters to a seat by the prior, further symbolising that, 
 as a man of learning, he was qualified to sit among the 
 princes of the earth. So Jerome was made a doctor in 
 the famous University of Padua. He was then twenty- 
 five years old. 
 
 Having obtained this qualification. Cardan, without 
 loss of time, proceeded to establish himself in practice. 
 An opening was found for him at Sacco, to which place 
 he went, by the advice and with the help of a zealous 
 friend, a physician of Padua, Francisco Buonafede 1 .'j3uona- 
 fede had been a warm promoter in the university of Car- 
 dan's claim to a degree. He himself held rank at Padua 
 between the years 1524 and 1526 as the first of the two 
 extraordinary professors of the Theory of Medicine, his 
 
 i De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. Lib. iii. p. 431. De Libris Propr. (1557) 
 p. 12. 
 
72 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 colleague being Peter Maynard, of Verona. Buonafede 
 next became the second extraordinary professor of Prac- 
 tical Medicine, in which department he became senior 
 professor in 1539 1 . He was a man of great worth, who 
 felt towards the young student disinterested friendship, for 
 Cardan had not attended any of his lectures 2 . Sacco is a 
 small town, about ten miles from Padua and twenty -five 
 from Venice. 
 
 Battle and murder, plague, pestilence, and famine, de- 
 terred Cardan from residence at Milan. During the six 
 or seven years spent by him at Sacco, his own district 
 was devastated by a succession of those evils that charac- 
 terised in most parts of Europe the low social condition 
 of the age. W hile Jerome pursued his studies at the uni- 
 versity, the slaughter committed by the plague in his own 
 district had been merciless. In 1522 fifty thousand of 
 the Milanese died of the plague in four months. In 1524 
 there had been fierce plague, and by the fortune of war 
 Milan had twice bowed to a new master. In 1526 and 
 1527, while Cardan dwelt at Sacco, Milan suffered under 
 scarcity, that was made more distressing by the added 
 burden of intolerable taxes. In 1528 disease and pesti- 
 lence again broke out, and were less fearful in their 
 ravages only because they had already swept off a large 
 
 1 Gyran. Pat. Riccoboni, p. 23. Tomasini, p. 314. 
 
 2 De Vit. Propr. p. 18. The same authority covers the facts stated 
 in the succeeding paragraph. 
 
OPENING FOR PRACTICE. 73 
 
 part of the population of the district. In 1529 the 
 miserable wars abated, and Cardan made an attempt to 
 fix himself in Milan, for he regarded that town as his 
 proper home. The attempt failed, as will presently be 
 shown, and the adventurer having returned to Sacco, con- 
 tinued to live there during three or four more years. 
 ' At Sacco, in which town he began to reside by way 
 of omen perhaps on his birthday 1 , that is to say, on the 
 24th of September (1526), Cardan established himself in a 
 house of his own, practised his profession, gambled, spent 
 his money, and had no lack of holiday friends. (The belief, 
 founded on his horoscope, that he would die in middle 
 age, and a desponding sense of inability to marry, caused 
 the young physician to care little for the morrow. The 
 consciousness of impotence had weighed upon him for 
 about four years when he went to Sacco, and continued 
 unabated until he was more than thirty years of age 2 . It 
 was the greatest trouble of his life during those years 
 which formed, in other respects, the happiest part of his 
 existence. To feel, or to confess, that he was absolutely 
 happy was not in the nature of Cardan. The conditions 
 necessary to true happiness were absent from his mind. 
 To the child whose character is forming the accidents of 
 
 1 De Libris Propr. (ed. 1557) p. 13. A work entitled " Epidemia " 
 begins thus: " Anno MDXXVI. die xxiv. Septembris qua mihi nata- 
 lis fuit, contuli me in Saccense oppidum." 
 
 2 De Ut. ex Adv. Capiend. Lib. ii. cap. 9. 
 
74 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 outer life are events of real importance, happy or unhappy 
 in themselves, but in the man whose character is formed 
 the outer life is subject to the inner. I have taken pains, 
 as I thought just, to call attention to those incidents of 
 Cardan's youth which had a baneful influence upon his 
 character. The child Jerome it was right to handle ten- 
 derly, but now that he has grown up, and has come out 
 into the world to take his part in it as independent worker, 
 he must run alone, for he is too old to be nursed by a 
 biographer. 
 
 In his own morbid way Cardan tells us that as there are 
 short giants and tall pigmies, so when he says that he 
 spent at Sacco happy days, we must understand them to 
 have been happily wretched 1 . He enjoyed games of 
 chance, indulged his love of music, rambled through a 
 beautiful country, dined and studied indolently. No- 
 body molested him, he spent his money and he had 
 his friends, he was respected, visited by gay Venetian 
 nobles. The magnates of the town associated with him, 
 he kept open house, and men gathered about him, prompt 
 enough to own that Jerome Cardan was a great philoso- 
 pher. This cheerful bit of Cardan's life extended over 
 five years and a half, commencing in September, 1526, 
 and ending in the month of February, 1532, not very 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. xxxi. p. 129. The authority remains the same 
 until there occurs a fresh citation. 
 
LIFE AT SACCO. 75 
 
 many weeks after his marriage. He had enjoyed fairly 
 his student life, but to the years spent at Sacco he 
 looked back often afterwards. They contracted in his 
 memory into a single happy thought, a thought to which, 
 at night, his pleasant dreams frequently led him. 
 
 lie studied while at Sacco indolently, or at any rate 
 his study produced small immediate results. During the 
 six years spent there his mind was at work, but that was 
 a period rather of growth than produce. Cardan himself 
 says, discontentedly, " During all the six years that I 
 practised my art in that town, with great labour I pro- 
 duced but little profit to myself, much less to others." 
 (Yet he was by no means wholly without practice 1 .) " I 
 was impeded by crude thoughts and restless studies, my 
 wit not working smoothly or to good effect 2 ." His writ- 
 ten work during that period, except an essay upon Chei- 
 romancy, an art in which Cardan had more faith than a 
 modern gipsy, was entirely medical. It consisted of 
 three hundred sheets, upon the Method of Healing ; a 
 treatise to the extent of thirty -six sheets, on the epidemic 
 that prevailed in his neighbourhood during the whole 
 time of his residence at Sacco ; a treatise on the Plague. 
 The treatise on the Plague was lost, and there were two 
 other treatises destroyed also by the misdeed of a cat, 
 
 1 De Consolatione, p. 75. 
 
 3 De Libris Propriis. Liber ultimus. Opera, Tom. L p. 97. 
 
76 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 one De Re Venerea, the other upon Spittle 1 . The three 
 hundred sheets upon the Method of Healing, Cardan 
 proposed to arrange in four books, putting into the fourth 
 the remedies for the compound diseases. Of the early 
 works of Cardan, and of the teachings found in them, it 
 will be my duty to speak more at large in the succeeding 
 chapter. 
 
 Two persons Jerome names especially as having been his 
 friends while he lived at Sacco. One of these, Paolo Illirico, 
 was a druggist, with whom he came very naturally into con- 
 tact. His other friend was Gian Maria Mauroceno, a Vene- 
 tian noble 2 . This may or may not be the same senator who 
 was concerned in the disreputable quarrel next to be re- 
 lated, but the hero of it was more probably a nobleman 
 named Thomas Lezun, who is elsewhere mentioned 3 . 
 I shall best illustrate the bold way in which the philoso- 
 pher speaks evil of himself, by putting down the worst 
 part of this tale in his own words. They, however, who 
 are familiar with the personal records that have been left 
 to us by men of the world who lived and acted in the 
 spirit of the sixteenth century, will know that the rude 
 passion of Cardan was very little out of harmony with the 
 coarse temper of the times 4 . 
 
 ' De Sapientia, &c. p. 422. De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 13, 
 where he says of the two spoilt treatises, " ambo hi libri corrupt! sunt 
 urin. felis." The same fact he records again elsewhere. 
 
 3 De Propr. Vita Liber, cap. xv. 3 Liber de Ludo Alese. 
 
 4 1 may suggest a recollection of the Memoirs of Cellini. 
 
FOUL PLAY. 77 
 
 " When I was at Venice," Jerome tells us 1 , "at the 
 festival of the birth of the Virgin, I lost my money at 
 cards, and on the next day what remained; but I was in 
 the house of the man with whom I played. When, 
 therefore, I noticed that he used foul play, I wounded 
 him in the face with a poniard, but slightly. There 
 were present two youths of his household, and two spears 
 were hanging from the rafters, and the house-door was 
 fastened with a key. But when I had taken from him 
 all his money, both his own and mine, having won back 
 early that morning, and sent home by my boy the clothes 
 and rings that I had lost to him on the preceding day, I 
 flung back to him, of my own accord, some of the money, 
 because I saw that he was wounded." Having achieved 
 so much, Cardan pointed his sword at the two servants, 
 and threatened death to them if they did not unlock the 
 door and let him out. Their master, balancing the cost 
 in his own mind, and finding, says Jerome, that what 
 he had now lost was not more than he had previously 
 taken, bade that his assailant should be suffered to go 
 unmolested. The fierce passions awakened in the gambler 
 made such scenes no doubt sufficiently familiar, and the 
 Venetian either was conscious that he had provoked an 
 attack, by being guilty of the charge upon which it was 
 founded, or he was a hospitable, kindly man. He took 
 1 De Vita Propria, cap. xxx. 
 
78 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 the dagger-thrust in friendly part and bore no malice, for 
 there is a sequel to the story. 
 
 On the same day, while Cardan was wandering about, 
 with arms under his clothes, endeavouring to avoid the 
 wrath of the chief magistrate for his assault upon a 
 senator, after dark his feet slipped and he fell into one of 
 the canals. By clinging, in his struggle, to the oars of a 
 passing boat, he obtained rescue at the hands of the 
 rowers, and was dragged on board. He found on board 
 his adversary, with a fillet round his face, who covered 
 him not with reproaches, but with a dry suit of his own 
 clothes. 
 
 After he had dwelt two years in Sacco, Cardan, never 
 strong in health, was attacked by tertian fever, ending, 
 however, on the seventh day. A year afterwards, in 1529, 
 there being a slight remission of the plague and tumult 
 in Milan, Jerome, summoned by letters from his mother 1 , 
 returned to his own town, and there endeavoured to 
 obtain his enrolment among the members of the College 
 of Physicians. But the old stain of illegitimacy clung 
 still to him in the company of those men who had known 
 him as a boy. The respectable body of the physicians of 
 Milan would admit no bastard into their society, and they 
 rejected him, upon a suspicion of illegitimacy based, as 
 its victim tells us, upon the ill-treatment he had expe- 
 1 De Consol. p. 75. 
 
REJECTED AT MILAN. 79 
 
 rienced from his father 1 /' When Cardan is relating facts, 
 the neglect of his son by the geometrician cannot be kept 
 out of sight; when he expresses feelings, however, a senti- 
 ment of filial affection, and a tender recollection of the 
 old man's latest sympathies, prompt nothing but panegyric 
 of the dead. 
 
 His rejection by the physicians of his own town for the 
 reason assigned, inflicted a fresh hurt upon the sickly 
 spirit of the young philosopher. He entreated also, while 
 in Milan, for some satisfactory adjustment of his claims 
 against the powerful Barbiani family 2 ; but from the Bar- 
 biani he obtained no settlement. He found his mother 
 also sullen ; and having experienced in Milan insult and 
 disappointment, with much bodily and mental toil, he 
 went back to Sacco in a hectic state, half convalescent 
 from a desperate complaint. He had been oppressed at 
 Milan with worldly cares, the sense of which was rapidly 
 supplanted by the expectation of death 3 . Cough, ulcers, 
 and foetid expectorations, caused all who were about him 
 
 1 De Consol. p. 75. 2 De Vita Propr. p. 18. 
 
 3 De Propr. Vit. p. 19. De Consol. p. 76, where he writes "In- 
 terim vero cogita quae curse qua3 tristitise animum meura vexare de- 
 buissent. Hinc paupertas maxima, illinc mater flens orbitatem et 
 suam miseram senectutem, turn memoria contumaciae affinium, inju- 
 riae ut rebar medicorum, minae potentis " (t. e. of Count Barbiani, who 
 no doubt had borrowed money of Fazio) " desperatio salutis, nullus 
 amicus. Quiescens indigebam necessariis, laborare non poteram : men- 
 dicare turpissimum erat." On the same pages will be found authority 
 for the succeeding facts . 
 
80 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 for a long time to consider that the life of Cardan was 
 already near its close. He was thus seriously ill for seven 
 months, wanting necessaries. Nevertheless, by the inter- 
 cession, he tells us, of the Blessed Virgin perhaps 
 through abstinence from medicine, for he took none ; per- 
 haps, he hints, because he was reserved for better things 
 Jerome recovered. There were many years to come 
 through which a busy philosophic mind had work to do 
 in the unwholesome chamber of his body. The spirit 
 would have been more healthy had it dwelt in wholesome 
 flesh. In more than one place we are told by Cardan that 
 his mind suffered at times pain so intense that he was glad 
 to relieve it by applying counter-irritation to his body. 
 He would beat his thighs with a switch, bite his left arm, 
 pinch tender bits of skin, would fast, and endeavour by 
 such means to produce a flow of tears, for he was relieved 
 greatly by weeping, but was frequently unable to obtain 
 for himself that method of relief 1 . 
 
 The appearance of Cardan in his manhood well ac- 
 corded with the temper of his mind 2 . He had thin arms 
 and unequal hands, the left hand being elegantly formed 
 with shapely nails, the right hand clumsy and ill-shapeii. 
 His forehead was broad, and there was little hair upon the 
 temples; in later and graver years he wore a skull-cap on 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. vi. p. 30; cap. xiv. pp. 65, 66. 
 
 2 Ibid. cap. v. p. 24; cap. xxi. pp. 84, 85, for the next statements. 
 
ECCENTRICITIES. 81 
 
 a shaven head. His beard was yellow and forked. His 
 gait was clumsy, for he paid little or no heed in walking 
 to the way that lay before him, and his pace and bearing 
 varied with his thoughts. It was now fast, now slow, 
 now upright, now with bowed head, as variable as the 
 gestures of a child. In his speech he was too copious and 
 too deficient in amenity 1 . He was very fond of fishing 2 . 
 He had a taste for cats and dogs and little birds, so that 
 he even names them with history, music, and other things 
 that adorn this transitory scene, placing them in his list 
 between liberty and temperance on the one side, and on the 
 other side the consolation of death, and the equal ebb of 
 time over the happy and the wretched 3 . Among his 
 follies he numbers an inability to part with living things 
 that have been established once under his roof. " I re- 
 tain," he says, " domestics that are not only useless to me, 
 but that I am told also are a scandal to my house; I keep 
 even animals which I have once accepted, goats, lambs, 
 hares, rabbits, storks, so that they pollute me the whole 
 house 4 ." 
 
 A more natural taste in a philosopher, an extravagant 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. p. 59. 2 Ibid. p. 80. 
 
 3 He speaks of quicquam boni quo adornes hanc scenam, and gives 
 for example " musicaB auditus, oculorum lustratio, sermones, fabulae, 
 historiae, libertas, continentia, aviculae, catuli, feles, consolatio mortis, 
 communis temporis transitus miseris cequalis ac beatis, casuum et fortunes" 
 De Propria Vita Lib. cap. xxx. 
 
 4 De Propria Vita Lib. cap. xiii. pp. 60, 61. 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
82 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 taste for the purchase of books, can scarcely be named as a 
 peculiarity 1 . More characteristic, in the same way, of the 
 philosopher whose ruling passion was an eagerness for 
 everlasting fame, was a delight in expensive writing mate- 
 rials, a desire to lavish money on the instruments by use 
 of which his name was to be made immortal 2 . A per- 
 sonal peculiarity which lasted for about two years while 
 he was at Sacco, Jerome regarded as a portent. His 
 skin exhaled a strong odour of sulphur 3 . As a practi- 
 tioner of medicine, Cardan, very wisely indeed, consider- 
 ing the science of the time, trusted more to experiment 
 and observation than to his own wisdom or the knowledge 
 of his art. As a philosopher, apart from dice and cards, 
 he professed and felt tender regard for time, the economy 
 of which he recommended by some such proverb as that 
 many mouthfuls make a bellyful 4 . Not only when pro- 
 fessedly at work, but also when riding, walking, eating, 
 or awake in bed, there were analyses and distillations 
 going on within the laboratory of his brain. He con- 
 sidered it a good and wise thing to court the acquaint- 
 ance of old men, and to seek knowledge in their society. 
 He also, in a spirit of the truest philosophy, considered it 
 
 1 " Profusus in emendis libris." De Vit. Propr. cap. xxv. p. 94. 
 
 2 De Vit. Propr. cap. xviii. p. 80. 
 
 3 De Serum Varietate (ed. Basil. 1557), Lib. viii. cap. 43, p. 316. 
 
 4 " Multa modica faciunt unum satis." De Vit. Propr, cap. xxiii. 
 p. 90. All that is stated in this paragraph depends for authority on the 
 same chapter in the Liber de Vita Propria. 
 
EVIL OMENS. 83 
 
 liis duty to observe everything, and suppose nothing to 
 have been fortuitously made by nature " by which 
 means," he hints, and we can readily believe, " I have be- 
 come richer in knowledge than in money." 
 
 Recovered from his wasting illness, writing, trifling, 
 and enjoying again his position in the little town of Sacco, 
 when he had completed his thirtieth year, towards the 
 end of the year 153 1 1 , the young physician married. Be- 
 fore the event, he tells us 2 , looking back to it from a later 
 date, and colouring his narrative with superstition, before 
 the event a quiet dog howled with unusual pertinacity ; 
 ravens sat upon the house-top and croaked more than they 
 were wont; bundles of sticks broken by a boy emitted 
 sparks of fire. 
 
 At that time Cardan, newly and suddenly 3 relieved 
 from the sense of incompetence to marry by which he 
 had for ten years considered himself doomed to remain 
 single, dreamed of a lovely maiden dressed in white. His 
 
 1 De Vit. Propr. p. 19. 
 
 2 De Vit. Propr. cap. xli. pp. 209, 210: " Cum anno MDXXXI. canis 
 modesta ulularet praeter consuetudinem assidue : corvi insiderent 
 domus vertici crocitantes praeter solitum, puer cum fascicules lignorum 
 frangeret, erumpebant ignis scintillae, duxi uxorem inexpectato." 
 
 3 " Minim dictu," he says (de Lib. Prop. Lib. ult.) " ut flatim e galli 
 naceo factus sim gallus, et ex 6Xa<ria KTJ\(OV" All this part of Car- 
 dan's experience is the theme of a distinct chapter of the second book 
 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. beginning at p. 280 of the edition before cited. 
 
 In it he relates with surprising candour various facts belonging to his 
 student life, especially to the year of his rectorship. 
 
 G2 
 
84 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 sick mind coloured the memory of his dream in later and 
 more miserable years ; the shadow of his future life is 
 therefore thrown over the telling of it. Jerome Cardan 
 dreamed 1 that he was walking in a lovely paradise, fanned 
 by a soft breeze, through scenes such as not Pulci himself 
 could represent by words. It seemed to him, that as he 
 came by the garden porch, he noticed that the gate had 
 been left open. Then looking through the open gateway 
 he saw standing beyond the porch a damsel dressed in 
 white, and he went out to her and put his arms about 
 her neck and kissed her. But after his first kiss there 
 came the gardener, who shut the gate, and would for no 
 persuasion open it again. Then Jerome hung upon the 
 damsel's neck, outside the locked door of his paradise. 
 
 Now it happened that not long after this dream a fire 
 took place in the house of an inhabitant of Sacco, Aldo- 
 bello Bandarini 3 , captain of the Venetian levies in the 
 district of Padua. Cardan, who scarcely knew this man 
 by sight, felt somewhat annoyed when, after he had been 
 burnt out of his own home, he established himself next 
 door to the philosopher, and vexed him with the constant 
 passing to and fro of a rough set of visitors. Aldobello 
 was a man who had created friends and fortune for him- 
 self in a shrewd, genial way. Jerome was learning to en- 
 
 1 De Vita Prop. cap. xxvi. pp. 96, 97.WDe Libr. Propr. Liber ultim. 
 Opera, Tom. L p. 97. 
 
 2 De Vit. Prop. p. 97. 
 
MARRIAGE. 85 
 
 Jure his neighbourhood, when after a very few days he 
 saw from the road a girl standing at the captain's window 
 dressed in white a girl perfectly resembling her of whom 
 he recently had dreamed 1 . What was the girl to him ? 
 he reasoned. How can I marry a girl who is poor, when 
 I myself am poor ? How can I bear to be crushed under 
 the weight of her brothers, sisters, and relations, when I 
 barely know how to support my own existence ? Abduc- 
 tion or seduction are not to be thought of (they were un- 
 happily thoughts only too ready to arise in men who ad- 
 mired women three centuries ago), because her father is a 
 captain who would bear no wrong, and lives next door to 
 me, handy for vengeance. O miserable man, what can 
 I do? 
 
 It is most probable that Cardan did connect Lucia Ban- 
 darini, the damsel whom he first saw dressed in white, 
 with some dream of a white-robed girl that he regarded 
 as an omen, for he was deeply imbued with all the super- 
 stitions that had credit in his age. The dream and the 
 desire for marriage were both most likely begotten of his 
 newly-acquired sense of power. He became eager to 
 
 1 De Vit. Prop. p. 97. " Verum dicebam, quid mihi cum hac puella? 
 Si uxorem ducere voluero pauper nihil habentem et fratrum ac sororum 
 multitudine oppressam, perii, cum vix vel sic sumptum sustinere 
 queam ; si tentem abducere, aut occulte earn opprimere, cum ipse sit 
 oppidanus, non deerunt exploratores, Tribunus Militum non injuriam 
 patietur, et in utroque casu quid mihi agendum erit? O miser . . ." 
 
86 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 marry Lucia, and by his eagerness greatly surprised the 
 captain, who at first believed his offer to be made in jest, 
 knowing what chances of marriage he had up to that 
 time steadily refused 1 . The offer was, however, no jest, 
 and the willing maiden was led to the altar by a willing 
 man 2 , who afterwards, during the short time that he re- 
 mained in Sacco, received all the aid and kindness that 
 her parents could bestow upon him. The dog had 
 howled, the dream had warned, but Jerome Cardan took 
 a wife home notwithstanding. 
 
 1 De Lib. Prop. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 97. 
 
 2 "Duco volentem volens." Ibid. p. 98. 
 
PHYSIC. 87 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WORK OF THE BRAIN. 
 
 MEDICINE, during the last hundred years, has been 
 developing with energy among the sciences, and marking, 
 by an ample ring of newly-acquired knowledge, each 
 year's growth. The study of it may be compared now to 
 a tree planted on congenial soil, for its roots are imbedded 
 in a fair amount of ascertained truth concerning the prin- 
 ciples upon which nature acts. When there was no true 
 natural philosophy, there could be no true science of 
 medicine. Medicine was then an art, in which there 
 was awakened no inherent power of development. Dis- 
 eases are so various in kind, and those of the same kind 
 so various in aspect, that the best empiric, with no thread 
 of principle to follow, is a man lost in a labyrinth. Before 
 anything like a correct knowledge of the ways of nature 
 had supplied the clue, it was in the choice of the physician 
 either to treat his patients in accordance with some theory 
 deduced from the false data furnished by an unsubstantial 
 philosophy, or to argue wholly, as well as he could, from 
 
88 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 
 experience. In the time of Cardan it showed sound dis- 
 cretion in the doctor when he could say as Cardan said, 
 "I have been more aided -by experience than by my own 
 wisdom, or by faith in the power of my art 1 ." At that 
 time the empiric really was the best physician, and a 
 quack doctor, who would use his eyes with conscientious 
 shrewdness, dealt less death not to say more health 
 about him, than the graduate who put trust in scho- 
 lastic theories. 
 
 It was just in those days that the sap began to rise in 
 the philosophy which had put forth leaves once only, and 
 but for that single brief show of vitality had remained, to 
 all appearance, without any change where it was first 
 established by Hippocrates. The science of medicine, 
 for the reason before stated, makes more progress in one 
 month of the present year than it was able to make 
 among all the generations that succeeded each other in 
 the world between the time of the birth of Hippocrates 
 and the publication of the writings of Cardan. During 
 that great interval of twenty centuries there was born 
 only one man, Galen, who did much to advance medical 
 knowledge; and so little had otherwise been gained by 
 the accumulation of experience, that when Cardan began 
 to write, Hippocrates and Galen were the undisputed 
 teachers of all that was held to be sound practice in 
 i De Vita Prop. cap. xxv. 
 
AUTHORITY. 89 
 
 medicine and surgery./ Nothing was at the fingers' ends 
 of doctors that was not found in the tomes of those two 
 ancient worthies, if we except " the dust and cobwebs of 
 scholastic theories that had collected on their surface in 
 the lapse of time. There were indeed other writers whom 
 physicians studied, Oribasius, Aetius, Paulus ^Egineta; 
 among the Arabs, Avicenna, and Averroes, Rhases, and 
 others. But these, so far as they were trustworthy, were 
 little more than cups filled from the pure spring of Hip- 
 pocrates, or the broad pool of Galen. As for the Romans, 
 they had no physicians of their own worth following. 
 Celsus was only useful and in that sense very useful 
 to physicians of Europe in ' the sixteenth century, as a 
 repertory of medical Latin, which enabled them to write 
 their treatises correctly, and apply to diseases and re- 
 medies of which they read in Greek, the proper Latin 
 names in their own volumes. 
 
 It was in the lifetime of Cardan that the sap began to 
 find its way into the barren stems of many sciences. The 
 spirit of inquiry that begot the reformation was apparent 
 also in the fields and woods, and by the sick beds of the 
 people. Out of the midst of the inert mass of philo- 
 sophers that formed the Catholic majority in science, 
 there came not a small number of independent men who 
 boldly scrutinised the wisdom of the past, and diligently 
 sought new indications for the future. Cardan was one 
 
90 JEKOME CARDAN. 
 
 of these; perhaps the cleverest, but not the best of them. 
 Though he worked for the future, he was not before his 
 time. It was said after his death, probably with truth, 
 that no other man of his day could have left behind him 
 works showing an intimate acquaintance with so many 
 subjects 1 . He was one of the few men who can be at 
 once versatile and profound. He sounded new depths in 
 a great many sciences, brought wit into the service of the 
 dullest themes, dashed wonderful episodes into abstruse 
 treatises upon arithmetic, and left behind him in his 
 writings proofs of a wider knowledge and a more brilliant 
 genius than usually went in those days to the making of a 
 scholar's reputation. Jerome, however, had not a whole 
 mind, and the sick part of him mingled its promptings 
 with the sound in all his writings. To any one now 
 reading through the great pile of his works, the intellect 
 of the uneasy philosopher might readily suggest the 
 image of a magnificent moth half-released from the state 
 
 1 A Milanese physician, writing of the Milanese College the same 
 that had once persecuted Cardan not very long after Cardan's death, 
 scarcely exaggerated the opinion then held in speaking of him : " Tan- 
 quam ad omne scientiarum genus natus, inter omnes sui et antiqui 
 temporis profitentes medicos eminentissimus, verum Medicuiae lumen." 
 Joan. Bapt. Silvatico, Liber de Coll. Mediol. Med. (1607) cap. xx. 
 Naudseus is still more emphatic, and considers Cardan to have excelled 
 Aristotle in variety and depth of knowledge. Cardan himself (living 
 before Dr. Johnson's time) was not ashamed to boast that he had 
 written more than he had read, and that he had taught more than he 
 had learnt. 
 
AUTHORSHIP. 91 
 
 of chrysalis, its head and feet and front wings working 
 out towards free space and upper air, but all the rest 
 bound by some morbid adhesion to its dusky shell. 
 
 The publications issued by a scholar form, of course, 
 so many chapters in his life, but anything like a full 
 discussion of the writings of Cardan, which, in the col- 
 lected edition, fill ten densely printed folios with matter 
 that is almost everywhere curious and interesting, would 
 occupy more space than could be allowed to it in this 
 biography. I shall condense, therefore, into the present 
 chapter what I wish to say about his early works, in- 
 cluding everything written previous to his marriage. 
 Up to that time nothing had been printed. In speaking 
 of these, and afterwards in speaking of maturer, better 
 works, I shall endeavour to dwell only upon those points 
 which elucidate his character, or stand out as facts that 
 belong fairly to the story of his life. Since the great 
 triumphs of Jerome's genius were not achieved in boy- 
 hood or in youth, it is not necessary to say very much 
 about those first fruits of his intellect to which this 
 chapter is devoted. 
 
 They have been named already. The treatises, written 
 almost in boyhood, on the Earning of Immortality, and 
 upon the True Distances of Objects, do not remain 
 to us. Cardan himself tells us " they were juvenile 
 attempts, and rather signs of disposition than the fruits 
 
92 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 of knowledge or of study 1 ." The early treatise upon 
 gambling, written in Italian, is represented by a Latin 
 disquisition, published at a later date, on dice and cards 2 . 
 This is recast from the early work, and has few traces of 
 maturity about it. It contains much curious minute 
 information about the games played in those days, and 
 the tricks of gamblers, good to be consulted by all writers 
 on the history of such amusements. The book is, at the 
 same time, very characteristic of the writer's temper. 
 Gambler himself, and writing in that avowed character a 
 treatise on his favourite amusement, Jerome takes no pains 
 to defend his reputation, or to justify a love of dice. 
 He lays it down coolly and philosophically, as one of his 
 first axioms, that dice and cards ought to be played for 
 money, since if there be no stake to win there is nothing 
 to mitigate the fact that time is to be lost 3 . To play at 
 dice and cards for amusement purely, he says, when there 
 are books, music, conversation, and so many wiser and 
 better ways of passing time agreeably, is the part only 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis. Liber ultimus. Opera, Tom. i. p. 97. "Fuerant 
 enim conatus juveniles: et indolis potius indicia, quam fructus scientiae 
 aut studiorum." 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis (1557), p. 11. 
 
 3 " Impositus est tamen modus, circa pecuniae quantitatem, alias certe 
 nunquam ludere licet: quod quam sumunt excusationem de leniendo 
 taedio temporis, utilius id fiat lectionibus lepidis, aut narrationibus 
 fabularum vel historiarum, vel artificiis quibusdam pulchris nee labo- 
 riosis ; inter quae etiam lyra, vel cheli pulsare, aut canere, carminaque 
 componere, utilius fuerit. . . . Lib. de Ludo Alese, cap. ii. 
 
THE GAMBLER'S MANUAL. 93 
 
 of an empty man. Dice and card-playing in a house set 
 a bad example to children and servants; and people who 
 are very respectable, says Jerome, ought not to be seen 
 at the gambling-table. To take part in games of chance 
 sullies also especially the dignity of a physician 1 . 
 
 There is more than ordinary candour in this way of 
 opening the subject, and in the recommendation that 
 decent people should gamble in private, and then only 
 with their equals in position and in wealth 1 . There is a 
 chapter occupied in the setting forth, as upon a balance- 
 sheet, of the good and bad sides of the dice-player's ex- 
 perience 3 . In his favour, it is said : At the gaming-table 
 he forgets his cares, and can return from it with a prompt 
 spirit to the work over which his mind may happen to 
 have flagged. There, also, his friends open their souls 
 to him unwittingly, their passions and propensities break 
 out over the changes of the game, and he can see them 
 and discriminate between them as they are. The gaming- 
 table also is, for the time, as true a leveller as death; 
 over it men have hailed princes as companions, acquired 
 their favour, and obtained promotion in the state. Cardan 
 himself did in this way become acquainted with a prince 3 . 
 Then, however, turning to the dark side of the picture, 
 the philosopher dilates upon the great preponderance of 
 
 1 Liber de Ludo Alese, cap. iii. 2 Ibid. cap. iv. 
 
 3 " Quo etiam Francisco Sfortiaa Mediolani principi innotui et nobi- 
 liura amicitiam multorum mihicomparavi." DeVit.Propr.cap.xiii.p. 62. 
 
94 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 evil that he finds, and sums up by saying that he writes 
 a treatise upon gambling, though it is a bad thing, because 
 it had become (as, indeed, in those days it almost had 
 become upon all ground much afflicted by the tread of 
 armies) universal and, as it were, natural to man. He 
 writes of it, therefore, as a physician writes of an in- 
 curable disease, not praising it, but showing how to make 
 the best of the affliction 1 . 
 
 Then arises a discussion of the furniture of dice-playing 
 namely, the tables, and the bone marked upon four 
 sides, or the cube marked upon six. Then follows a 
 chapter upon the casting with one, two, and three dice, 
 pointing out probabilities. The rest of the treatise in- 
 cludes a consideration of the morals of dice and the 
 rules of honour among gamblers, as, says Cardan, there 
 are laws also among thieves 2 . It contains also an account 
 of all games played with French, Spanish, German, and 
 Italian cards, including a description of the cards then 
 commonly in use. Cheating appears to have been more 
 common, as it was more easy, with cards than with dice. 
 Among the tricks that are exposed is one that consisted 
 
 1 " Etsi tota Alea mala esset cum tamen ob ludentium multitudinem 
 quasi naturalis sit ; ob id etiam velut de insanabilibus morbis a Medico 
 tractandum fuit; namque in omne malo est minimum malum, in omni 
 dedeco minimum dedecus, in omni flagitio minimum flagitium." Lib. 
 de Ludo Aleec, cap. v. 
 
 2 "Sunt enim in malis rebus suse leges; velut et latromim et pira- 
 toruncu" Ibid. cap. xxix. 
 
PALMISTRY. 95 
 
 in soaping the back of some important card, so that the 
 others should slip from it when it was thrown down 
 among them. Thomas Lezun, a Venetian patrician, 
 used to cheat Cardan with soaped cards. We may sup- 
 pose that when a trick of that kind could be practised 
 the cards used were not particularly clean. Nor should 
 we connect with them any associations drawn from the 
 modern whist-table : in most games played in the time of 
 Cardan, cards were used only as paper-dice. This trea- 
 tise closes with a little chapter upon the use of dice 
 among the ancients. 
 
 Of the works already named as having been written by 
 Jerome during the six or seven years of his life in Sacco, 
 there remain two, both of which underwent at a later 
 period of their author's life a great deal of revision. One 
 of them is the little treatise upon Cheiromancy, which, 
 afterwards was published as a chapter in a philosophic 
 work of great extent, the labour of maturer years. In his 
 maturest years, however, Cardan never escaped from the 
 hold of superstition. Stars and dreams were always por- 
 tents to him, and he never ceased to believe that there 
 was a portentous science to be studied on the palm of a 
 man's hand. The hand, he said, is the instrument of the 
 body, as the tongue is of the mind 1 . He therefore studied 
 
 1 De Kerum Varietate Libri xvii. (Basil. 1557) Lib, xv, cap. Lxxix. 
 p, 557, 
 
96 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 all that lie found written upon Cheiromancy, and his 
 treatise on the subject is no more than a dull abstract of 
 his studies. He gives, for example, a woodcut-picture of 
 an outspread hand, with the name of eacli part inscribed 
 on it, according to the Cheiromantic nomenclature. Above 
 the joint of the hand at the wrist there is the carpus 1 . 
 The side of the hand against which the thumb rests is 
 the thenar. The other side, between the little finger and 
 the wrist, is called the hypothenar. . The ball of the 
 thumb is entitled stethos. The joints of each finger from 
 the hand upwards are called procondyle, condyle, and 
 metacondyle. Then there is assigned to each finger a 
 planet, Cheiromancy being, in fact, a sister science with 
 Astrology. The thumb and stethos belong to Mars : on 
 them we read of violence or strength, of fire or hostile ac- 
 cidents in life ; there also we read of rough attachments, 
 similar to that which inclined Mars to Venus. It is a 
 curious fact to note how intimately a belief in the old 
 heathen mythology was blended with those pseudo- 
 sciences, astrology and cheiromancy, and in that form 
 could be fostered even by grave Christians and dignitaries 
 of the Church of Rome. The index finger belongs to 
 Jove: upon it we read of priesthood, honours, magis- 
 tracy. Middle fingers are all subject to Saturn : Saturn 
 writes on them dark hints of prisons, fevers, poisons, fear, 
 1 De Ker, Variet, pp, 558564, 
 
PALMISTRY. 97 
 
 grief, profound meditation, occult studies, toil without re- 
 ward. The ring finger is the Sun's: on it we read of 
 high honour, power, and the favour of kings. Venus 
 holds man by the little finger : upon it she writes of 
 wives and sons and other pleasant things that suit her 
 humour. The Moon rules over the hypothenar: upon 
 that she tells of shipwrecks, suffocations, and submersions. 
 In the next place, concerning lines, the line within the 
 hand, bounding the ball of the thumb, is the line of life, 
 of the heart, and of the sun. The line across the middle 
 of the hand is the line of the brain and of the moon. 
 There is a line running sometimes from the carpus to the 
 middle finger, called the sister to the line of life, and they 
 who have it lead lives full of labour and pain. It would 
 be weary work to multiply the details of so dull a science. 
 Very few more words upon it will suffice. 
 
 They who are to die early have the lines upon their 
 hands indistinct and intersected in a great many places. 
 They will be happiest whose lines are deep, and coloured, 
 and straight in their course, or running into such regular 
 forms as stars, crosses, squares, or parallels. New lines 
 found tending to the right mean new successes, those 
 that incline to the left forebode reverses. Fine lines like 
 hairs denote bad luck. This science also takes great 
 notice of the nails, drawing conclusions from the number 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 and the colour of the spots upon them. All these things, 
 throughout his life, Cardan, a great philosopher, reli- 
 giously believed 1 . 
 
 He was not daunted by this problem : In children on 
 account of the softness of the skin, and in old age on 
 account of its dryness, lines are most abundant. How 
 then can lines denote the course of life when they abound 
 most in the people who do nothing? To this objection 
 Jerome was content to give the answer properly appointed 
 to be given by the teachers of the Cheiromantic creed 2 . 
 In children the lines signify the future, in old men they 
 signify the past ; in each they tell of a whole life. In the 
 mature hand, also, it is convenient to know that there are 
 
 1 After speaking of some of the doctrines of Bodinus, who was born 
 thirty years later than Cardan, Dugaid Stewart says : " Notwithstand- 
 ing these wise and enlightened maxims, it must be owned, on the other 
 hand, that Bodin has indulged himself in various speculations, which 
 would expose a writer of the present times to the imputation of 
 insanity. ... In contemplating the characters of the eminent persons 
 who appeared about this era, nothing is more interesting and in- 
 structive than to remark the astonishing combination in the same 
 minds of the highest intellectual endowments with the most deplorable 
 aberrations of the understanding; and even, in numberless instances, 
 with the most childish superstitions of the multitude." Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica. Eighth edition. Vol. i. pp. 28, 29. The life and writings of 
 Cardan are an emphatic illustration of this fact. Speaking very 
 roughly, we may even say that where Cardan was thought mad by 
 his neighbours, we should think him wise; and where his neighbours 
 thought him wise, we think him mad. 
 
 2 De Rer. Variet, p. 561. 
 
HIPPOCKATES. 99 
 
 many lines, commonly ill-defined as if vanishing that 
 tell of past events. 
 
 The work next to be mentioned shows the intellect of 
 the superstitious philosopher from a better point of view. 
 It is the treatise on the Differing of Doctors. 
 
 Many things in the writings of Cardan make it evident 
 that he had studied Galen to good purpose, and it is not 
 unlikely that it pleased him Secretly to feel that he him- 
 self resembled Galen in a good many particukrs. Hip- 
 pocrates stood on his own pedestal, and was a great man 
 by himself. The old father of Medicine, contemporary 
 with the wisest men of Greece younger than Socrates, 
 but at the same time an older man than Plato merited 
 his crown of gold from the Athenians and his dinner in 
 the Prytaneium, for he was morally and intellectually 
 great. He wrote simply, tersely, royally as a king issu- 
 ing wealth from his own mint, not as a rich man pouring 
 out his hoard of coins, with all manner of kings' heads 
 and dates upon them. He was a fearless old fellow who 
 would not move one step for the enemies of Greece. He 
 was a true-hearted physician, who gathered men about 
 him in a grand spirit of kindliness. He visited the poor 
 without reward, loved knowledge for its own sake, bound 
 his disciples by a vow to mutual courtesy, to a religious 
 keeping of all secrets trusted by sick people to their 
 
 H2 
 
100 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 charge, and enforced with all his might a code of prac- 
 tice that became a noble calling. To the end of the 
 world, physicians will appreciate their fine-hearted old 
 father, and be proud to* think themselves the children of 
 Hippocrates. But Galen was a man of smaller stature, 
 living at a time when it was not so easy to be noble. 
 He was physician to five Roman emperors, and one of 
 them was Commodus. He commented upon Hippocrates, 
 and wrote much ; not in the clear, royal style, but with 
 diffuseness. Like Cardan, Galen had a passionate mother; 
 like Cardan, he was persecuted, for he could with diffi- 
 culty keep his ground in Rome 'against the sects in 
 medicine whose theories he laboured to demolish; and 
 the parallel holds good, though Galen became great 
 in his day, and was sought by kings. Like Cardan, 
 again, Galen was deficient in personal courage, and su- 
 perstitious, having much belief in dreams and omens. 
 Galen and Cardan were both boasters, and both men 
 who really rose above the level of the intellect around 
 them. Galen fought against the mere scholastic sects 
 into which the doctors had degenerated and divided, the 
 dogmatics, the empirics, the methodics, the episynthetics, 
 the pneumatics, the eclectics, and especially attacked 
 them in a lost book, of which the title is preserved, De 
 Empiricorum Contradictis, the Differings of the Em- 
 pirics. Cardan found the physicians in his day straying 
 
GALEN. 101 
 
 away from the truth, and losing the best sense of the 
 teaching of Hippocrates, as Galen had restored and ampli- 
 fied it. The first attempt, therefore, of Cardan, as a medi- 
 cal author, made in direct imitation of Galen, was a work 
 entitled Contradicentia Medicorum, on that wide sub- 
 ject the Differings of Doctors. The titles of some other of 
 Cardan's works are borrowed from the example of Galen. 
 The list of resemblances is scarcely made complete, when 
 I add that the style of Galen, brilliant, pompous, and dif- 
 fuse, would not pair badly with the style of Cardan, though 
 Cardan, equally diffuse, wrote with less rhetoric and more 
 true genius. Galen was also a prominent example of pro- 
 lific authorship, Cardan himself being no mean proficient 
 in the art of bookmaking. In that respect, however, he was 
 utterly eclipsed by the sage of Pergamus, since it is said of 
 Galen that he wrote seven hundred and fifty books ; five 
 hundred on medicine, and the rest on geometry, phi- 
 losophy, logic, and grammar. Galen wrote two treatises 
 especially upon the books that he had written, and the 
 order in which they were to be taken. Those treatises 
 he called " De Libris Propriis." Cardan wrote three works 
 of precisely the same kind, and gave them the same title. 
 While noting facts like these, it is to be remembered 
 that the imitation of old forms was, in Jerome's time, the 
 highest object of a great deal of the scholarship of Europe, 
 and that Cardan shared many points of the preceding 
 
102 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 parallel with a large body of the teachers in his day. He 
 differed from the herd of doctors, however, very greatly, 
 inasmuch as he poured into the old jars not dregs col- 
 lected from all quarters, but fresh oil of his own pressing. 
 His first work, the Contradicentia Medicorum, was very 
 much expanded afterwards, and published as a massive 
 treatise, of which it will be requisite to speak in a succeed- 
 ing chapter. It will be quite sufficient, therefore, now to 
 state the plan of it, since that was conceived even in its 
 author's days of pupilage. Hippocrates, said Cardan 1 , had 
 become obscure through lapse' of time and the conciseness 
 of his style. Galen " of whom there remains less 
 than we could wish, but more than we could well be- 
 lieve it possible for one man to have written" Galen, 
 in works written at different periods, contradicted himself 
 much and often. By the Arabians all his errors had been 
 copied. Aetius was inconsistent, following at once both 
 Galen and the men whom Galen combated, and never 
 giving reasons for his dicta. Oribasius was useless. In 
 fact, there was only Galen, with his errors and his obso- 
 lete passages, upon whom a hope of useful information 
 could be built. His design, therefore, was to travel steadily 
 through the medical doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen, 
 to note all contradictions of themselves or of each other, 
 and to consult with the same view the works of all the 
 1 Contradie. Medicorum. In preface. 
 
DIFFERINGS OF DOCTORS. 103 
 
 leading medical authorities. Then he proposed to pre- 
 sent to the medical world of his own day, in a series of 
 paragraphs, all the chief points on which conflicting senti- 
 ments had been expressed ; to cite in each instance the 
 differing opinions, in order that a judgment might more 
 easily be formed as to the balance of authority. He him- 
 self always undertook to hazard a decision, testing the 
 judgment not only of the Prince of Physicians, but of 
 others ; in every case following, as his guide, Keason rather 
 than Authority. He would confirm or dispute past opi- 
 nions, and not shrink from the addition to them, now and 
 then, of views more properly his own. The reader was 
 thus also to be left fully provided with the materials re- 
 quired for independent judgment. The value of a work 
 of this kind, really well done, would of course be great, 
 and many sheets had been written in prosecution of the 
 plan when Jerome took a wife at Sacco. 
 
104 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE STORY OP ALDOBELLO BANDAEINI ILLS OF FORTUNE OF THE 
 PORTENT THAT AFFLICTED CARDAN AT THE BAPTISM OF HIS ELDEST 
 SON HUNGER IN GALLARATE POVERTY IN MILAN. 
 
 JEROME CARDAN duly reflected before marriage upon 
 the dead weight of his wife's relations, that might, per- 
 haps, form not one of the lightest burdens of the married 
 state. Lucia was the eldest of four sisters, and she had 
 three brothers, all sons and daughters of Aldobello Ban- 
 darini and his wife ThaddaeaV At the time of the 
 marriage, however, it was much more likely that Jerome 
 would depend now and then for help upon the Bandarini 
 family, than that the Bandarini should need or, if need- 
 ing, ever be able to get help from him. Aldobello, the 
 father-in-law, was a man in the prime of life, genial and 
 shrewd, a man who knew not only how to win to himself 
 friends, but also how to use them profitably. A full 
 sketch of his career is left to us by Cardan, who, speaking 
 
 The succeeding sketch of the career of Aldobello follows the very 
 full narrative given by Cardan in De Ut, ex Adv, Cap. Lib, iii. 
 pp. 457466. 
 
STORY OF ALDOBELLO BANDARINI. 105 
 
 rather as a philosopher than as a son-in-law, begins his story 
 very much in the manner of a physician of the present day 
 who has a case to state, and defines his subject as 
 " Aldobello dei Bandarini, of the town of Sacco, aged 
 about thirty-five, hairy over his whole body, short, round 
 limbed, and of a dusky colour," &c. This man began 
 life as a soldier, and made a little money in the wars that 
 is to say, being of an acquisitive disposition, he had laid by 
 three or four hundred crowns of gold. Retiring then 
 from military life, he built an inn at Sacco, and dwelt in 
 it with his wife Thadda3a and his seven children. Mine 
 host soon made himself known in Sacco as a sociable, 
 friendly fellow. In his domestic management he was a 
 strict economist : nothing was in his eyes too small to be 
 saved. He bought in times of cheapness stores that he 
 laid by to sell in times of dearth ; he paid cash for his 
 purchases when he could obtain any advantage by so 
 doing, and wherever it was gain to him to run a bill up and 
 allow it to remain unpaid for a time, so he did. He not 
 only received guests as an innkeeper, but also provided 
 dinners and suppers for private parties in the town ; at 
 such entertainments, whatever was to be consumed he sold ; 
 whatever was to be looked at only, he let out on hire ; 
 what he himself did not possess, if it was required he 
 would contrive to borrow and sub-lend. To the great 
 men of the town he was indispensable : whether they 
 
106 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 
 feasted or gambled, there was the friendly, jovial Banda- 
 rini ready to supply their wants ; and so much did he 
 ingratiate himself among them, that even clothes and 
 worthier gifts were often pressed upon him by his noble 
 friends. Still more complete, however, was the hold 
 which the bland soldier-host maintained upon the good- 
 will of the gentle sex. He often busied himself in de- 
 fending the causes of accused people before the magis- 
 trates, in obtaining by his influence exemption from some 
 public burden for one friend or another, and for such 
 services the gratitude of the women streamed upon him 
 in a shower of substantial gifts, which he accepted without 
 difficulty. Kind messages were constantly accompanying 
 to his door consignments of wine, meal, geese, chickens, 
 pigeons, barley, pigs, or cheese, so that he could almost 
 have kept his family upon the goodwill-offerings supplied 
 by his fair neighbours. 
 
 At one time, in the hope of making profit from it, 
 Aldobello had, among other things, stored up a consi- 
 derable heap of flax. To this heap, Mark, his eldest boy, 
 by accident set fire ; the inn was burnt, and with it all the 
 wealth of its bland master. Bandarini, without showing 
 any anger, bit his nail ; he did not so much as utter a 
 curse, but thanked God that his children were all safe. 
 After the fire was out, he searched for any little things 
 that might possibly be snatched out of the wreck ; friends 
 
STORY OF ALDOBELLO BANDARINI. 107 
 
 also flocked to him with presents in their hands, and hos- 
 pitable homes provided bed and board for all his chil- 
 dren. There was no capital wherewith to build another 
 inn, but there was worldly wit in ample store, and Aldo- 
 bello set to work at once over the rebuilding of his for- 
 tunes. 
 
 The Duke of Ferrara was then contemplating the 
 occupation of a part of the territory of Padua called the 
 Polesino de Rovigo. To the senators of the Republic of 
 Venice an offer was made by a good citizen, who undertook 
 to aid in the protection of the commonwealth by training 
 gratuitously two hundred men belonging to the town and 
 neighbourhood of Sacco in the art of war. The citizen 
 asked only that the senate would, if it accepted his pro- 
 posal, grant two hundred harquebuses to the two hundred 
 volunteers. The rumour of war was loud, the enemy 
 was near at hand, and there were no fortresses to check 
 his progress if he made hostile advance. The offer was 
 opportune ; the proposer of it, a certain Aldobello Ban- 
 darini, had seen service as a soldier, and he had many 
 friends of mark who offered to be surety for his loyalty, 
 lauded his character, and urged his suit. He did not ask 
 pay for his services in drilling the recruits ; the cost of 
 harquebuses would be inconsiderable. The burnt-out 
 innkeeper therefore obtained the authority of the senate 
 to levy in his own neighbourhood two hundred recruits. 
 
108 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 It was easy to find that number of rustics, or even of 
 friends in better circumstances, glad to go out to drill 
 with Aldobello, and to earn the legal right of carrying 
 about the harquebuses sent from Venice. Aldobello set 
 to work upon his little army. Bearing some ridicule at 
 first, by diligent devotion of spare hours and holidays to 
 the forming of lines, squares, and wedges, he had in a 
 month or two made very obvious progress towards the 
 formation of a troop reasonably disciplined. The volun- 
 teers of Sacco bought for themselves drums, and further- 
 more set up a flag. Doubtless they would also have done 
 deeds of daring in the presence of the enemy, but most 
 unluckily for them the murmurs of approaching war 
 subsided. 
 
 If there was no money to be made out of the Venetian 
 republic as captain of a band in actual camp service, the 
 prudent Aldobello saw that he was altogether in a false 
 position ; he must make a further move towards the resto- 
 ration of his fortunes. He therefore went to Venice, and 
 having demonstrated the usefulness of the labour in which 
 he had- been engaged, petitioned that the senate would 
 permit him to go out with his two hundred men as mer- 
 cenaries, hiring their services to foreign princes, but 
 always bound and ready at a call to return and do what- 
 ever duty was required for the Venetians. To make this 
 request, he said, he was compelled by poverty, not urged 
 
STORY OF ALDOBELLO BANDARINI. 109 
 
 by avarice. Then there arose again the cloud of friends 
 who trumpeted his value; and the senate being led justly 
 to believe that the petitioner was a servant whose depar- 
 ture would inflict a loss upon the state, Bandarini was re- 
 quested to remain in Sacco, and to receive payment for 
 his labours with a monthly stipend. Immunities were 
 also granted to his soldiers, and the world of the shrewd 
 soldier-host began to brighten. 
 
 But at that stage of his progress enmities arose against 
 him. Some jealous men detested the activity with 
 which he pushed his fortunes; many were annoyed at 
 him for taking labourers from steady tillage of the soil, 
 marching them about to sound of drum in squares and 
 wedges, and infecting them with military airs. Again, 
 there was the sister of an important personage in Sacco 
 deeply enamoured of the gallant captain, and she, by her 
 misplaced tenderness, brought down upon his head the 
 wrath of her relations. A tide of accusations suddenly set 
 in towards Venice. The accusers, evidently knowing his 
 weak point, complained to the senate that Aldobello 
 Bandarini had employed the vantage-ground of his posi- 
 tion for the extortion of substantial gifts and money from 
 the people ; that he was designing also to sell the harque- 
 buses entrusted to him for the use of his troop, and to de- 
 camp with the money so obtained. Complaints of this 
 kind were urged so strenuously, that they led to the 
 
110 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 arrest of Aldobello, who was carried off one day in 
 chains. 
 
 Again he was enveloped in the cloud of friends, and 
 his exculpation was by them and by himself made so 
 complete, that he came back to his own neighbourhood 
 taller than ever. He was supplied with three hundred 
 more harquebuses, and authorised to raise three hundred 
 more recruits from volunteers in and about Sacco. He 
 thus became a captain of five hundred ; and so well did he 
 perform his work with these, so earnestly did he enforce 
 the extended adoption of his plan in other districts, that 
 in no very long time Aldobello Bandarini was able to 
 boast that he had been the founder of a complete militia 
 system spread over the whole territory of Venice, and 
 adopted from the Venetian pattern in adjacent and even 
 in some distant states. He himself enjoyed the post of 
 Tribune of the Militia, and a threefold increase of his 
 monthly pay. 
 
 Having attained this point in his career, he was again 
 burnt out of his abode, by the fire to which reference has 
 been made in a preceding chapter. The business of the 
 tribunate required a large house, and one night a boy 
 asleep in a weaver's shop belonging to the premises 
 upset a pan of burning charcoal with his foot. A confla- 
 gration was the consequence, destroying the whole house, 
 and for a long time threatening to devour also the houses 
 
JEROME'S FATHER-IN-LAW. Ill 
 
 in the neighbourhood. At this fire Cardan was present ; 
 out of it the members of the tribune's family were 
 rescued with much difficulty, not indeed without some 
 shock to the modesty of the youngest daughter. Lucia 
 was the eldest of the daughters, and may then, perhaps, 
 have been first seen by her future husband. An impres- 
 sion, otherwise fleeting, then made upon Jerome, may 
 have been revived subsequently in his vision of the white- 
 robed maiden who invited him to pass beyond the gates 
 of paradise. Dream- figures are, however, unsubstantial, 
 and resemblances between them and the daylight aspects 
 of real flesh and blood are matters rather for the fancy 
 than the judgment to lay stress upon. 
 
 By the second fire, the tribune of course was not 
 ruined. His friends again came forward. Houses were 
 again open for the reception of his children while he 
 established himself in new premises, next door to the 
 dwelling of the young physician and philosopher. Re- 
 presentations made at Venice procured from the senate a 
 liberal order that Aldobello should be compensated for 
 his loss by an immediate grant of six months' pay. Very 
 soon afterwards his new neighbour, the doctor, courted 
 Lucia, and the tribune, whose career in Sacco just nar- 
 rated had all been comprised in the short space of seven' 
 years, consented to the wedding. 
 
 Marriage is, in a poor philosopher, a bold act. Jerome, 
 
112 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 when he married the young girl 1 Lucia Bandarini, was 
 extremely poor, yet because he had made a vow upon 
 the subject, he refused to take with her the customary 
 dowry 3 . He was very poor, and there was no hope that 
 in Sacco he would ever become richer, for Sacco was but 
 a small town, and could ill support a doctor of medicine, 
 even though he were dull, bland, and formal enough to 
 impress everybody with a notion of his talent and re- 
 spectability. Jerome had friends at Sacco, but he had 
 spent all his available substance in their company, and 
 since, in spite of the ravens on his house-top and the 
 howling dog under his window, he had taken upon him- 
 self the responsibilities of marriage, it was necessary that 
 he should obtain an income upon which the expenses 
 that would certainly ensue could be supported. 
 
 In what town should he battle for his bread, if not in 
 Milan ? There he was at home; there his relations were, 
 litigious and hostile certainly ; there his friends ought to 
 be ; there only he was not a stranger. The friendship of 
 the physician Buonafide had suggested Sacco to the 
 young Cardan, when the physicians of his own town 
 would not admit him to participation of their privileges. 
 From Sacco he had already made one descent upon the 
 ' capital, where he sought in vain, as we have seen, to 
 
 1 " Duxi uxorem adolescentulam." De Ut. ex Adv. Capiend. p. 431. 
 3 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 431 and p. 452. 
 
DEPARTURE FROM SACCO. 113 
 
 overcome the hostility of the college and secure a footing 
 for himself. He found then also his mother miserable 
 and morose, lamenting her widowhood, and sulking over 
 the discomforts she endured. Fatigue and disappoint- 
 ment brought him on that occasion to the gates of death. 
 After seven months of deadly sickness, he had returned 
 with broken health and broken hopes to Sacco. Now, 
 however, he would try Milan again. The college could 
 not be for ever obdurate, and he might live down the 
 objection to his birth. Very soon after their marriage, 
 therefore, Jerome and his wife, in February, 1532 1 , re- 
 moved to Milan. Jerome was then infirm in health, but 
 his mother, Clara, had become, by that time, prosperous 
 and cheerful 3 . 
 
 The tribune, however, had expected nothing less than 
 the departure of his son-in-law from Sacco. He sub- 
 mitted to the disappointment he experienced on this ac- 
 count with outward equanimity, but he was deeply 
 grieved at heart. His regard for " the daughter of his 
 good luck" was of a superstitious kind 3 . A few days 
 before she quitted Sacco with her husband, a stone, put 
 upon the fire by accident, cracked with a loud noise, and 
 
 1 De Libris Propr. (ed. 1557) p. 13. " Valetudinarius, pauperque." 
 The date is there misprinted 1533, but the correction is obvious enough. 
 
 2 "In patriam denuo re versus, sospitem matrem inveni." De Con- 
 sol, p. 75. 
 
 3 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 452. 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 scattered fragments over Aldobello's bedroom. Ever 
 afterwards his mind recurred with horror to that evil 
 omen ; but ever after was not a long time, for he died 
 before the year was ended. He died with another and a 
 deeper grief upon him, caused by the wicked life of one 
 of his own sons. 
 
 Cardan, when he returned to Milan, felt the want of 
 his father-in-law's tact in winning good opinions that 
 could be turned to gold. Still he had no friends, except 
 the few who had become acquainted with his genius 
 men who knew how the young physician, so excitable, so 
 superstitious, and so often seen indulging in a restless 
 love of dice, spent solitary hours in abstruse study, 
 cherished great thoughts, wrote books out of the pure 
 instinct of the scholar, having no reason to believe that 
 he could ever get them printed, and lived on in the 
 unwavering conviction that he had within him power to 
 secure immortal fame. Still the decorous college of the 
 Milanese physicians shut their gates upon him 1 . He 
 was notoriously excluded from their body, and denied 
 the right of practising legitimately, because he had not 
 been legitimately born. Trouble weighed heavily upon 
 him: poverty, nervous irritation, and the foul air of a 
 town then never entirely free from plague, weakened 
 still more the health of the young husband. His wife, 
 1 De Libris Propriis (1557), p. 13, 
 
FAILURE IN MILAN. 115 
 
 sharing his cares, miscarried at the third or fourth month, 
 and again a second time miscarried 1 . No bread was to be 
 earned at Milan. After a vain struggle, the newly- 
 married pair determined to go out again into the world. 
 
 The anxious question of the choice of a new spot to 
 which they might transfer their struggle with some hope 
 of a good issue was decided by a series of arguments in 
 favour of Gallarate 2 . That is a small town twenty-four 
 miles distant to the north-west from Milan ; it does not at 
 this day quite contain four thousand inhabitants. Jerome 
 and Lucia went sick and weary out of the inhospitable 
 capital, and settled in the country town of Gallarate when 
 the trees were bursting into leaf 3 . They would gain, they 
 said, pure air, and that was good for both of them. They 
 would be able to subsist more cheaply, for the country 
 prices differed greatly from the charges set upon provi- 
 sions in the town, and there were even a few eatable 
 things to be had for nothing. Cardan would be at liberty 
 to practise there unhindered, for he would be beyond the 
 jurisdiction of the hostile college, and he would be im- 
 peded by no rivals. Finally, there was one consideration 
 above others which had indeed suggested Gallarate as the 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 98. 
 
 2 These will be found, with other details here cited, in the section 
 de Paupertate of the book de Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, pp. 439, 
 440. The supposed connexion with the Castellione family is there ex- 
 plained very minutely. 
 
 3 " Circa Aprilis finem," De Vita Propr. p. 19. 
 
 12 
 
116 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 proper home for a Cardan. The town was within one 
 mile of a castle which the Cardans claimed as an ancestral 
 hall. At Gallarate a Cardan might claim the respect that 
 he was unable to command in Milan. As for the Milanese, 
 the College of Jurisconsults had at first been nearly as 
 hostile to Fazio the father, as the physicians were to 
 Jerome the son, and in the next generation the same 
 spirit was displayed 1 . Now the Cardans claimed to be of 
 the noble blood of the Castellione, who were at home near 
 Gallarate, and in confirmation of their claim pointed to 
 inscriptions upon the prothema of a church known to 
 all the people of that little town. Jerome at first believed 
 this claim to be a true one, and was not unwilling to be 
 called Girolamo Castellione Cardano. He is to be found so 
 named after his death by many writers, but in his lifetime 
 he formally and conscientiously abjured the second name, 
 because he convinced himself that he had no right to 
 bear it 2 . In April, 1533, however, when, towards the end 
 
 1 " Nam et pater meus ut ab eo accepi, diu in ingressu coll. jurisc. 
 laboravit, et ego ut alias testatus sum, bis a medicorum Patavino, 
 toties filius meus natu major, a Ticiuensi, uterque a Mediolanensi 
 rejecti sumus." De Lib. Prop. (1557) p. 188. 
 
 2 In the dedication to the revised edition of De Malo Medendi Usu. 
 Since the name that he disclaimed is still commonly ascribed to him, 
 it will be well to quote a part of his distinct repudiation of it. " Pude- 
 bat me inter reliqua, nimia pietate, patris siquidem verbis persuasus, 
 qui hocpalam, nescio quo ductus errore, affirmabatj Castilioneum nomen 
 addidisse: cum certum habeam, revolutis omnibus publicis tabulis, 
 majorum meonun, ad annum usque MCCCXL. qui ab hoc, ccvi. est, nihil 
 mihi cum Castilioneis commune esse," 
 
REMOVAL TO GALLARATE. 117 
 
 of the month, Jerome settled in Gallarate, by the advice 
 of Giacomo Cardan, his cousin, resident upon the spot, he 
 believed that he had a right there to be honoured, if not 
 for his genius and learning, at least (scrofulous man as he 
 was) for the good composition of his blood. 
 
 Pure air improved the health of the philosopher, and 
 cheapness of provisions may have made it possible, by 
 dinners of herbs, to live for a short time without too 
 bitter a sense of want. They watched the gradual de- 
 parture of the few coins they had mustered when he and 
 Lucia prepared to set out on their venture 1 . Their poverty 
 began to border upon destitution : very few fees came in. 
 Cardan began a treatise upon Fate 1 , in which he showed 
 that events frequently happen contrary to human wishes, 
 and that such disappointments must be borne with equa- 
 nimity. For himself, the knowledge of his strength was 
 in him, and when he sat down at Gallarate to begin this 
 treatise upon Fate though there was no outward circum- 
 stance on which to found a hope that anything proceed- 
 ing from his pen would ever make its way into a print- 
 ing-office his heart leapt out into the opening words 
 concerning " All who hope that, by writing, glory possi- 
 bly may follow to themselves 2 ." At Gallarate he began 
 also for Filippo Archinto, a clever young Milanese patri- 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 14. 
 
 2 " Omnes qui scribendo gloriam consequi se posse sperant." 
 
118 JEKOME CARDAN. 
 
 cian, a book on astronomical opinions, and a treatise based 
 upon Agrippa's occult philosophy, in which, care was 
 taken to avoid the introduction of fictitious marvels 1 . 
 
 But Cardan's daily life was tortured by the morbid in- 
 genuity of superstition into a long course of experience in 
 magic. Every sight, sound, or smell that was unusual, 
 was likely to be received as an omen by the credulous 
 philosopher. He believed that he received secret moni- 
 tions from a genius or guardian spirit 2 sometimes they 
 came from the spirit of his father. It was not strange to 
 him that, when he contemplated marriage, the dog howled, 
 and ravens shrunk together in his neighbourhood. The 
 shadow of the warning spirit moved about its doors, and 
 the brute animals gave token of the dread excited by its 
 presence 3 . So men's minds are darkened when the shadow 
 of a cloud floats over them, and they are moved against 
 their will to joy or to delusive hope by a fresh outburst of 
 the sun ; so can gems also lose their light, and metals lose 
 their lustre. Why, asked Cardan, should he enjoy the 
 favour of especial warnings? Was it because, although 
 hemmed in by poverty, he loved the immeasurable truth, 
 and worshipped wisdom, and sought justice, that the 
 mystic presence taught him to attribute all to the Most 
 
 1 De Sapientia, &c. p. 423. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, cap. xlvii. More will be said of this hereafter. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 263. 
 
MYSTERIES. 119 
 
 High? Or did the spirit come for reasons known best to 
 itself? Again, why were its warnings so obscure why, 
 for example, did it sometimes become manifest by noises 
 that he was unable to interpret? He could not answer 
 these questions, but he believed that the spiritual commu- 
 nications were made wisely, and lost significance by 
 passing through the dull wall of the flesh into a mind not 
 always fitted to receive them 1 . 
 
 After his twenty-sixth year, Cardan was often troubled 
 by a complaint, common to most men of his organisation, 
 a frequent ringing in the ears. He received this as a 
 supernatural endowment 2 . By the ear in which the 
 sound appeared to be, and by the manner of the sounding, 
 he knew, he said, in what direction and in what way men 
 were talking of him. He believed also that his presence 
 acted as a preventive of all wounds, and that no blood 
 could flow from wounds inflicted in his presence 3 . The 
 former opinion he may have justified by the fact, that in 
 those days of violence he had escaped the sight of blood- 
 shed in the streets; the latter belief he founded on a 
 single circumstance. Since he himself, professionally, 
 opened veins, it was his further belief that in such 
 instances the flow of blood was owing to a special dis- 
 pensation. Cardan embraced and amplified the whole 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, cap. xlvii. pp. 264, 265. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 178, 179. 3 Ibid. p. 163, 
 
120 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 body of the superstition of his age, yet it may be said of 
 him, more truly perhaps than of any one of his contem- 
 poraries, that he embraced and amplified also the whole 
 body of its learning. 
 
 While struggling unsuccessfully in Gallarate, breathing 
 the fresh country air, and able to satisfy no more than 
 the wants of nature in the simplest way, Jerome's health 
 steadily improved, and Lucia, who did not again disap- 
 point his hopes, gave birth to a son on Thursday, the 14th 
 of May, in the year T534 1 . The child resembled most 
 its grandfather, for it had small, white, restless eyes, and 
 a round back ; it was born also with the third and fourth 
 toes of the left foot joined together, and proved, as it 
 grew, to be deaf in the right ear. It being at first un- 
 certain whether the boy would live, it was baptised on 
 the succeeding Sunday, between eleven and twelve 
 o'clock, by the bedside of its mother, all the household 
 being present, except a famulus. Then, because the day 
 was warm and sunny, they had drawn aside the curtain 
 from before the window, and had thrown the window 
 open to admit the light and air. And at the moment 
 when the child was lifted from the font or basin, chris- 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis (1557), p. 22. "Cumvero parum esset mihi 
 eo eunti, totum tamen illud parum consumptum erat. Sed valitudo 
 restituta, yiresque confirmatae, et filio auctus eram." See for date of 
 the son's birth, and the account of his baptism, De Vita Propria, 
 cap. xxxvii., and especially the last of the three books De Libris 
 Propriis. Opera, Tom. i. p. 98. 
 
BIRTH OF A SON. 121 
 
 tened by its name of Giovanni Battista, there flew into 
 the room a mighty wasp. 
 
 This was portentous, for the wasp was larger than 
 wasps should be at that time of year, nor, reasoned 
 Cardan, do they usually enter houses till July or August. 
 All watched to see the issue of the omen : the anxious 
 father, whose sense of mystery was so fine that he had 
 found something supernatural even in the smell of his 
 own body, perceived that this was not a common wasp. 
 Hurting no one, but alarming all, it flew twice in a circle 
 round the bed, but from its third flight darted back 
 towards the window. There, however, instead of flying 
 out into the open air, it dashed into the curtain, and, 
 becoming entangled, made so loud a noise, " that you 
 would say," writes Cardan, ( ' a drum was being beaten. 
 We ran to it, nothing was found." The portent had 
 vanished ; there was no wasp to be seen ; and yet we are 
 told that it could not have escaped unnoticed through 
 the window while they were all watching it attentively. 
 It was agreed by the whole party that this wasp was a 
 revelation. All coincided in opinion that the life of 
 Jerome's first son would be short, that he would be gar- 
 rulous, and that he would be cut off by a sudden death. 
 So much Cardan predicted, and the vital part of the 
 prediction was fulfilled, how terribly no wasp or planet 
 could have taught the father to suspect* If griefs ever 
 send heralds out before them, there was a grief advancing 
 
122 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 by slow marches to possess the spirit of Cardan, great 
 enough to be worth announcing by a dozen heralds. 
 
 So, declared the victim after the event, it was an- 
 nounced. The dream of the shut gate of the paradise he 
 quitted to embrace a white-robed maiden foreboded no 
 bad wife to him, it pointed to his son 1 . A knowledge of 
 the mighty grief for which the way was opened by his 
 marriage, caused the shadow of the tutelary genius to 
 haunt his doors when he slept for the last time alone at 
 Sacco. So such things were afterwards interpreted. At 
 Gallarate, Jerome, in spite of all warnings, ignorant of 
 the future, and by no lore able to divine the way to 
 larger dinners, wrote much and ate sparingly. He 
 bravely bore his poverty, and knew that he should work 
 his way to fame. 
 
 In addition to the writings that have been already 
 mentioned, he was turning into Latin his treatise upon 
 games, and making slow progress with his analysis of 
 the contradictory opinions of the doctors. But he 
 consumed much time in seeking the relief of music 
 for his cares, and relief to his pocket from the dice- 
 board 2 , for he was slipping, when his son was born, 
 every week lower down * into an abyss of hopeless 
 
 1 " Somnii interpretatio non in puella desiit sed in filiis vim suam 
 ostendit." De Vita Propr. cap. xxvi. p. 98. 
 
 " Anmis erat trigesimus tertius exactus, cum ludis et musica serum 
 consumpseram, nee interea quicquamegregiiinveneram aut perfeceram. 
 Siquidem libros de Fato et librum Ludo latrunculorum, paulo plus 
 quam inehoaveram." De Libris Prop. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 100' 
 
DEPTHS OF DISTRESS. 123 
 
 poverty. After his son's birth, he struggled on against 
 adversity for five more months in Gallarate, and at the 
 end of that time gave up his position in the little 
 town, not upon deliberation but compulsion. He and 
 Lucia, in all the nineteen months 1 of their abode at Gal- 
 larate, had earned scarcely forty crowns 2 ; and when they 
 were at last reduced to absolute destitution, when he had 
 lost at the gaming-table his wife's jewels, even his bed, 
 they, having no other hope, determined on returning into 
 Milan. Not, said Cardan with touching brevity, that 
 there was anything to seek, but that there was something 
 from which to fly 3 . He determined to quit Gallarate 
 and plunge once more into Milan, as a man hemmed in 
 upon a barren rock resolves to cast himself into the sea. 
 
 It was in October, 1534 4 , that Jerome, with his wife 
 and child, came back to Milan beggared, and applied for 
 shelter to the public Xenodochium 5 , the workhouse of his 
 
 1 " Ubi raansi xix. mensibus." De Vita Propr. p. 19. He vent in 
 April, 1533, and returned to Milan in October, 1534. 
 
 * De Vit. Propr. cap. xxr. p. 94. De Lib. Propr. Lib. ult. Opera, 
 Tom. i. p. 100. 
 
 8 " .... non quod haberem quod sequerer, sed quod fugerem . . . ." 
 Ibid. 
 
 4 " Quasi e scopulo inaccesso me prsecipitaturus in mare, decrevi in 
 patriam redire anno MD.XXXIV, mense Octobris." De Lib. Prop. (1557) 
 p. 23. 
 
 5 Details and references on the subject of the Xenodochia may be 
 found in Zedler's Lexicon (Leipzig. 1749), vol. 60, col. 655 7. They 
 took their name, and some of their spirit, from the Greek institutions 
 dedicated Jovi Xenio. Much of their spirit was, however, purely 
 ecclesiastical ; they became sources of income to the clergy. 
 
124 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 age. That was an establishment whose doors were open 
 to the sick and needy and the houseless stranger, main- 
 tained from religious motives by various communities, in 
 direct obedience to the admonition joined in Scripture to 
 the question of the righteous and unrighteous " Lord, 
 when saw we thee an hungred and fed thee? or thirsty 
 and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger and 
 took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?" 
 
 Cardan, however, had an active friend in Milan. The 
 same Filippo Archinto 1 for whom he had been writing his 
 book on the Judgments of the Astronomers, had coun- 
 selled him to come again to Milan, and took pains on his 
 behalf. Filippo, the son of Christopher and Maddalena 
 della Torre, differed in age from Cardan by not more 
 than a year; he was a young man equally agreeable and 
 learned, who, by love of pleasure, had been doubtless 
 brought into contact with Cardan over the dice, and by 
 the instinct of a kindred genius, and by love of learning, 
 had been drawn into a state of intimacy with the poor, 
 maligned philosopher. Archinto, full of kindness, wis- 
 dom, tact, and well born also, already in repute for ora- 
 tory 2 , had the promise of a bright career before him ; and 
 he did afterwards attain, as we shall find, by his own 
 merits, to high distinction. In 1534 his influence sufficed 
 
 1 De Consol. p. 76. 2 De Vita Propria, p. 19. 
 
THE PLAT ENDOWMENT. 125 
 
 to procure even for the despised Cardan a small appoint- 
 ment. He could not obtain for him authority to prac- 
 tise medicine, but he lost no time in endeavouring to 
 make him independent of the college. Under the will 
 of a deceased citizen named Thomas Plat, a small sum 
 had been left to be applied yearly to the payment of a 
 lecturer on geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy ; the 
 lectures to be delivered upon holidays. The office of 
 lecturer under the endowment of Thomas Plat happened 
 then to be vacant ; and not many days after his return to 
 Milan, the appointment was by Archinto's influence con- 
 ferred upon the learned graduate in medicine, Jerome 
 Cardan 1 . To the same kind friend he was indebted for 
 the introduction to a few other sources of income, very 
 trifling indeed; a deduction had been made from his 
 small salary of seven crowns a year by the prefects of the 
 Xenodochium 2 , in whose gift the office was. His yearly 
 receipts from all sources would not exceed fifty crowns, 
 but he was a philosopher, and he and Lucia were quite 
 able to subsist on that. / 
 
 Not unwilling at the same time to earn, if possible, a 
 better income, the new lecturer endeavoured to increase 
 the fees paid for attendance on his courses, by rendering 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis (1557), p. 23. De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. 
 Opera, Tom. i. p. 100. 
 
 Ibid. De Ut. ex Adr. Cap. p. 546. 
 
126 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 them as attractive as he could. With this view he occa- 
 sionally substituted geography for the less popular details 
 of geometry, and lectured upon architecture instead of 
 arithmetic 1 . The mind of Cardan being thus set actively 
 to work upon five subjects, was soon engaged on books 
 allied to them in character ; and five works were reckoned 
 afterwards by the philosopher himself as the direct result 
 of the appointment now in question. 
 
 Jerome then was in this way established with a slender 
 income. Among the discouragements that pressed upon 
 him from all sides in Milan, he had not lost faith in his 
 future. He was thirty-three years old. He had been 
 practising medicine for eight years, and had found him- 
 self at the end of that term, without patients and without 
 character as a physician, utterly poor. He had been 
 writing books from boyhood. Some of his manuscripts 
 had been read by a few educated friends, and by one or 
 two of them appreciated; others had perished through 
 domestic mischances, others had been lent and carelessly 
 mislaid, none had been printed. Yet Cardan was curious 
 in pens, and because he regarded them as the keys that 
 would enable him one day to open a door for himself into 
 the temple of Fame, he wrote on with unflagging in- 
 dustry. He breakfasted on barley-bread and water, and 
 
 1 " Ut vero magis audientes allicerem, pro Geometria Geographiam, 
 pro Arithmetica Architectural!! docebam. Ilinc occasio nata conscri- 
 bendi quinque volumina." 
 
STRUGGLES IN MILAN. 127 
 
 compared with the relish of an epicure the respective 
 merits of nasturtium leaves, rue, parsley, and other herbs, 
 as economic means of making bread and water savoury 1 . 
 At the same time he worked on with a restless energy, 
 and knew that he should win the prize on which his heart 
 was set, not wealth for a few years, but renown for cen- 
 turies. 
 
 In spite of all his eccentricities and errors, within a rude 
 exterior the disputatious and excitable young scholar had 
 shut up a fine spirit and a tender heart. His ethical 
 writings uttered throughout life the language of a spiritual 
 nature. The unique candour with which he publishes 
 his faults often such faults as many men commit and no 
 man names though he may have been stung to it by a 
 contempt for the hollow affectation of respectability that 
 would have hunted him for ever as a bastard, had he not 
 been strong enough to stand at bay, and though such can- 
 dour may sometimes be scaroely sane, yet it bespeaks a 
 sturdy truthfulness, an innate generosity that we must 
 honour. Jerome was a faithful son, and to the world at 
 any rate an uncomplaining husband. There remain but 
 slight and accidental traces of any discord between him 
 and Lucia; of his wife's father, mother, brothers and 
 sisters, he speaks with domestic kindliness; and though he 
 accuses justly his own errors as a father, it will be found 
 1 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. Liber de Paupertate. 
 
128 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 
 hereafter that his tenderness towards a miserable child 
 forms one of the main features of his life. He claims for 
 himself, and that also justly, the merit, that if he attracted 
 to himself few friends, he never broke a friendship, and 
 that if he found himself forsaken for a time by one of 
 those few friends, he never used unkindly, whether as 
 public accusation or as private taunt, knowledge obtained 
 in confidential intercourse 1 . He had a rugged love of 
 truth and justice; he remembered benefits, and when af- 
 fronted could afford deliberately to abstain from seizing 
 any offered opportunity of vengeance. He governed his pen 
 better than his tongue, and carefully restrained himseli 
 from carrying into his books the heat he could not check 
 in oral disputation. He left enemies unnamed, and 
 though he now and then is found devoting some impa- 
 tient sentences to writers who had treated his opinions 
 rudely, yet it seems at first sight absolutely wonderful 
 that a man so sensitive and so irascible, so beset by harsh 
 antagonists as the weak-bodied Jerome, should have filled 
 so many volumes with philosophy and so few pages with 
 resentment. The wonder ceases when a closer scrutiny 
 displays the difference in intellectual and moral weight 
 between Cardan and most of his opponents. 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. xiv. pp. 67, 68. And for the next facts. 
 
PRIOR GADDI. 129 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIFE AS A LECTURER IN MILAN HOW JEROME AT LENGTH FOUND A 
 MAN WILLING TO PRINT ONE OF HIS BOOKS THE ISSUE OF THAT 
 ENTERPRISE. 
 
 ARCHINTO, again, was perhaps the friend who ob- 
 tained for Jerome the appointment of physician to the 
 body of Augustin Friars; not a lucrative post, since the 
 receipts from it are included among the other trifles 
 which, together with the post of lecturer under the Plat 
 endowment, made up an income of not more than fifty 
 crowns 1 . Although denied authority to practise by the 
 local college of physicians, Cardan was not the less 
 Doctor of Medicine by right of his degree, and did not 
 scruple to exercise his profession whenever he found any 
 patient willing to consult him. The prior of the Augus- 
 tines, Francisco Gaddi 2 , a shrewd, severe man, whose 
 influence over the members of his order made him an 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 100. 
 
 2 De Libr. Prop, (ed, 1557) p. 123. De Vit. Propr. cap. xl. p. 193. 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 JEKOME CARDAN. 
 
 object of consideration among rival princes, had for two 
 years lived in a bilious, melancholic state, afflicted with a 
 skin-disease, and unrelieved by the advice of the most dis- 
 tinguished Milanese physicians. Jerome, when first ad- 
 mitted to attend upon the monks, found the prior cherish- 
 ing despondent, though unfortunately distant, hopes of 
 a release by death from all his fleshly troubles. By the 
 good advice, however, of the young physician, or perhaps 
 only by good fortune, Gaddi recovered. In six months 
 he was well, and he was the first man of any note upon 
 whom Jerome had been allowed to exercise his art. 
 
 Prior Francisco Gaddi belonged to a famous family in 
 Florence, founded by three generations of painters 
 Gaddo Gaddi, who worked in the thirteenth century; 
 Taddeo, his son; and his grandsons, Agnolo and Gio- 
 vanni, in the fourteenth. The continuous labours of 
 those men procured for their house wealth and fame, so 
 that they left to their heirs a palace richly stocked with 
 works of art, and a distinguished place among the noble 
 families of Florence. A Francisco Gaddi was, in 1493, 
 the Secretary of the Florentine Republic. The Prior 
 Gaddi, settled at Milan, did not cease to be grateful to his 
 health-bringing physician, though it was in his power to 
 give him very little worldly help. Nor was it in Cardan's 
 power to administer more potent aid to the scheming and 
 ambitious monk in his last illness than a consolatory 
 
FRIENDS. 131 
 
 letter 1 . Gaddi, who, as we have seen, fell among princes, 
 ten years afterwards died in a dungeon, wretchedly. 
 
 Ludovico Madio was another friend to whom Cardan 
 was introduced by the warm-hearted Archinto. Of 
 Madio we know only that he was kind, and that the 
 young struggler obtained from him ready help in times of 
 need. Girolamo Guerrini, a jeweller, was at the same 
 time an associate from whom Jerome obtained much 
 curious information, and from whose experience he was 
 able to enrich some of his books 2 . 
 
 The works upon which Jerome was occupied in the 
 months immediately following his return to Milan, were 3 
 a volume suggested by Sacrobustus upon Spheres, of 
 which he wrote nine or ten books; a little work on 
 Circles ; three dissertations founded on the first and 
 seventh books of Ptolemy's Geography ; and one on the 
 elements of Euclid, which grew in after-years till it con- 
 tained three books, then was enlarged to seven, then to 
 nine, then to fifteen, when it contained more than forty 
 new propositions. 
 
 Very soon after his appointment as a lecturer Jerome 
 had taken a house, and received his mother as a portion 
 of his family. Since Clara had been hitherto depending 
 
 1 The letter is included in his published works. Cardan relates the 
 fate of his friend in the last of the three books De Libris Propriis. 
 Opera, Tom. i. p. 107. 
 
 - De Vit. Prop. p. 69. 
 
 3 De Sapientia, &c. p. 424. 
 
 K2 
 
132 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 on her own means of subsistence, it is probable that she 
 was able to contribute a small fund towards the house-ex- 
 penses. If she paid nothing, Jerome had indeed very 
 great need to increase his income, or to make the most of 
 fennel and nasturtium in his diet, for the household that de- 
 pended on him for support consisted of himself, his wife, 
 and infant son, his mother, a female friend, a nurse, a pupil 
 (Ambrose Bizozoro, an ingenious, bold fellow, who became 
 afterwards a sea captain), a maid-servant, and a she mule 1 . 
 Upon the mule he rode abroad, and it is probable that in 
 so doing he consulted less the received prejudice in favour 
 of a doctor who can leave a horse or carriage waiting at the 
 door, than the necessities of a body at all times infirm. 
 
 For the next five years Jerome was distressed, not only 
 with bodily infirmities, but with poverty at home and un- 
 relenting rivalry abroad. The very patients who had 
 profited by his attentions often joined the cry against the 
 poor physician-lecturer, whose eccentricities were more 
 apparent to the vulgar than 'his genius. After Cardan 
 had healed Bartholomaea Cribella, a noble matron, and 
 her brother, the perverse brother was loud in ridicule 
 against him 2 . But the physician-lecturer solaced himself 
 at home with music and with dice, indulged as he could 
 his taste for expensive writing materials and for rare 
 books, read Aristotle and Plotinus for his pleasure, or his 
 
 1 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 431. 
 
 2 De Lib. Propr. Lib. ult. 
 
HOME. 133 
 
 favourite Italian poets, Petrarch and Pulci 1 . Above all, 
 he continued to cover many sheets of paper with the 
 written workings of his mind, and obtained consolation 
 from his dreams of immortality. 
 
 Dreams really, not wild waking thoughts, became at 
 that time guides and helpers to him. Being interpreted 
 with admirable ingenuity into such meanings as accorded 
 with his nature, they became prophetic. About four 
 months after his return to Milan from the unsuccessful 
 struggle in Gallarate, Cardan reckoned that he first re- 
 ceived communications of the future in his sleep 1 . Then, 
 as he believed, the dream-power commenced in its full 
 force. Before that time, except in the case of the 
 dream that heralded his marriage, his sleep had scarcely 
 been disturbed with visions worth interpreting. As he 
 got higher up the hill of life such mists increased about 
 him. 
 
 His first dream, of the great series, was of the weary 
 hill of life itself. It was the following 2 . At the close of 
 the year 1534, when all was black about him in his 
 worldly state, and all was looking blacker day by day, 
 Jerome Cardan dreamed in the early dawn that he was 
 running towards the foot of a mountain that stood to the 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. cap. xviii. p. 80. 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis (1557), pp. 21 26. De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. 
 Op, Tom. i. pp. 100, 101. For the two succeeding dreams and their 
 interpretations. 
 
134 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 right of him, and that he ran in company with an 
 immense multitude, of every rank, and sex, and age; 
 there were women, men, old men, boys, infants, poor 
 men, rich men, clothed in many fashions. Then he 
 asked, " Whither are we all hastening ?" One of the com- 
 pany replied, " To death." In great terror the dreamer 
 began then to ascend the mountain slope, drawing himself 
 up by clinging to the vines through which he went, and 
 with which that part of the mountain was all covered. 
 They were dry vines with sere leaves, such as are seen in 
 autumn when the grapes have all been gathered. He 
 ascended with much labour, for the mountain at its base 
 was steep, and as he looked back on his way, he saw that 
 all the vines among which he had passed, no longer dry, 
 were green and full of blossom. In a little while the 
 ascent became easier, the mountain was less steep, and the 
 dreamer hurried on. When he came near the top, he 
 found the ground there barren, and across bare rocks and 
 broken stones he was still pushing forward, as if by a 
 strong impulse of the will. Suddenly he was on the point 
 of plunging into the dark maw of an abyss, a chasm so 
 huge and terrible, that, as a waking thought, it remained 
 for the next thirty years a thing to shudder at. The 
 dreamer, however, checked himself in his career, and 
 turning to the right, wandered across a wintry plain, 
 covered with heaths, timidly, as one uncertain of his way. 
 
A DREAM OP LIFE. 135 
 
 So he came before the porch of a sordid peasant's hut, 
 thatched over with straw, and reeds, and rushes. There 
 came out of the porch a boy, as of about twelve or four- 
 teen years old, with pale features, and wearing an ashen- 
 coloured cloak ; he, taking him by the right hand, led 
 him in, and as they passed into the hut the dream 
 was broken. 
 
 Thousands of men have such dreams, and think no 
 more of them. " I understood from this dream," says 
 Cardan, "that I was destined to strive after immortality." 
 He felt that he had a work to do in the world, that he 
 was sent to do it by the Deity, whose hand so often had 
 been visibly stretched out for his protection. All men, 
 said the dream to him, run to death and to oblivion. The 
 mountain was the Mount of Virtue, full of life, but with- 
 out pleasures, as was signified by its being planted thickly 
 with vines, but without fruit. The ascent of that mount 
 is at first laborious, but afterwards becomes comparatively 
 easy. The vines blossoming behind him what could they 
 signify ? Certainly glory after death. The way over the 
 wintry heaths might signify an easy close to life. What 
 the boy might portend, however, Jerome could not then 
 tell. Years afterwards, he believed that he had found 
 him in a pupil, by whose face he was reminded of the 
 dream. 
 
 Not long after this vision of the mountain, Jerome 
 
136 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 dreamed that he was alone in the moon, naked, and dis- 
 embodied. There, in his solitude, he heard only the voice 
 of his father, and it said to him, " I am given to you by 
 God as a guardian. All here is full of souls, but you do 
 not see them, as you do not see me ; nor do you hear 
 them, for to the others it is not permitted to address yon. 
 You will remain in this heaven for seven thousand years, 
 and as many years in single orbs, until the eighth. 
 Afterwards you shall come into the kingdom of God." 
 
 So worked the restless brain of the young student when 
 he and Lucia had gone to rest, she thinking of the next 
 day and its cares, he of the next age and its glories. This 
 dream of the moon had its own suitable interpretation. 
 His father, Cardan said, was his tutelary spirit. His 
 spiritual progress through eight planets, indicated, t as he 
 said afterwards, with remarkable accuracy, the different 
 studies upon which he was to occupy his mind. The 
 Moon meant grammar ; Mercury, geometry and arith- 
 metic; Venus, music, divination, poetry; the Sun, morals; 
 Jupiter, nature ; Mars, medicine ; Saturn, agriculture, 
 knowledge of herbs, &c. There were seven planets indi- 
 cating studies to which he did really afterwards devote his 
 mind, and the eighth planet held the scraps of know- 
 ledge that could be referred to none among the seven. 
 Gleanings which the student picked up in such fields of 
 science as he did not himself undertake to cultivate, 
 
A DREAM OF THE MOON. 137 
 
 formed the last of the eight masses of study that were re- 
 presented by his spiritual life in the eight stars. 
 
 In the succeeding year (1535) Jerome read through 
 the works of Cicero, word for word as he tells us 1 . This 
 task he had probably set himself, with a view to the im- 
 provement of his Latin style, his scholarship being at 
 that time far from accurate. He had picked up Greek, 
 French, and Spanish, without much care for learning 
 them grammatically, and in Latin he wrote rather by 
 tact and impulse than by rule. His labours were in 
 some respects very much hindered by the badness of his 
 memory 2 , and they were also partly hindered, though on 
 the whole more helped, by the restlessness of disposition 
 which made him, in study as in action, prompt always in 
 decision and impatient of delay. The same impatience 
 made him sharp in argument; but while, as it has been 
 already said, men surprised at his acerbity avoided wordy 
 warfare with him, Jerome took no credit to himself for 
 his unchallenged honours as a disputant. It was a pro- 
 perty, as he affirmed, belonging to him which he could 
 no more change than a stone could change its character. 
 " Surely," he said, with a happy stroke of humour, " it is 
 no matter of glory to the cuttle-fish that he can make 
 
 the dolphins fly 3 ." 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis. Liber ult. 
 
 2 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. Lib. ii. p. 277. 
 
 3 De Vit. Propr. cap. xiii. 
 
138 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Quick-witted, versatile, and candid. Cardan rarely 
 suffered himself to be deceived into a respectful treat- 
 ment of his own defects. Of his love of dice the best he 
 could say in excuse was that " Philosophers may play, 
 but Wise Men are as kings enjoying higher pleasures 1 ." 
 By skill in dice he even eked out his subsistence in the 
 first days of his poverty at Milan, and perhaps earned 
 more at the gaming-table than at the bedside; for on the 
 hint of his rivals, it was soon a subject of discourse in 
 Milan the most frivolous of scandal-tattling cities 3 , as 
 he found reason to call it that Cardan was too intent on 
 mathematics to be very conversant with medicine. In 
 his office of lecturer he had then been interpreting Vitru- 
 vius 3 , and it was quite certain that his studies in con- 
 nexion with his duties under Thomas Plat's endowment 
 were of a kind to be regarded by the jealous public as 
 incompatible with the thoughts which are supposed to 
 revolve eternally in the minds of practising physicians. 
 A physician even in our own day cannot acquire reputa- 
 tion in any branch of literature or science that does not 
 bear directly upon tongues and pulses, without forfeiting 
 a portion of the practice that he might have gained with 
 
 ^ $ 
 
 ease if he had been a duller man, or if he had but hidden 
 
 1 De Paupertate. 
 
 2 " In urbe omnium nugacissima, et quae calumniis maxime patet." 
 De Libr. Propr. (1557) p. 32. 
 
 3 De Sapientia, &c. p. 425. 
 
THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON SCANDAL. 139 
 
 some part of his light under a bushel. Cardan's hope of 
 fame and profit as a doctor was being undermined by the 
 reputation he acquired as an ill-paid teacher of geometry, 
 arithmetic, geography, and architecture. It is easier, he 
 writes, to prop a falling house than to rebuild it after it' 
 has fallen. He resolved, therefore, to support his sinking 
 reputation in the art of medicine by writing a work 
 strictly professional. Following up the notion with his 
 usual impetuosity, in fifteen days he wrote two books on 
 the bad practice of medicine by the physicians of his day 
 De Malo Recentiorum Medicorum Medendi Usu 1 not a 
 propitiating subject, certainly. A small tract was written 
 about the same time on the noxious ingredients in simple 
 medicaments. These Cardan put aside, or lent to friends 
 in manuscript, for he was unable to pay a printer, and 
 knew no one who would bear the risk of publishing what 
 he had written. 
 
 When, in the same year 1535, the academic session 
 closed, Jerome's young patron was about to leave Milan. 
 In that year had died Francisco Sforza, Duke of Milan, 
 and Philip Archinto had obtained so much esteem and 
 trust in his own town, that he was selected by the magis- 
 trates as the most fit person to accompany Massimiliano 
 Stampa, their ambassador to the court of Charles V. upon 
 
 1 De Sapientia, &c. p. 425. De Lib. Prop. (ed. 1557), where he says 
 that he wrote the book, " ut etiam in Medicina aliquid scire viderer." 
 
140 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 the occasion. Francisco, the last Sforza, he whom Cardan 
 had encountered among gamblers, died at the age of 
 thirty-nine. Expelled from home by the French, his 
 childhood had been spent in Germany. In 1521, the 
 Emperor and Pope together had resolved upon his re- 
 establishment. The French resisted their design until the 
 overthrow at Pa via, but after that decisive battle, Charles 
 had delayed the execution of his promise. Then Fran- 
 cisco had joined the Italian league, had been betrayed by 
 Marquis Pescara, besieged in Milan by the emperor, and 
 reduced in 1526 to the abandonment of his designs. In 
 1529 the Emperor and Pope had agreed to receive him 
 again into favour, and had allowed him to buy of them 
 his dukedom with a large sum of money. From that 
 time he had given little trouble to his master, but in 1534 
 he had beheaded a subject named Meraviglia, who was 
 supposed to serve the French interest at his court, and 
 troubles might have followed had the duke not died in 
 the succeeding year. He was a credulous, weak man. 
 Leaving no children by his wife Christina, he bequeathed 
 his dukedom to the emperor. This last fact was the chiei 
 subject of the embassy to which Archinto was attached. 
 The young noble who had shown in Milan so much pro- 
 mise of. a prosperous career, a man of the world in the 
 true sense of the term, genial, prompt, and learned, found 
 his opportunity when he was sent into the presence of the 
 
AECHINTO. 141 
 
 emperor. Charles liked him, and sent Stampa back alone, 
 retaining Cardan's patron in the character of secretary 1 . 
 
 It will be convenient here, in a few words, to tell the 
 fortune of Archinto. In the next year, 1536, he was 
 created a Count Palatine; afterwards, when he was sent to 
 Rome on imperial business with Paul III, the Pope, who 
 thought him a man worth acquiring for the Church, per- 
 suaded him to consult his interests by taking holy orders. 
 He did so, and was promptly appointed Apostolic Proto- 
 notary and Governor of Rome. In 1539 he was ordained 
 Bishop of Borgo San Sepolcro; in 1546 he was transferred 
 to Saluzzo ; and after having served as vicar to four Popes, 
 came back to his own town as Archbishop of Milan, in 
 1556. Two years afterwards he died, and being dead, his 
 life was written by Joannes Petrus Glussianus in two books. 
 
 Archinto then, in the year 1535, being about to leave 
 Milan with Massimiliano Stampa, soon after the close of the 
 academic session, Jerome employed his vacation very busily 
 in writing certain treatises, which Archinto promised to 
 take for him, and commend, as well as he was able, to the 
 favourable notice of the Pope 2 . Cardan had heard of the 
 
 1 Joseph! Ripamontii Canon. Scalens. Chronistae Urbis Mediolani, 
 Historic Patriae, Libri x. Med. 1641, p. 698. In the succeeding pages 
 is a full account of the manner in which Archinto passed into the ser- 
 vice of the Church, and of his subsequent career. His success, says 
 Ripamontius, was so great, that " ad consilia negotiaque omnia adhi- 
 bebatur, et gravissimi cujusque consilii author ipse erat." Ibid. p. 704. 
 
 2 De Sapientia, &c. p. 425. The same authority will cover the re- 
 mainder of the paragraph. 
 
142 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Pope's liking for astronomy, and therefore took pains to 
 suit the humour of his Holiness with two books, of which 
 one was a Supplement to the Almanacs, the other was a 
 sensible technical work, with a title that might be con- 
 sidered startling " Emendation of the Celestial Move- 
 ments, by Jerome Cardan." They were both written in 
 fifteen days, and duly taken by Archinto; but they pro- 
 duced no supplement to the poor scholar's income, or emen- 
 dation of his daily fare. He spent the other two months 
 of his holidays in the preparation of an elaborate work 
 on Arithmetic, which occupied his mind so thoroughly 
 that problems and solutions filled his very dreams. Thus 
 even in his dreams he found hints for his book; and 
 the subject being thus suggested to him, an inquiry into 
 the subject of dreams, and a treatise upon them, closed the 
 year. 
 
 Cardan was thirty-five years old, and up to this date, 
 though an indefatigable author from his youth up, not a 
 sentence of his writings had been printed. At last, how- 
 ever, the great day was near when for the first time he 
 should talk to the whole world in print, and ascertain 
 whether he could really make it worth men's while to 
 pay attention to his talking. 
 
 Mention was made in a former chapter of a college 
 friend, Ottaviano Scoto 1 , to whom Jerome had lent some 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 29. De Lib. Propr. Lib. ult. 
 Opera, Tom. i. p. 102, for the succeeding narrative. 
 
A PRINTER FOUND. 143 
 
 early essays, and who had lost them. He was a pallid 
 youth, one of the few old companions whose friendship 
 Cardan afterwards desired, avoiding richer and more 
 powerful associates. Octavian paid absolute homage in 
 his friendship to the stronger mind of Jerome, adhered to 
 him through good and ill report, believed implicitly in 
 his great talents, and loved him with the utmost warmth 
 of youthful friendship. By the death of his father in 
 Venice, this believing friend, Ottaviano Scoto, became 
 master of a printing-office. 
 
 Then Cardan dusted his manuscript about the Bad 
 Method of Practice among Physicians, and opened his 
 heart to Scoto. If he could only prove to the Milanese 
 that he was not the worse physician for his knowledge of 
 geometry, a better day might shine into his chambers. 
 If he could only print his book ! The distant hope of 
 a great good, to attain which the poor philosopher had 
 sighed so long in vain, seemed but a trifle in accomplish- 
 ment. " What you propose is a light matter," said the 
 sanguine printer, who took cheerfully all risk of publica- 
 tion on himself. "And if," he added, "I knew that I 
 was to lose all my outlay on it, I would still print the 
 volume for your sake. I think, however, that it will be 
 no great venture." The book De Malo Medendi Usu 
 was therefore printed at Venice, in 1536, Scoto alone 
 correcting the proofs, because there were no ready or 
 
144 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 cheap means of communication between Venice and 
 Milan. 
 
 It was a clever book, denouncing seventy-two errors in 
 practice. Such errors were the total denial of wine to 
 the sick 1 , the denial of fish, and the allowance of flesh to 
 people sick of fever 2 , the belief prevalent in many quar- 
 ters that there could be found one mode of cure for all 
 diseases 3 , and the doctrine that no patient should be bled 
 while suffering under acute pain 4 a woful sentence to 
 some sentence of death, for example, to the man tor- 
 mented by the agonies of an acute inflammation of the 
 peritoneum. He taught that to do nothing with physic 
 was much better than to do too much, and urged the 
 great number of things that have to be considered before 
 a man desiring to act rightly should set his hand to a 
 prescription 5 . The book was clever, and was of a kind 
 to meet with rapid sale. 
 
 It did sell rapidly, but its appearance plunged the luck- 
 less author into new distress. It had not been long sub- 
 ject to criticism before Cardan was made aware of so 
 many petty faults in matter, style, and grammar, that any 
 pride he may have himself had in his work when he sent 
 
 1 De Malo Medendi Usu (Venet. 1536), cap. vi. p. 13. 
 
 2 Ibid. cap. x. p. 18. 3 Ibid. cap. xiv. p. 22. 
 * Ibid. cap. xl. p. 48. 
 
 5 So he defines the spirit of the book in his second work, De Libris 
 Propriis, p. 29. 
 
AGAINST THE STREAM. 145 
 
 it to the press was altogether humbled 1 . Many years after- 
 wards, when he re-issued the work with the number of 
 its sections increased to a hundred, having spent twenty- 
 eight days in correcting what he had written in fifteen, 
 he refers in this way to its first appearance : " I blush to 
 acknowledge that there were more than even three hun- 
 dred blunders of mine in this book, exclusive of mis- 
 prints. And I long since had it in my mind to blot it 
 out from the number of my offspring : but to that course 
 there was the objection of a certain special usefulness con- 
 nected with it, by which it had been made so saleable that 
 in its second year the printer would have issued it again 
 to the public if I had not resisted his desire." 
 
 But the sound part of the book which, in many points, 
 condemned and opposed prevailing practices, of course 
 received from the doctors of Milan, hostile enough already, 
 the strongest condemnation and opposition. The cry was 
 raised against its author that he did not practice his 
 profession, and it was asked, how then could he presume 
 to teach it to the men who did 2 . The unlucky title of 
 his book was quoted constantly against him, and if any- 
 body thought of seeking medical assistance from Jerome 
 
 1 See the dedication to the revised issue of the book, Opera, Tom. 
 Tii. 
 
 2 " In artis autem operibus negligerer, cur erat ut alios docere 
 vellem." De Libris Propr. (ed. 1557) p. 29. "Et modum alium me- 
 dendi observans ex titulo libri nuper edito, jam prope ab omnibus 
 habebar," p. 32. 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 JEKOME CAKDAN. 
 
 Cardan, it could be urged against him not only that he 
 was not recognised by the local College of Physicians, 
 but that he was an eccentric man who would imperil the 
 lives of his patients by rash crotchets of his own. He was 
 a poor man, maddened by poverty, struggling against men 
 high in repute and rich. He was a young man complain- 
 ing of his elders 1 . Rivals and enemies looked grave and 
 shrugged their shoulders, merely pointing out that the 
 author of a book " On the Bad Practice of Medicine in 
 Common Use" might have a better practice of his own; 
 but from the very title of his work it was obvious as 
 the public generally could but admit that he opposed 
 singly the experience and learning of the whole profes- 
 sion. He, too, a young man, who, as they all knew, was 
 a lecturer upon geography, geometry, arithmetic, and 
 
 architecture. 
 
 1 De Libris Propr. (ed. 1557) p. 30. I must quote part of his own 
 account of the misfortunes that attended this first literary venture: 
 " Sed et longe aliter commodum, quod expectabamus ex illis libellis, nam 
 non parvam retardationem attulit ad gloriam in arte consequendam. 
 Nacti nanque aemuli ex argumento libri occasionem, dicebant, Nunquid 
 modo dubitatis hunc insanire? aliumque medendi modum aliamque, 
 quam nos, medicinam profiteri, cum in tot rebus ritum nostrum accuset? 
 Itaque merito, ut dicebat Galenus, qui tot insanientibus contradicere 
 niterer, insanire visus sum: cum enim necessarium esset me vel illos 
 aberrare quis mihi crederet contra tot probatos usu viros, divites, senes 
 magna ex parte, nee mediocriter eruditos, cultos restibus, ornatos 
 moribus, facundia vulgari prseditos, amicis atque affinitatibus potentes, 
 auraque populari in sublime elatos, inde, quod maximum erat, tot 
 artibus ad cavendum ad fallendumque instructos. Ego vero pannosus, 
 ita ut mihi non conveniret illud, Vestibus inquam homini surgit bona 
 fama decusque. Itaque egregio hoc meo invento pene fame perii." 
 
FAILURE OF THE FIRST BOOK. 147 
 
 And this was all that had resulted from the book 
 written and printed with so much hope of a happy issue. 
 It was to have led the way to sick-beds, by the proof it 
 would afford that he who wrote it had thought soundly 
 and deeply as a practical physician. It was to have 
 brought to him the first honours of public authorship. 
 "But where I looked for honour," said Cardan, "I 
 reaped nothing but shame 1 ." The book damaged him in 
 every respect, but one. It had satisfied the printer, who 
 derived a profit from its sale. It had been bought to be 
 abused; the printer rejoiced, while the author grieved. 
 Ottaviano Scoto, satisfied with his experience, held his 
 type still at the service of the poor philosopher, and so at 
 any rate one difficulty had been overcome. 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 102. 
 
 
 L2 
 
148 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PHYSIC AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A MAGPIE in the court-yard chattered more than 
 usual on the last day of November, 1536. Cardan knew, 
 therefore, that something was about tq happen. He ex- 
 pected news or an arrival, and was not deceived, for on 
 the evening of that day Lodovico Ferrari was brought to 
 his house as a famulus 1 . Lodovico, then a boy of fifteen, 
 was brought by his uncle Vincent from Bologna. The ser- 
 vant, full of talent, soon became a pupil and a friend. He, 
 of all Cardan's pupils, was the one who lived to be after- 
 wards the most distinguished, inasmuch as the natural bent 
 of his mind easily caused him to share Cardan's own very 
 decided taste for mathematics, and he had power enough 
 as he grew older to think onward for himself, and earn 
 for his name though he died young a permanent place 
 in the records of that science. 
 
 Not very long afterwards, it happened that there came 
 to Milan a tall, lean man, with a sallow skin and hollow 
 eyes, awkward in manner, slow in movement, sparing of 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, p. 214. Vita L. Ferrarii Bononiensis, a H. Car- 
 dano Descripta. Op. Tom. ix. p. 568. 
 
LODOVICO FERRARI. 149 
 
 his words, a great mathematician. He was a native of 
 Brescia, and his name was Zuanne da Coi 1 . He brought 
 word to Milan that there had been discovered two new 
 algebraic rules, for the solution of problems of a certain 
 kind that concerned cubes and numbers. " I asked," 
 said Cardan, "by whom?" " By Scipio Ferreus of 
 Bologna," he replied. " Who is possessed of them?" He 
 said, "Nicolo Tartaglia and Antonio Maria Fior; but 
 Tartaglia, when he came to Milan, taught them to me, 
 though unwillingly enough." Then Jerome continues, 
 " When I had thoroughly looked into those matters with 
 Lodovico Ferrari, we not only .made out the two new 
 demonstrations, but discovered in addition a great num- 
 ber of others, so that I founded upon them a book on the 
 Great Art." Of his skill in algebra Cardan was justly 
 proud ; it was the department of knowledge in which he 
 displayed perhaps the most remarkable evidences of his 
 intellectual power. One of his processes, upon which we 
 shall hereafter dwell, is still known by his name in mathe- 
 matics. The researches prompted by Zuanne da Coi had 
 some influence, perhaps, upon the character of Jerome's 
 second venture into print, which was a step towards that 
 book of the great art about which much will hereafter be 
 said. 
 
 i De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 36. De Libr. Prop. Lib. ult. 
 Opera, Tom. i. p. 103. 
 
150 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 His second publication did not, however, follow very 
 rapidly upon his first abortive effort for success. There 
 were other enterprises to engage his mind, and author- 
 ship did not appear to be a happy way of courting 
 fortune. Towards the end of the year 1536 at about 
 the same time when Ferrari came to him he was invited 
 to teach medicine publicly at Pa via, but declined the 
 offer, because he did not clearly see from what source he 
 was to derive a stipend 1 . Soon afterwards, still in the 
 same year, letters from his friend Archinto (to whom, of 
 course, he had dedicated his first book) summoned him to 
 Placentia, where it was hoped that he might find oppor- 
 tunity of pushing his fortunes by acquiring for himself 
 the active good-will of Pope Paul III. 3 Archinto, how- 
 ever, had prepared the way for him in vain. An ungainly 
 and plain-spoken philosopher was not the man to make 
 way at a papal court. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that those who would have re- 
 coiled most certainly from a mere clumsy cynic, men who 
 had not unlearnt the generosities of youth, who had come 
 newly with fresh hearts and stirring minds into the 
 market of the world, men like Archinto, were almost the 
 only people who held out to the unrecognised philosopher 
 their helping hands. Such a friend Jerome found at 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, p. 19. 2 De Sapientia, &c. p. 425. 
 
SEEKING FORTUNE. 151 
 
 Placentia in the young and handsome Brissac (Marshal 
 Cosse), there serving as lieutenant to the King of France, 
 and already famous for his gallantries 1 . Brissac was four 
 years younger than Cardan a man delicate and beauti- 
 ful, but agile and robust; at the siege of Naples he had 
 singly taken prisoner a knight in armour, though he was 
 himself on foot without the defence of casque or cuirass, 
 having no weapon but a sword. Brissac had taste and 
 scholarship, with a quick sympathy to feel the merits 
 of Cardan ; he therefore besieged Louis Birague, com- 
 mander of the French infantry in Italy, with petitions on 
 behalf of the poor scholar. The -hopes of Jerome were 
 excited very much, but there was nothing done. 
 
 He went home therefore to his family at Milan, re- 
 sumed his harness as an unsuccessful and, so far as the 
 Milanese College was concerned, illegal practitioner, 
 wrote more books, prepared more lectures, and continued 
 the instruction of his apt young pupil Lodovico. 
 
 Among the few patients whom Cardan attended, there 
 was a certain Count Camillo Borromeo, whom he had 
 cured of a serious disorder ; but because Jerome declined 
 to sit up a whole night with him when he was troubled 
 with some other ailment, the mean-spirited count had 
 carried his complaints about the town: " Therefore," says 
 
 i De Vita Propria, p. 20. " Erat enim Brisaccus Prorex singularis 
 in studiosos amoris et humanitatis." 
 
152 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 the offended physician, "I had left the man." But 
 chancing afterwards to pass, he was called in to look at a 
 sick nurse, whom in two days he cured; soon afterwards 
 the count's only child, a boy of seven, being ill, Jerome 
 was urgently invited to attend. Now it so happened that 
 on the preceding night that dreamy sage had been 
 troubled with a complex vision of a snake, which, as he 
 thought, portended danger to himself. When therefore 
 he went to Borromeo's house and found the child's pulse 
 pausing after every four beats, he said to himself, though 
 the disease seems light this boy will die. Having then 
 written a prescription, which contained one powerful 
 ingredient, and placed it in the hands of a messenger who 
 was about to take it to a shop to be made up, his dream 
 suddenly recurred to him. Its application was made very 
 obvious by the fact that Borromeo having added a snake 
 to his arms, possessed a country-house painted over with 
 vipers. The boy will die, he thought, and as the present 
 ailment seems to be so light, if it be found that any 
 active drug has been administered, it will be said after his 
 death that I have killed him. He therefore called back 
 the messenger, and substituted for his first prescription 
 another, containing only the most harmless ingredients 1 . 
 
 i " Medicamentum quod vocatur Diarob, cum Turbit, propinare in 
 morsulis decreveram: et jam conscripseram, et nuncius ad pharmaco- 
 polam ire caeperat, recorder somnii, 'Quiscio,' mecum dixi, <ne hie 
 puer moriturus ex signo prsescripto ' revoco nuncium, qui non- 
 
COUNT BOEROMEO'S CHILD. 153 
 
 But he predicted to the mother the boy's death. Other 
 physicians who were summoned spoke more hopefully, 
 and after the death had really taken place, gratified their 
 jealous dislike by secretly asserting that the mathema- 
 tician had not understood the boy's complaint. They 
 were unable, however, to say that his medicine had been 
 of a kind to cause or hasten any fatal issue. So he 
 avoided, through attention to the warning dream, great 
 danger to himself, because if Count Borromeo had 
 believed that the loss of his one child was caused by 
 a prescription, he would certainly have killed the doctor 
 who had written it. Many indeed 'at that time heard so 
 much ill spoken of Cardan, that it appeared to them 
 as though it would be but a just thing to kill him, if 
 the law were not so undiscriminating as to protect even 
 lives like his. Borromeo never ceased to alleviate his 
 grief for his lost child by curses loud, frequent, and 
 public, upon his physician. As for the general public of 
 Milan, it had come to the conclusion that the Plat 
 lecturer was mad, through poverty. 
 
 The luckless author, greatly vexed at the large number 
 of misprints which had disfigured his first publication, 
 
 dum quatuor passibus ab ostio aberat, dico deesse quippiam quod addere 
 vellem, lacero priusfactum, clam, et aliud scribo e margaritis, osse 
 monocerotis, gemrais. Datur pulvis evomit," &c. De Vita Propria, 
 p. 148. For some of the details in the text, see also De Libris Propriis 
 (1537), p. 31, and Synesiorum Somniorum, Lib. IT, cap. 4. Opera, 
 Tom. v. p. 724. 
 
154 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 issued a new example of his skill as a philosopher, printed 
 at Milan under his own eye, either in the same year 1536, 
 or in the year succeeding 1 . It was printed also at his 
 own expense, and as he was in no condition to sustain a 
 heavy charge, it was but a work consisting of five leaves, 
 upon judicial astrology. His neighbours cried him down 
 at once for an astrologer; his little venture was again 
 unlucky. 
 
 A touch of superstition belongs also to this as to every 
 period of Jerome's life. It happened in the year 1536, 
 about the month of July 2 , when he lived by the Porta 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 40. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, pp. 223, 224. Cardan tells the story at more 
 length. As I desire the few quotations in these notes not simply to 
 justify the text, but also to provide for some readers means of obtaining 
 glimpses of Cardan himself, I quote this little narrative in his own 
 words. The tone of natural credulity about it is particularly striking. 
 There is a great deal of agreeable naivete in Jerome's nonsense ; it had 
 more in it of the sick wit of a child than of the gloom of full-grown 
 superstition. " Ergo anno MDXXXVI. cum habitarem in P. Tonsa, erat 
 mensis ni fallor Julii, prodiens & caenaculo in Cortem, sensi maximum 
 odorem cereorem quasi nuper extinctorum; territus voco puerum in- 
 terrogans an quicquam sentiret, ille cum de strepitu intelligeret, nega- 
 bat, Monui non de sono intelligere, sed an odorem perciperet, dixit * O 
 quam magnum sentio cerse odorem,' dixi ' Sile ' et ancillam rogans, et 
 uxorem, omnes mirabantur praster meam matrem quse nil sentiebat, 
 credo gravedine prsepedita : Itaque mortem imminere hoc ostento autu- 
 mans, cum ad lectum contulissem me, non poteram obdormiscere, et 
 ecce aliud prodigium priore majus, in via publica grunnientes sues, 
 cum nulli ibi essent, inde anates similiter obstrepentes : Quid hoc mihi, 
 et unde tot monstra? Et anates cur ad sues veniunt ? qui tota nocte 
 grunnientes perseverarunt. Mane tot visis perculsus, nesciebam quid 
 agerem : vagabar extra urbem a prandio : et rediens domum, video 
 matrem quae me hortabatur ut properarem, ictum fulmine vicinum lo. 
 Prsefectum alias pestilentiae : Hunc ferebant cum xii. ante annis ei 
 
A DREADFUL SMELL. 155 
 
 Tonsa, that as he went out of his door one evening, 
 after supper, he perceived a smell as of extinguished 
 tapers. He called out his household, and the smell was 
 recognised by all except his mother, whose nose was dis- 
 abled by a cold, and it was thought by all that such 
 a smell must certainly be ominous of something. That 
 night the physician was continually disturbed by a 
 strange sound as of sows and geese outside. When 
 morning came, Cardan went out to wander in the fields, 
 very solicitous about these omens. On his return he was 
 hurried off to see a neighbour a man of no very good 
 character, reputed to have been a ' thief in the office he 
 had once held as prefect of the plague who had been 
 struck by lightning. He proved to be dead, and so the 
 meaning of the presages became quite clear to the philo- 
 sopher. " After my neighbour's death," he says, " my 
 mind was easy." 
 
 Work of the pen in the mean time went on. Seized by 
 a bold idea, Jerome brought his astrology to bear on the 
 Nativity of Our Lord, and began a Life of Christ con- 
 firmatory of his horoscope 1 . He wrote also three medical 
 
 muneri vacaret, quod pestilentia saeviret, multa rapuisse: concubinam 
 habebat, nee exomologesim subibat : forsan et alia pejora admiserat : 
 erat autem vicinus, ut non intercederet nisi domuncula, vidi et cognovi 
 esse mortuum prorsus, tune liberatus sum a cura, illius obitm" 
 
 1 " Succedente anno" (f. e. 1539) " tres libros de Christi vita super- 
 auxi. qui jam an tea per triennium erant inchoati." De Sapientia, &e. 
 ad fin. The first book treated of bis Birth, the second of his Life, the 
 third of his Laws. ^T, 
 
 . 
 
156 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 tracts, and began a work on the Arcana of Eternity, de- 
 signing thereby to please the Marquis Avalos, a governor 
 of Milan, who had shown some friendliness towards the 
 poor wise man whom so few heeded. 
 
 Alphonso d' Avalos 1 , Marchese del Guasto, was another 
 of the young and clever men who could recognise and 
 enjoy the vigour of a genius that repelled the prim and 
 vulgar by its eccentricities. He was a year younger than 
 Cardan, the son of Inigo d' Avalos, and going early out to 
 war was, at the age of twenty-one, present at the battle of 
 Bicoque. From the subsequent contests in the Milanese, 
 to which reference has been made often in preceding 
 pages, he had been rarely or never absent. After the 
 death of Antonio Seva he had been appointed general 
 
 1 I have seen it somewhere stated that there is a MS. life of this 
 D' Avalos in one of the Italian libraries, I think at Florence. In a note 
 appended to his name in Roscoe's memoirs of Cellini, it is said that he 
 was " the son of the great Ferdinando d' Avalos, Marquis of Pescara." 
 In the Biographic Universelle he is called his nephew. Ferdinand was 
 his cousin. The first of the family it belonged to Navarre who came 
 to Italy, was Inigo, first of the name. He following Alphonso V. of 
 Arragon to Naples, married a sister of the Marquis Pescara, who hap- 
 pened to be heir to his estates. In this way he acquired great wealth and 
 a new title. Of the three sons of that couple, one died single, and two, 
 Alphonso and Inigo II., married. " The great Ferdinand" was the son 
 of Alphonso, and inherited through him the title of Pescara. The 
 Avalos connected with the life of Cardan was the son of Inigo II., and 
 inherited from him the Marquisate del Guasto. See Imhof Geneal- 
 Ital. et Hisp. and the article on the Avalos family in Zedler's Universal 
 Lexicon oiler Wissenschaften und Kilnste, vol. ii. col. 20938. This 
 old German Lexicon is a repertory of minute facts and references to 
 authorities concerning half-forgotten things and people, through which 
 I have had easy access to much valuable information. 
 
THE PATRON D'AVALOS. 157 
 
 and governor in Milan. In the year 1535 he joined the 
 expedition of the Emperor to Tunis, and obtained mili- 
 tary promotion. D'Avalos was by no means a man of the 
 best stamp. He was clever, but unscrupulous ; in words 
 and ways fond of display. He sought the smiles of ladies 
 as a dandy, and in that character was probably unequalled 
 in his time and country. His dress was elaborate, and he 
 perfumed not only his own person, but even the saddle 
 upon which he rode. In the year 1536 his patronage of 
 Jerome was but nominal. Four years afterwards, how- 
 ever, the marquis was sent by the emperor as chief am- 
 bassador to Venice; and before that time, on the recom- 
 mendation of an influential friend, Jerome had come to be 
 numbered and paid among the members of his suite. He 
 had worked, however, for the great man's favour had 
 gone courting to him ; and in one of his works he relates 
 incidentally his regret that he was troubled with a severe 
 cold at a time when he was in furtherance of his suit 
 assiduously paying to the great man evening visits. He 
 put his feet, however, in hot water, took Cassia Nigra, and 
 in three days got rid of the ungraceful huskiness 1 . 
 
 The name of this patron will recur several times as the 
 narrative proceeds, and I know no better way of giving a 
 
 1 " Opprimebar aliquando Coll. nostri auctoritate. . . . coactus sum 
 principis Alphonsi amicitiam colere, id faciebam hora vespertina," &c. 
 De Aqua. Opera, Tom. ii. p. 585. 
 
158 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 preliminary insight into his character than by carrying on 
 to the end this brief sketch of his life. D' Avalos, while 
 at Venice, treacherously murdered two French ambassa- 
 dors, in order to obtain possession of their papers. In 
 1544 he lost the battle of Cerisoles, in Piedmont, being 
 the first man to take flight, although he had set out with 
 the boast that he would bring home the young Duke of 
 Anjou as a plaything for the dames of Milan. He had 
 also taken with him on his march four thousand chains, 
 with which he was to bind Frenchmen to the galleys. 
 The unexpected reverse preyed upon his mind ; never re- 
 covering from his chagrin he was taken ill, and died in 
 the year 1546, ten years after the date from which this 
 narrative has wandered. 
 
 While these facts are told against him, it should also be 
 said that Alphonso d' Avalos used his great wealth in such 
 a way as to merit the commendation of all churchmen 
 and men of letters, for he was a lavish patron, as Cardan 
 well knew, when he cultivated his good-will. At first he 
 had been military governor of the Milanese district, 
 Cardinal Caraccioli being the civil governor of the town. 
 After the cardinal's death no successor was appointed, and 
 D' Avalos was supreme. "His mild rule," wrote a 
 Milanese churchman while his memory was green, " re- 
 vived the province; and he was so liberal in sacred things 
 that he in some degree made good the loss occasioned by 
 
D'AVALOS. 159 
 
 the absence of an archbishop 1 .'* "He was a man," says 
 the same authority, " of the most polished manners, 
 studious of the fine arts, high minded, prodigal of his own 
 wealth, and little greedy of the wealth of others 2 ." All 
 that was said evil of him was ascribed to the malignity of 
 his enemies, who added to the grief of his last days by 
 causing the Emperor to demand an oversight of his 
 accounts. After his death at Vigevano he was brought 
 to Milan, and buried publicly in the cathedral, with ora- 
 tions, and all honours that the clergy could bestow upon 
 him. 
 
 It was at the end of the year 1536 then, during the 
 vacation, that, to please this marquis, Jerome began a 
 book on the Arcana of Eternity. In the year 1537 he 
 being then thirty-six years old the world still used him 
 ill, and prompted him to write two works 3 , one upon 
 Wisdom, one on Consolation philosophic shields against 
 the outer miseries of life. In the same year he proved 
 himself a true philosopher by burning about nine books 
 that he had written upon various subjects, because they 
 seemed to him on re-perusal empty and unprofitable. 
 His manuscripts had accumulated into a great farrago, 
 chiefly of medical papers, and he destroyed so much that 
 
 1 Kipamontius Chronistoe Urb. Med. (ed. cit.) p. 725. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 710, 
 
 3 DeLibrig Propriis (1557), p. 39. 
 
160 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 there remained whole little beside his printed work, and 
 the materials belonging to the treatise on arithmetic, 
 which he proposed to publish soon, if possible. 
 
 The work written for D'Avalos on the Arcana of 
 Eternity was kept afterwards unpublished by the 
 Church, but Cardan himself liked it, and quotes the 
 headings of the chapters 1 . The work would have been a 
 curiosity had it come down to us ; only a fragment, how- 
 ever, is preserved. It was divided into seven books. 
 The first treated of God and the origin of what we 
 should call the Cosmos the number of worlds and their 
 magnitude. The second book discussed the constitution 
 of the divine world which was called intelligible, or im- 
 material ; the third was on the constitution of the sensible 
 or material world ; the fourth book was on the order of 
 human things; the fifth on the succession of things 
 natural; the sixth on the succession of things human; and 
 the seventh on the end of the world to which those suc- 
 cessions lead. The subjects of the chapters in each book 
 are communicated to us, but it will suffice here to quote, 
 by way of illustration, half a dozen of the heads under 
 which Jerome treated of things human. They were of 
 this kind : On the Likeness between the World and Man 
 and on the Equal Distribution of Parts; on Sense and 
 Memory; on Contemplation; on Numbers; on Virtue 
 1 De Libris Propriis (1557), pp. 4251. 
 
THE ARCANA OF ETERNITY. 161 
 
 and Sin; on Happiness; on the question, Are Assemblies 
 worthier than Individuals? on the Existence of some 
 Truth in all Falsehood, and of some Falsehood in all 
 Truth; on the Necessity, Uses, and Harms of Law. 
 There must have "been no little boldness and originality 
 of treatment in a book of this kind written by Cardan; 
 but as it was not to be published, I must say no more of 
 it, and turn to works with which the world at large be- 
 came acquainted. 
 
 When he sought fame in print as a physician, he had 
 been told that he was only qualified to write on Mathe- 
 matics. Well, he would publish next a work on Mathe- 
 matics; upon that subject also he had new ideas to com- 
 municate. Should he be honoured as a prophet then by his 
 compatriots? The Milanese physicians still rejected him. 
 In 1537, Jerome humbled himself again to petition for 
 admission to their college. He had, indeed, for a short 
 time consented to what he considered a dishonourable ad- 
 justment of his quarrel with them. The truce did not 
 last long, and he was again formally rejected 1 . In the 
 same year, however, a new patient was obtained, whose 
 friendship gave him hope of better days. Anxiously 
 must they have been desired by Lucia, who had by this 
 time two children to support; the second child a daughter, 
 Clara, having been born in the preceding year 2 . 
 
 1 De Vit. Propr. p. 147. 
 
 3 De Vita Propr. p. 20. The date is inferred readily from the state- 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 JEROME CARD AN. 
 
 In the preceding year his household was increased, his 
 daughter Clara had been born; and in that year, 1537, of 
 which we now speak, his household was diminished, for 
 it was then that his mother Clara died 1 . While she lay 
 awaiting death, Jerome of course had all his senses open 
 for the perception of some sign or omen. Once in the 
 night he heard a mysterious tapping, as of the fall 
 of water-drops upon a pavement, and he counted nearly 
 one hundred and twenty distinct raps. He was in doubt, 
 however, as to their significance, or whether they were 
 indeed spiritual manifestations, for they appeared to pro- 
 ceed from a point to the right of him, in contradiction to 
 all doctrine concerning portents of cakmity. He be- 
 lieved, therefore, that fe perhaps one of his servants might 
 be practising on his anxiety." But for the purpose of 
 assuring his faith in the genuineness of the supernatural 
 communication that he had received, the raps were re- 
 peated he supposed that they could have been repeated 
 only for that purpose on the next day when the sun was 
 high, and he, being up and awake, could assure himself 
 that nobody was near him. There were then fifteen 
 strokes; he counted them. Afterwards he heard in the 
 night a heavy sound as of the unloading of a waggonful 
 
 ment there incidentally made that his daughter was two years younger 
 than his eldest son. 
 
 1 " MDXXXVII, cum mater obiit, . . . ." Paralipomenon. Lib. ii. 
 cap. xxj. Opera, Tom. x. p. 471. 
 
A MOTHER DEAD A DAUGHTER BORN. 163 
 
 of planks. It caused the bed to tremble. After these 
 events his mother died; but Jerome adds: " Of the signi- 
 fication of the noises I am ignorant 1 ." 
 
 Turning from death to sickness, we revert to the new 
 patient from whose friendship better days were to be 
 hoped. There was a druggist named Donato Lanza 2 , 
 who had been cured by Cardan of a spitting of blood 
 with which he had been for many years afflicted, and 
 who therefore looked up to his benefactor as the most 
 eminent of all physicians. He having the ear of a distin- 
 guished senator, deep in the counsels of the emperor, 
 Francisco Sfondrato, of Cremona, often endeavoured to 
 persuade 'him that he would do well to obtain Jerome 
 Cardan's opinion upon the condition of his eldest son. 
 The boy suffered for many months from puerile con- 
 vulsions, and was to be counted rather among the dead 
 
 1 De Vita Propr. p. 224. The spirit-rappers of the present day are 
 welcome to the exact text: " Cum mater esset in extremis, experrectus, 
 et illucescente altius sole, videos et nihil videns XT. ictus (illos enim 
 numeravi) audivi, quasi aquae guttatim in pavimento cadentis, nocte 
 autem praecedente, circiter cxx. prope numeravi, sed dubitaveram, quod 
 hos a dextril sentirem, ne quis domesticorum mini anxio illuderet, ut hi 
 ictus non viderentur in die contigisse, nisi ut nocturnis fidem facerent. 
 Paulo post ictum quasi curris tabulis onusti simul se exonerantis, 
 supra laquearia sensi, tremente cubiculo. Mortua est ut dixi mater, 
 ictuum significatum ignoro." 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis (1557), pp. 123130, for the next story, and for 
 the two cases afterwards narrated. The account of the introduction to 
 Sfondrato is amplified from another narrative of the same facts in the 
 De Vita Prop. pp. 188192. 
 
 M2 
 
164 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 than among the living, being distorted, and imbecile both 
 of mind and body; yet in time he did recover. Then a 
 younger son of the same senator was attacked in the ninth 
 or tenth month of his life by fever. Sfondrato's old 
 friend and family physician, Luca della Croce, was called 
 in, a very respectable man, procurator of the College of 
 Physicians, which inscribed also Sfondrato among its 
 patrons. Luca's brother Annibale had even thrown some 
 lustre of scholarship about the family name, by writing 
 Latin poems and translating Statius badly. The same 
 Annibale we shall presently find furnishing half a dozen 
 recommendatory verses to Cardan's next publication. 
 Luca della Croce saw the child, and promised fairly for it, 
 as became a well-spoken physician ; but sharp convulsions 
 suddenly set in, and made it fit that there should be fur- 
 ther advice taken and formal consultation held upon the 
 case. Luca proposed to summon Ambrose Cavenega, one 
 of the leading members of the faculty in Milan, holding 
 rank as imperial first physician, a man whose eminence 
 Jerome had acknowledged by dedicating to him, with 
 high compliment (little esteemed), the small tract upon 
 simple Medicaments added to his book on the Bad 
 Practice of Doctors. Sfondrato being entitled by usage 
 to name the third voice in the consultation, remembering 
 all that had been said to him by Donate Lanza, proposed 
 that they should meet Jerome Cardan. 
 
A CONSULTATION OF PHYSICIANS. 165 
 
 At the second hour of the day it was summer time 
 the three physicians were assembled at the bedside, the 
 father of the patient being present. Delia Croce was 
 the first to express his opinion, then Cardan followed, 
 Cavenega being the last speaker, as the senior man. 
 Cardan said: i( This is a case of opisthotonos." The first 
 physician stared, for he had never heard the word before. 
 It is a word still commonly used in medicine to express 
 the excessive action of one class of muscles by which limbs 
 or body are curved backwards. Delia Croce said: " How 
 can you ascertain that ?" Cardan showed how the child's 
 head was forcibly held back, and could not be pulled 
 forwards into natural position. Delia Croce lauded 
 courteously his discernment. Said the father then to 
 Jerome, " You appear to know what the disease is, do 
 you know also how it can be remedied ?" Cardan 
 turned to his colleagues, and proceeded glibly to quote 
 aphorisms of Hippocrates concerning fever and convul- 
 sions. The colleagues, conscious that there could result 
 only loss of dignity from any words of quarrel, flattered 
 the unrecognised physician with some praise, and left to 
 him the treatment of the case. He ordered a light 
 milk diet, by denying the nurse meat, prescribed fomen- 
 tations and external application of linseed oil and lilies, 
 ordered the infant to be kept in a warm room and gently 
 rocked to sleep. 
 
166 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Afterwards, when Jerome was alone beside his patient, 
 Sfondrato said to him : " I give you this child for a son." 
 Jerome was astonished. " Consider him your own," said 
 the senator ; " do with him as you would with your own 
 child. Do not concern yourself about the other doctors. 
 Let them be offended if they will." Cardan replied, that it 
 was his desire to act as their ally, and to receive assistance 
 from them in the case, of which the issue could be only 
 doubtful. His course of treatment was, however, followed, 
 and the child recovered in four days. The father reflected 
 that under the care of Delia Croce his eldest child had 
 lain six months uncured, and so came to the abrupt con- 
 clusion that Donato Lanza had with reason praised Jerome 
 Cardan to him as the , most skilful of the Milanese 
 physicians. The senator Sfondrato who became after- 
 wards a cardinal abided by Cardan from that time for- 
 ward as a good patient and a faithful patron. 
 
 Having made up his mind emphatically on the subject 
 of Cardan, and distinctly weighed against him Delia Croce 
 and Cavenega, Sfondrato began to reflect upon his friend's 
 position in relation to the College of Physicians. Delia 
 Croce was the procurator ; Cavenega had openly declared 
 that he could not praise merit in a man who was disowned 
 by the faculty ; the senator formed, therefore, at once a 
 strong opinion that the exclusion of Cardan from their 
 body by the Milanese physicians was the consequence 
 
A NEW PATRON SFONDRATO. 167 
 
 not of his illegitimate birth, but of his dreaded superiority 
 of genius. Sfondrato, feeling warmly the wrong done 
 to the poor lecturer, narrated his own experience of 
 Jerome's skill to the whole senate, engaged on his behalf 
 the interest of the Marquis d'Avalos, and of other minis- 
 ters and men robed in the purple of authority. Would 
 the physicians remain obdurate ? 
 
 I add here one or two other examples of Cardan's 
 medical practice which belong to this part of his career. 
 Branda Scoto, brother to Ottaviano, from whose press the 
 Bad Practice of Doctors had issued, being, like his 
 brother, a familiar friend, took Jerome to see Martha 
 Mott, a woman of thirty, who lived in the Via Sozza. 
 She had been for thirteen years confined to a chair by an 
 ulcer in the left leg, which limb was too weak to support 
 her. She had also flying pains, and a general wasting of 
 the body. After two years, under Cardan's treatment, she 
 retained nothing to remind her of her disease but a limp 
 in walking. Twenty years afterwards she was a healthy 
 married woman. 
 
 A tradesman, Jerome Tibbold, was induced, by what 
 he heard of the preceding case, to apply to Cardan for the 
 cure of his own cough, attended by spitting of blood and 
 matter. He was wasted by consumption. Under the new 
 doctor's care he got to all appearance well, and became 
 fat. The physicians said that he could not have had true 
 
168 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 consumption, or the man would not have recovered. 
 When Jerome had healed several in this way, he ventured 
 to write that he had cured people who suffered from con- 
 sumption and oppression of the breath. But as far as 
 concerns the consumptives, he tells us, " the physicians 
 spoke untruly who declared them to be afflicted by dis- 
 eases of another kind, and I spoke untruly in saying that 
 they were healed. But what I wrote was written in good 
 faith, for I was deceived by hope." After five years, for 
 example, in the case of Tibbold, Cardan explains that the 
 deceptive show of health broke down. Having returned 
 from church upon a holiday in rainy weather, he did not 
 change his wet clothes, but spent the entire night in 
 gambling. His complaint then returned upon him with a 
 fatal violence. He had been once apparently cured by 
 Cardan, once afterwards by another person, but so at last 
 he died of the disease. Upon close inquiry, Jerome was 
 informed by the widow that her husband's cough had at 
 no period been quite removed. Donate Lanza himself, 
 who had considered himself to have been cured by Cardan 
 of a consumption, a few weeks after he had introduced 
 him to Sfondrato, being sought by the authorities for some 
 offence, jumped out of window and fell into a fish-pond, 
 where he brought on himself a recurrence of his malady, 
 and speedy death. 
 
 Plainer acknowledgment of error could not be made, 
 
ASSUMED CUKES OF CONSUMPTION. 169 
 
 and if Jerome afterwards, handling himself roughly as 
 usual, declares that an important step in his life was 
 determined by the lie he told about the healing of con- 
 sumptive patients, and that he never profited so much by 
 any single truth as by that falsehood 1 , he certainly shows 
 no decrease of candour. Yet mendacity in this instance 
 was one of the great charges made against poor Jerome by 
 his first posthumous critic of any note, Gabriel Naude 2 , 
 who has been followed thoughtlessly by later writers. 
 Bits of truth are the basis of error. Dreadful accounts of 
 Cardan have been founded upon isolated passages found 
 in his works ; but from a scrutiny of all the statements 
 made by him about himself, arranged and collated with a 
 fair amount of care, there can result only, as this narrative, 
 if it be worth anything, will show, a confirmation of his 
 claim to be regarded as a scorner of untruth. He does 
 not by any means lay claim to the whole group of car- 
 dinal virtues, but he can see through respectability and 
 all its cheats. It may be as much out of the pride of an 
 ill-used philosopher, as out of the spirit of a Christian, 
 that he speaks the truth, but it is truth that he does 
 always speak, and nothing else. " I think," he says, " that 
 
 1 De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 136. 
 ' 2 " Mendacissimum ilium fuisse deprehendi, et ab hoc vitio reliqua 
 demum velut e fonte promenasse, quae a nonnullis deliramenta vocan- 
 tur, non levibus de causis existimo." Naudaeus in the De Cardani Ju- 
 dicium, prefixed by him to the book De Vita Propria. 
 
170 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 I may call it a virtue never from my youth up to have 
 uttered falsehood 1 ." " Beyond all mortals," he says in 
 another work, " I hate a lie 2 ." And though he has him- 
 self confessed one boyish falsehood, and may have been 
 guilty of dozens while his unformed mind was grow- 
 ing up under corrupt influence, it is not the less consistent 
 with the strongest passion for truth, that Cardan should 
 exclaim out of the energy of manhood, " I do not remem- 
 ber that I ever told a lie, and, to defend my life, I would 
 not do it 3 ." We may accept it, therefore, as a fact, that 
 Jerome always speaks literal truth, and generally speaks 
 his mind in plain words, that are only too unguarded. He 
 does not use even the reservation that is necessary to pre- 
 serve a semblance of consistency before the crowd of casual 
 observers. By making known too much about himself, he 
 only puzzled steady men, with whom it had become a 
 second nature to put out of sight the variations that arise 
 within us all as time runs on, of memory, of mood, and of 
 opinion. 
 
 To these considerations we must, however, add the fact 
 that Jerome was by no means perfect in his ethics. Every 
 honest man now holds that words so purposely contrived 
 as to be true in themselves, but false in the impression 
 
 1 De Vit. Prop. cap. xiv. 
 
 2 De Varietate Rerum, Lib. xvi. cap. 93, p. 635 (ed. Bas. 1557). 
 
 3 "Nos autem non recordamur unquam mendacium dixisse, nee 
 si pro vita tuenda dicendum esset, diceremus." 
 
PLAIN SPEAKING. 171 
 
 they create, are morally identical with lies. I hold them 
 to be worse. A sudden lie may be sometimes only man- 
 slaughter upon truth, but by a carefully constructed 
 equivocation, truth always is with malice aforethought 
 deliberately murdered. The spirit of the Roman Catholic 
 religion in the days when Luther lived, led men to hold 
 a very different opinion on this matter, and Cardan, in 
 his ethical works, has critical chapters on simulation and 
 dissimulation, holding the one to be right, the other 
 wrong. He would disdain to speak untruth, or, indeed, 
 often to suggest it, but he did not think it wrong to cir- 
 cumvent 1 . Three centuries ago that was regarded gene- 
 rally as a lawful and even laudable exercise of ingenuity, 
 if it had any good purpose in view. 
 
 While Francisco Sfondrato was engaged actively on 
 his behalf in one way, Jerome was himself engaged in 
 another way, during the year 1538, upon labours that 
 might lead to an improvement of his fortunes. He was 
 about to make his next public appearance as an author. 
 The labours to which he had been stimulated by the lean 
 and hollow-eyed mathematician, Zuanne da Coi, had 
 assisted him to the completion of an elaborate, and in 
 many respects original work on the Practice of Arith- 
 metic. As it would contain many diagrams, and abound 
 in notes, numbers, and novelties, Jerome had determined 
 1 See Cardan's De Prudentia Civili, chapters 52 and 53. 
 
172 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 that it must on no account be printed by his friends at 
 Venice, the brothers Scoto 1 . It must be executed at 
 Milan, under his own anxious supervision. The crabbed- 
 ness of a handwriting loaded with calculations, lines, 
 and numerals, added to the ignorance or carelessness of 
 printers whose sheets could not be submitted to the dis- 
 tant author for correction, would, if he entrusted his work 
 to the Scoti, result in the publication of a jumble infi- 
 nitely more distressing to the reader than his first little 
 work issued from the same press, with its hundreds of 
 errata. Not a shadow of the original treatise would 
 remain ; labour, money, and the hope of fame would so at 
 once be thrown away. Fortunately there was a bookseller 
 in Milan ready to publish the Plat lecturer's arithmetical 
 treatise at his own expense nay, more, ready to pay him 
 something very little, but still something for the copy- 
 right. Jerome Cardan sold, therefore, to Bernardo Calus- 
 cho, for ten crowns 2 , his Practica Arithmetice, and it 
 was imprinted at Milan in the year 1539, by Joannes 
 Antonius Castellioneus, at the expense of the said Bar- 
 nardinus Caluscus. 
 
 To this volume a portrait of its neglected author was 
 prefixed, surrounded by a motto, reminding the unkind 
 Milanese that a prophet is of no esteem in his own 
 
 1 DeLibrisPropriis(1557),p. 41. 
 
 2 De Libris Propr. Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. pp. 103, 104. 
 
IN THE LONG LANE A TURNING. 173 
 
 country. As this portrait was submitted by Cardan 
 himself to his own townspeople in a book carefully pro- 
 duced, and upon the success of which he felt that much 
 depended, we may accept it fairly as a likeness. It is at 
 any rate quite clear that the artist has not been required 
 to mend the truth in representing the outside appearance 
 of the poor philosopher, and I am not disposed to think 
 that he has marred it 1 . 
 
 The publication of this book in 1539 formed, as will 
 presently be seen, the turning-point in the life of Cardan 
 as an author. In the same year, also, the dam suddenly 
 gave way by which his course as a physician had been 
 checked. The energetic friendship of Sfondrato had 
 obtained for Cardan the good-will and good offices of 
 another native of Cremona, Giovanni Baptista Speciario, 
 a magistrate in Milan. Speciario was in a position to- 
 commend him to the less distant friendship of a patron 
 before mentioned, Alphonso D'Avalos, in 1539 governor 
 of the province. By the influence of all these friends, but 
 by the protests of Sfondrato himself more especially, and 
 of another friend, Francisco della Croce, jurisconsult, an 
 honest man and good mathematician, the physicians of 
 Milan were compelled to sully their respectability by 
 welcoming into their company an ill-born scholar. Thus, 
 
 * A fac-simile of the old woodcut, reduced in size, has been placed 
 as a vignette upon the title-page belonging to this volume. 
 
174 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 in the year 1539, after twelve years of resolute exclusion, 
 Jerome Cardan at last came to be enrolled among the 
 members of the Milanese College of Physicians, and 
 acquired the legal right of practising for fees, or taking 
 office as a teacher in the university 
 
THE BAD PRACTICE OF HEALING. 175 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ARITHMETIC AND CONSOLATION. 
 
 DESIGNING in this chapter to complete and carry for- 
 ward the history of the first books published by Cardan, 
 I must go back for the purpose of adding a few facts to 
 the account already given of his earliest printed work. 
 Its full title is " The Tract of Girelamo Castellione Car- 
 dano, Physician of Milan, on the Bad Practice of Heal- 
 ing among recent Physicians ; to the Illustrious Master 
 Filippo Archinto, Jurisconsult, Imperial Councillor and 
 Governor of the Maternal City of Rome. 
 
 " The Tract of the same Author on the Hurt that is in 
 Simple Medicaments. With an Index of those things 
 which are contained in the several Chapters 1 ." Ottaviano 
 Scoto's mark, which follows, surrounded by a Fame, is 
 contained between the words of the motto : " Famam 
 extendere factis, virtutis est opus." Then follow the place 
 and date of publication, Venice, 1536. Only one edition 
 
 " Hieronymus Castellioneus Cardanus de Malo recentiorum me- 
 dicomm Medendi Usu Libellus, ud Illustrem Virum D. Philippum 
 Archintum juris-consultus consiliarumq ; Caesureumq ; ac Almae Urbis 
 Romae Gubernatorem. Ejusdem libellus de simplicium medicina- 
 rum noxa. Cum Indice eorum quae singulis continentur capitibus." 
 Venetiis. 1536. 
 
176 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 of this work was printed, Jerome having refused, for 
 reasons before stated, to sanction a re-issue. It is a little 
 square book, closely printed, and containing in all a hun- 
 dred and ten pages. The main work is dedicated to 
 Archinto ; but this dedication contains also a compliment 
 to the physician Ambrose Cavenega, who is excepted 
 from the author's general criticism of the physicians of his 
 time, " for," he says, " the things which give most autho- 
 rity to a physician in these times, are habits, attendants, 
 carriage, character of clothes, cunning, suppleness, a sort 
 of artificial, namby-pamby way ; nothing seems to depend 
 on learning or experience." It would be well if this 
 criticism had quite ceased to be applicable. It did not 
 lose its force for at least two hundred and fifty years, and 
 is in our own day only beginning to grow obsolete. 
 
 The dedication of his little volume to Archinto, Jerome 
 thus explains: " When I saw that you were foremost in 
 wit, memory, variety of studies, genius, and authority, I 
 judged you to be the best person to whom I could inscribe 
 my first so salutary labours ; I was also bound to dedicate 
 them to you by the several employments I have obtained 
 through you in the state; and at the same time invited 
 by your virtues." 
 
 The little tract on Simples, occupying the last few 
 pages of the book, is dedicated, as before stated, briefly as 
 possible, to "Ambrose Cavenega, the most excellent doctor 
 of arts and medicine, the most worthy ducal physician." 
 
HOW PHYSICIANS THROVE. 177 
 
 Passing over the ten pages of Judicial Astrology, pub- 
 lished by Jerome on his own account, we come to the 
 Practice of Arithmetic, published in 1539 by Bernardo 
 Caluscho. The book is entitled 1 " The Practice of Arith- 
 metic and Simple Mensuration. By Jerome C. Cardan, 
 Physician of Milan ; in which whatever else is con- 
 tained will be shown on the next page." There are pre- 
 fixed to it half a dozen lines of alternate hexameter and 
 pentameter, supplied by the Latin poet Annibale della 
 Croce, brother of the Doctor Luca before mentioned. 
 The lines 3 , literally translated, are to the following effect: 
 " Many are the uses of numbers, the discriminations of 
 parts, and you may read about them in a thousand 
 volumes. In a little, easy, learned, well- digested book, 
 the sedulous care of Cardan gives them to you here. 
 Read it presently, and you will say that you owe as much 
 to that small book as to the thousand volumes." The 
 book is dedicated by Jerome with the best feeling to his 
 early Milanese friend and patron, the Father in Christ 
 Prior Francesco Gaddi, and in the course of the dedi- 
 
 1 "Hieronimi C. Cardani Practica Arithmetice, et Mensurandi Sin- 
 gularis. In qua que prater alias continentur, versa pagina demonstra- 
 bit." Mediol. 1539. 
 
 2 " Multiplices numerorum usus, discrimina parteis. 
 
 Queque voluminibus mille legenda tenes. 
 Exiguo, facili, docto digesta libello. 
 
 Hie tibi Cardani sedula cura dabit. 
 Perlege mox, isti tantum debere libello. 
 
 Te dices, quantum mille voluminibus." 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 cation, looking back to his first luckless venture, the poor 
 author tells how he had been cherishing a " wish among 
 many occupations to have so much leisure as to write a 
 work that could be fairly blamed by none." 
 
 Before the index of chapters, there is given in this 
 volume a list of twenty-five new points laid down in the 
 course of the treatise; but as we shall find that a second 
 and maturer work on Arithmetic and Mathematics was 
 published at a somewhat later date, it will be more con- 
 venient to postpone for the present what has to be said 
 concerning the claims of Cardan to respect as a great 
 mathematician. It will suffice here briefly to indicate the 
 nature of the book published by Caluscho, and to dwell 
 only upon a certain page or two of characteristic stuff 
 appended to it which belongs immediately to the thread of 
 this narrative, inasmuch as it in fact led to the next 
 great event in Jerome's literary life, and carries on the 
 story from the point reached at the close of the preceding 
 chapter. 
 
 Cardan's Practice of Arithmetic is divided into sixty- 
 eight chapters. The first states the subjects to be dis- 
 cussed ; the second treats generally of the seven operations 
 of arithmetic ; the next four treat of the first of those 
 operations, numeration, as it concerns integers, fractions, 
 surds, and denominations (cubes, figures, &c.) respec- 
 tively. Four chapters follow devoted in the same way, 
 
A TREATISE ON ARITHMETIC. 179 
 
 one to the treatment of each of the four subjects of calcu- 
 lation by the next of the seven operations, aggregation 
 or addition ; the four next are occupied, of course, by de- 
 traction or subtraction; the four next by multiplication; 
 and the next four by division, as applied to integers, 
 surds, fractions, and denominations. The four next 
 chapters treat of the extraction of roots; and the next 
 four of progression. The seven elementary operations of 
 arithmetic are thus discussed in thirty chapters. The 
 thirty-first chapter treats of the application of the seven 
 operations to calculations in which there are combined 
 both integers and fractions; the succeeding chapters treat 
 in the same way successively of the seven operations as 
 applied to combinations of integers and surds, integers 
 and denominations, fractions^and denominations, fractions 
 and surds, surds and denominations. The thirty-seventh 
 chapter treats of the seven operations as applied to pro- 
 portion, and of the logical difference between multiplica- 
 tion and division on the one side, and aggregation and 
 detraction on the other. The thirty-eighth chapter dis- 
 cusses astronomical operations ; the next, multiplication by 
 memory; the next is a clever dissertation on the kalends, 
 nones, ides, cycles, golden numbers, epact, dominical 
 letter, places of the sun and moon and moveable feasts, 
 with rules for easy mental calculation of most questions 
 arising out of details of the almanac. The forty-first 
 
 N2 
 
180 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 chapter treats of the value of money; the forty-second 
 treats of mirific numbers, that is to say, of remarkable 
 properties of numbers, natural but strange. The next 
 chapter passes on to the supernatural, and treats of the 
 mystic properties of numbers. Then follows a chapter on 
 irrational quantities; and then Jerome comes to the dis- 
 cussion of the rule of three, which he characterises as the 
 key of commerce " clavis mercatorum." The next 
 chapter is upon the rule of six, our double rule of three ; 
 the chapter following compares the two processes. The 
 treatise then passes in the forty-eighth chapter to the first 
 simple rules of algebra, and travels on to higher mathe- 
 matical discussions, closing with chapters upon house- 
 rent, letters of credit and exchange, income, interest, 
 profit and loss, games of chance. It then comes to super- 
 ficial mensuration, and the measuring of solids ; passes on 
 to the practical details of weights and measures, and 
 closes with an exposition of certain errors in the works of 
 Luca de Borgo, and a Long list of cunningly-devised 
 questions in arithmetic and geometry, calculated to put to 
 a severe test the student's practical acquaintance with the 
 rules and reasons laid down in the book. 
 
 While this treatise was at the printer's and nearly a 
 year seems to have been spent in the printing the 
 unhappy author was still struggling against contempt and 
 poverty in Milan. Anxious to work a way out of his 
 
JEROME'S APPEAL TO THE WORLD. 181 
 
 obscure position, and to make some approach towards the 
 
 N fame for which he longed, for he was thirty- seven years old 
 
 and still unrecognised, Cardan proposed to bind up with 
 
 liis second venture as a public author a notice, which was 
 
 in effect, though not in form, an appeal from his own 
 
 countrymen to scholars in all quarters of the world. He 
 
 trusted that the merit of his book, unquestionably very 
 
 great, would recommend him to men at a distance. 
 
 Among them, perhaps, when they saw by the motto 
 
 round his portrait that he was in no esteem at home, and 
 
 read in the concluding notification how many and divers 
 
 books that he had written were still left unprinted in his 
 
 study, there might be one or two who would desire to 
 
 bring his genius more fully out into the light, and who, 
 
 for the love of knowledge, would extend to him a helping 
 
 hand. The notification was of a legal kind, and it is to 
 
 be found printed in black letter at the end of the first edi" 
 
 tion of the Practice of Arithmetic. In many parts it is 
 
 curious, as illustrating not only Jerome's anxiety to 
 
 escape from the cold and hungry state of a neglected 
 
 scholar, but also the law of copyright in those days, the 
 
 small money value set by Cardan on his writings, and the 
 
 care taken by the Church to provide a censorship which 
 
 did in fact render impossible the publication of a good 
 
 many philosophical works. It of course prevented the 
 
 world at large from being edified or shocked by the 
 
182 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Life of Christ that was completed in 1539 3 after having 
 been three years in progress. That book was never pub- 
 lished; but though not to be read it was abundantly 
 abused by controversialists, who were much scandalised at 
 the one fact of which they were informed by its author, 
 that it set out with an astrological nativity. The notifi- 
 cation added to the Practice of Arithmetic was to the 
 following effect: 
 
 " Charles the Fifth, Roman Emperor, Ever August, 
 &c. Inasmuch as we have considered the petition of 
 Girolamo Castellione Cardano, Physician of Milan, most 
 faithful servant of the most unconquered Emperor, saying 
 that he has prepared the under-mentioned works in divers 
 faculties to be imprinted in succession according to his 
 convenience, of which two little works have already seen 
 the light; and that he might not be compelled to seek 
 imperial privilege as often as he might have one such 
 work to publish, therefore for the works named below 
 existing in his possession, of which some have already 
 been printed, he desires to obtain an universal privilege : 
 We acquiesce in his humble supplication, and require by 
 these letters that fit and needful help shall be afforded 
 him to prevent any one from printing one of the works 
 named below, or introducing such a work elsewhere 
 printed into any part of the Duchy of Milan, or from 
 committing any fraud against any such work until ten 
 
COPYRIGHT. 183 
 
 years after the date of its first publication, under the 
 accustomed penalties according to the imperial pleasure. 
 Of which works the list now follows. (Here follows the 
 list of Jerome's unpublished writings upon divers sub- 
 jects, thirty-four in number.) In addition to those two 
 which have already been printed : one on the Bad Prac- 
 tice of Healing, and one on the Hurtfulness of Simples. 
 
 " For the pleasure or profit of professors of those sciences 
 whereof the above works treat: We concede that they 
 may cause them to be printed either together or in part ; 
 except, firstly, that one which treats of the Arcana of 
 Eternity ; secondly, that on Death, which is said to con- 
 tain three books ; thirdly, that on Fate ; fourthly, that on 
 the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, also contained in three 
 books : of which we require that they shall first be laid 
 before our senate, that it may be seen whether they are fit 
 for publication. 
 
 " Furthermore, we forbid that any man within this our 
 state of Milan shall within ten years print, or cause to be 
 printed, the above works, or any of them, or bring them, 
 or cause them to be brought, from other places into the 
 said state, or have them for sale, against the consent of 
 their author. The penalty for contravention of this our 
 decree shall be ten scudi for each volume of the said 
 works : of which half shall be paid to the author himself, 
 but the remaining half shall be divided between our 
 
184 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 exchequer and the informer. This we assure by the 
 present document, which we have commanded to be au- 
 thenticated by the impression of our seal. Given at 
 Milan, June 25, 1538." 
 
 The year 1539, in which Jerome broke through the 
 barrier opposed to his career by the Milanese College of 
 Physicians, and also published his Practice of Arithmetic, 
 which made an easy way for him ever thereafter into the 
 long-sought Paradise of Print, ought to have been foretold 
 to him as a bright year by the stars, if Jupiter had been 
 indeed a conjuror, and Venus had had any right to be 
 regarded as a gipsy. According to his own horoscope, 
 however, Jerome in that year was not very far from death, 
 nor was the world likely to lose much at his decease, if 
 Cheiromancy spoke the truth in calling him a dunce. His 
 head, however, confuted the testimony of his hand. The 
 Practice of Arithmetic, finding its way both into France 
 and Germany, commended its author to the respect of 
 many strangers, and the notification at the end happily 
 produced in one quarter the right effect. To the neglected 
 scholar of Milan there was sent from Nuremberg the offer 
 of Joannes Petreius to print any work which he might be 
 disposed to entrust to him for publication. The offer was 
 transmitted by a learned man of the same town, Andreas 
 Osiander, who undertook to watch through the press, and 
 take careful charge, as local editor, of any work written 
 
A FFJEND AMONG SCHOLAKS OSIANDER. 185 
 
 by the most learned Cardan, and printed by Petreius. 
 " That," says Jerome, " was the beginning of my fame ; 
 of whatever glory I have earned that was the origin 1 ." 
 
 Osiander was a Lutheran theologian, not very ortho- 
 dox of his kind, whose name in the vulgar world was 
 Hosemann, as one who may have had an ancestor distin- 
 guished for his early assumption of a garment mentionable 
 perhaps in Latin quasi vir braccatus. He was a man ten 
 years older than Cardan ; and having said so much, I may 
 add, that he did not remain to the end of his life at 
 Nuremberg, but spent the last three years of it in 
 Prussia, where he enjoyed court favour as a theologian, 
 and that he died long before Cardan, at the age of sixty- 
 two. He had commenced his public career at Nuremberg 
 as lecturer on Hebrew among the Augustin monks, whose 
 company he had left to preach the new doctrines of Luther. 
 His was the first Lutheran sermon preached in that town, 
 
 1 Speaking of the Practice of Arithmetic for which Caluscho gave him 
 the ten crowns, he says : " Nee si non impressus fuisset nostra monu- 
 menta invenissent Typographum : continue enim, eo opere impresso, 
 csepenint omnia commutari. Nam adjeceram Catalogum qualemcun- 
 que librorum nostrorum, quos vel scripseram, vel caeperam scribere: et 
 liberis distrahi caepit in Galliis atque Germaniis. Itaque cum tune 
 esset Andreas Osiander Norimbergae, vir Latinae, Graecae, Hebraicaeque 
 Iingua9 peritus, turn typographus Joan. Petreius, bonis literis, si quis 
 alius favens, inito consilio totis viribus mecum agere caeperunt, ut 
 aliquid opus illis traderem ut imprimerent. Atque ita initium gloriac 
 nostrae, si qua deinceps fuit, hinc ortum habuit." De Libris Propriis- 
 Lib. ult. Opera, Tom. i. p. 104. The same authority covers the ac- 
 count of the rest of this transaction. 
 
186 JEROME CAEDAN. 
 
 but as he continued to think for himself, he at last gave 
 not less offence to the orthodoxy of the Lutherans than of 
 the Catholics, and lived a life much clouded by contro- 
 versy, in which he appears to have shown no lack of the 
 usual bitterness and pride. He was well versed in 
 Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, had an inquiring mind, and 
 a decided leaning to philosophy. He was a good mathe- 
 matician, and, in 1543, the literary spirit which induced 
 his offer to Cardan, caused him to edit, for the first time 
 in Nuremberg, the Astronomy of Copernicus, Petreius 
 printing it 1 . 
 
 To the request of his new friends at Nuremberg, 
 Jerome replied by sending them an enlarged copy of the 
 tract on Judicial Astrology, which he had published im- 
 perfectly, and with too much curtailment, in Milan, at his 
 own expense. Having sent that to be published at 
 Nuremberg, he forwarded nothing else, for a short time, to 
 Osiander and Petreius, for it will be remembered that the 
 Scoti, of Venice, were his friends, and having profited by 
 his first work, they were quite ready to print for him 
 again. Having no friend in Venice competent to correct 
 for him the proofs of any abstruse work, and being greatly 
 
 i Christoph. Saxi Onomasticon Literarium, Tom. iii. p. 165. Zedler's 
 Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Kiinste. Bd. 25. In 
 which last work, under the name of Andreas Osiander, the elder, fur- 
 ther details may be found. One of Osiander's works had a curious 
 bearing on the character and spirit of his time ; it was entitled, " How 
 far is a Christian justified in flying from the Plague?" 
 
OSIANDER AND PETREIUS THE SCOTI. 187 
 
 annoyed at the mass of printer's errors in his early treatise, 
 Cardan refused to put his fame in peril by entrusting to 
 his friends any work that contained technical terms and 
 figures. There was no reason, however, why they should 
 not print his Books on Consolation, since there was in 
 them nothing but plain, every-day Latin. Those books, 
 forming the next volume issued by Cardan, were there- 
 fore first printed at Venice, and then published as a re- 
 print by Petreius of Nuremberg 1 . This volume, however, 
 was not published until the year 1542 ; and before more 
 is said of it, the two or three preceding years of its 
 author's literary life should be accounted for. 
 
 It should have been said, that in or before the year 
 1538, Jerome saw in a dream a book painted in three 
 colours red, green, and gold ; he admired greatly its 
 beauty, but he admired still more its contents. From 
 that dream he obtained the first idea of his work on the 
 Variety of Things, published years afterwards, and then 
 commenced 2 . He wrote in that year on Things Above 
 the rainbow, hail, earthquakes, lightning, &c., and what 
 he wrote was copied out for him by Lodovico Ferrari 3 , 
 then residing with him in his house. In the same year he 
 began to write a description of a famous astronomical in- 
 
 i De Libr. Propr. Lib. ult. Op. Tom. i. p. 103. 
 - Ibid. p. 102. De Lib. Prop. (ed. 1557) p. 28. 
 3 De Sapientia, &c. p. 428. The same reference provides authority 
 for the rest of the facts stated in this paragraph. 
 
188 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 strument showing celestial movements, which having been 
 bought formerly at a high price from the maker by a duke 
 of Milan, had then been taken to pieces, and, after great 
 trouble and discussion, put together again by lanello, of 
 Cremona. As Cardan could not have the instrument at 
 home with him, he grew tired of that work. In 1539 
 Jerome finished his three books on the Life of Christ, and 
 arranged two or three books of Letters. The whole of 
 the next year was spent in the revision and emendation 
 of his former writings, one of which, that on Consolation, 
 written in 1537, he prepared next for the press. In 1541, 
 admonished by a dream, he began to work earnestly at 
 Greek literature, and wrote upon the Immortality of the 
 Soul. 
 
 " Girolamo Castellione Cardano of Milan his Three 
 Books on Consolation," published at Venice in 1542 1 by 
 one of the brothers Scoto (Girolamo), formed a neat little 
 volume of two hundred and sixty-four pages 2 ; and had as 
 emblems on the title-page a Peace instead of a Fame 
 riding the globe, with the motto, Fiat Pax in virtute tua 
 Let Peace come of your virtue. There is a great deal of 
 wisdom in the matter, and of wit in the manner of all 
 
 1 Hieronymi Cardani Castellionei Mediolanensis De Consolatione 
 Libri Tres. Venetiis, apud Hieronymum Scotum, 1542. 
 
 2 One hundred and thirty-two, as figured ; the two pages of a book 
 that face each other being accounted one in this as in many other 
 volumes of the time. 
 
JEROME AS MORALIST. 189 
 
 Cardan's ethical writings. Though he did not soar far 
 above his neighbours in Latinity, he excelled most in the 
 sterling qualities of mind expressed through the usual 
 barbarous medium, and by force of genius even his six- 
 teenth century Latin is not seldom compelled into phrases 
 terse and inimitable in their way. The Books on Conso- 
 lation were intended in the writing to console their author 
 under bitter disappointments during his first struggles 
 with an adverse world. " The work was called at first," 
 he says, " the Book of the Accuser, because it contended 
 against the vain passions and false persuasions of mankind : 
 afterwards its name was changed, and it was divided into 
 three books, inscribed as Consolation, because it appeared 
 that there was a far greater number of unfortunate men 
 needing consolation, than of fortunate in need of blame 1 ." 
 This passage shows the spirit in which Jerome wrote, how 
 far it was removed from bitterness. He treats in succes- 
 sion of those events which are regarded commonly as the 
 great ills of life, offering upon each many such comments 
 as Epictetus would have heartily commended, fortifying 
 his case with apt illustrations and a great many classical 
 examples, adopting sometimes the language of a Christian, 
 
 1 " Fuerat autem ab initio ejus nomen Accusatoris, ut qui vanos 
 hominum affectus, atque falsas argueret persuasiones : at post mutato 
 nomine, et in tres libellos diviso, de Consolatione eum inscripsimus, 
 quod longe magis infaelices consolatione, quani fortunati reprehensione, 
 indigere viderentur." Op. cit. p. 3. 
 
190 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 and whether writing in the vein of the old Roman Forum, 
 or the modern Roman Church, always enforcing the 
 opinion, common equally to philosophic heathens and to 
 Christians, that happiness and peace lie not in the world 
 without but in the mind within, and that content is only 
 possible to virtue. This work Jerome dedicates to no one 
 person, because no man would wish it to be published 
 that he is in need of consolation 1 . " It seems," he says 
 very shrewdly, " to be in the grain of men to think them- 
 selves more miserable, and to wish to be thought happier 
 by others than they really are." 
 
 The gain made by the Scoti on the publication of the 
 " Bad Practice of Healing," was neutralised by loss upon 
 this second undertaking 3 . The title of the book, Cardan 
 thinks, was not liked, nor, perhaps, was the style attrac- 
 tive ; and again, the volume was disfigured by the printer 
 with a great number of the vilest blunders. So far as tem- 
 porary popularity was concerned, the book was very na- 
 turally less successful than its predecessor. One touched on 
 
 1 Namque illud natura omnibus insitum mortalibus videtur, ut se 
 miseriores quam sint existiment, faeliciores vero videri cupiant," Op. 
 cit. p. 2. 
 
 2 After its publication, he writes that Ottaviano held his books in 
 dread: "Neque enim, ut dixi, Octavianus sponte libros meos, neque 
 libenter imprimebat, jacturam veritus impensse: nam tametsi lucrum 
 fecisset in librorum de Malo Medendi Usu impressione, id tamen in 
 libris de Consolatione postea compensavit: non solum quod titulus et 
 forsan etiam stylus non arrideret, sed quod Typographus ipse innu- 
 meros atque turpissimos errores imprimendo commisisset." De Lib. 
 Prop. (1557) p. 40. 
 
" CARDANUS COMFORTE." 191 
 
 the material interests of a class, stirred passion, was warmly 
 talked about, and quickly bought ; the other touched on 
 the moral interests of mankind generally, was written to 
 allay passion, was coldly talked about, and bought with 
 more deliberation. It was reprinted by Petreius at Nu- 
 remberg 1 , and grew in credit ; it was a capital of fame 
 put out to interest, of which instalments were paid ever 
 after punctually year by year. The little volume came 
 by slow degrees to be accepted as a standard work of its 
 own time, was translated into sundry languages, and 
 twice into our own. The first English translation, 
 entitled Cardanus Comforte 2 , was' made while Cardan 
 still was living, thirty years after the publication of the 
 book at Venice. The very brief specimen that can be 
 here given of Jerome's style as an essayist and moralist, 
 I think it best to quote from this contemporary version. 
 
 It was made by " Thomas Bedingfeld, Esquyer, one of 
 her Maiesties gentlemen pentioners" her Majesty being 
 Queen Elizabeth and it was both made at the request 
 and published at the command of the Earl of Oxford 
 " Sure I am," said Bedingfeld, " it would have better 
 
 In 1544, together with the books subsequently written, De Sa- 
 pientiu, and the first of the three books De Libris Suis, then first 
 printed. 
 
 2 " Cardanus Comforte translated into Englishe. And published by 
 commaundementof the Right Honourable the Earle of Oxenford. Anno 
 Domini, 1573. Imprinted at London in Eleete Streate, near to S. Dun- 
 stone's Churche, by Thomas Marshe." Without pagination. 
 
192 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 beseemed me to have taken this travaile in some discourse 
 of armes (being your lordship's chiefe profession and mine 
 also), then in philosopher's skill to have thus busied 
 myselfe : yet sith your pleasure was such, and your know- 
 ledge in eyther great, I do (as I will ever) most willingly 
 obeye you." But in his modesty he begged of the earl 
 so far to keep his labour secret as " either not to make 
 any partakers thereof, or at the leastwise those, whoe for 
 reuerence to your lordship or loue to mee, will willingly 
 beare with mine errors," &c. &c. To this request the 
 earl replied in an elaborate epistle. ' ' After I had perused 
 youre letters good Maister Bedingfeld, finding in them 
 your request farre differing from the desert of your labour, 
 I could not chose but greatly doubt, whether it were 
 better for me to yelde you your desyre,' ; &c. &c. In 
 fine, he determined to print the book, and bade Bedingfeld 
 be proud rather than ashamed of it, inasmuch as it dis- 
 played a kind of gift that " ornifyeth a gentleman." His 
 lordship also called in " Thomas Churchyarde, gentleman," 
 to introduce Cardanus Comforte to the English public 
 with the proper flourish of commendatory verse. Church- 
 yarde first scolded in prose the expected readers of the 
 volume, who, he said, must not go to sleep " and loose 
 but labour with slobberinge handes or head to blot or 
 blemish the beauty of this booke." He then put on his 
 singing robes, and invited them to come for consolation 
 to Cardan in proper form ; as for example thus : 
 
COURTEOUSLY INTRODUCED. 193 
 
 "You troubled mindes with torments tost that sighes and sobs con- 
 sumes : 
 (Who breathes and puflfes from burning breast both sraothring smoke 
 
 and fumes) 
 
 Come reade this booke that freely bringes, a box of balme full swete 
 An oyl to noynt the brused partes, of everye heavye spriete," 
 
 I propose to quote from Cardan's work, as Bedingfeld 
 translated it, only the opening and closing paragraphs. 
 They will suffice to convey a very fair impression of the 
 style and temper of the poor philosopher who was so 
 rude and hasty in his speech, yet at the same time always 
 so deliberate and gentle in his writings. The opening 
 sentences remind us of the fact that, not long before the 
 writing of this work was commenced, Jerome had occu- 
 pied himself in reading word by word the whole of the 
 extant works of Cicero. Thus he begins : 
 
 " Amonge such and so manye auncient monuments as 
 perished in y e Barbarian warres : would God that at least 
 Marcus Tullius bokes of com forte, written at the deathe 
 of his daughter, had been tyll this day preserued. For 
 as in all other matters hee declared himselfe more then a 
 man, so may it be thought that herein he had written 
 most excellently : the matter being neyther common, 
 fayned or touchinge others, but procedinge from his 
 own naturall affection and extreme perturbation of myndc. 
 And suche is the condicion and qualitie of cornfortinge, as 
 al be it no persuation or eloquence were there in used, yet 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
194 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 wanteth it not reason and sufficiente proofe to trye it- 
 selfe 1 : wherein so excellente, wise, and eloquente a man 
 as Marcus Tullius having travailed : it muste be presumed 
 he framed a worke not only worthy prayse, but also aboue 
 all expectation. 
 
 "And albeit those auncient warres have among many 
 other noble workes depriued us of so learned a boke, yet 
 haue we thought mete to entreate thereof (not " [only] 
 " because it is so praisable as amisse it cannot be praysed), 
 but also so necessary " [that] " (as in all thinges whiche of 
 necessitie must be had) better it is to haue any than none 
 at al. For example we see, that houses are nedefull, such 
 as can not possesse y stately pallaces of stone, do per- 
 suade themselves to dwell in houses of timber and clay, 
 and wanting theim, are contented to inhabite the simple 
 cotage ; yea rather than not to be housed at all refuse 
 not the. pore cabbon, and most beggerly caue. For in 
 these things better it is to have the worst than none at 
 all. So necessarie is this gifte of consolacion, as there 
 liueth no man, but that hathe cause to embrace it 2 . And 
 wel we see ther is none aliue that in every respect may be 
 accompted happie, yea though mortall men were free 
 
 1 "Et se tamen locupletissimam materiam suggerat." It would 
 suggest by itself the richest matter. 
 
 2 I have not altered Master Bedingfeld's translation, which fits ad- 
 mirably to the text ; but as he had spoilt this passage so far by the 
 transposition of three sentences, I have restored them to their proper 
 places. 
 
195 
 
 from all calamities, yet the torments and feare of death 
 should stil offend them. But besides them, behold, what, 
 and how manye euilles there bee, that unlesse the cloude 
 of error be remoued, impossible it is to see the truth, or 
 receiue allay of our earthly woes." 
 
 After treating in succession of those ills of life most 
 commonly deplored, enriching his text with much shrewd 
 wit, with a great deal of anecdote, and with the proper 
 store of classical quotations and allusions, arguing also 
 sometimes out of a firm belief in curiously false opinions 
 current among men of science in those days, Jerome thus 
 draws his work of consolation to a close. He has through- 
 out taught that the best safeguard against tribulation is to 
 have a clean heart and a busy hand. Urging that fact 
 again emphatically, he passes from the last of human 
 sorrows, death, and ends by leaving man secure from 
 further need of consolation, in enjoyment of that peace 
 which is to be found only beyond the grave. Thus 
 Jerome wrote about Calamity and thoroughly meant 
 what he wrote at a time when he himself was bearing 
 much : 
 
 " Wherefore to bear everythinge resolutely, is not only 
 the parte of a wise man, but also of a man wel aduised, 
 seinge there is nothing in this life that may iustly be said 
 to be against us. Therefore Homerus fayned Aten the 
 Goddes of Calamitye to be barefooted, as one that could 
 
 02 
 
196 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 not toucli anything sharpe or hard, but walked lightly 
 upon the heades of mortall men. 
 
 " Meaninge that Calamitye durst not come nere anye, 
 but such as were of base minde, simple, and subjecte to 
 effeminacy. But among such as were valiant and armed 
 with vertue, shee durst not come. Wherefore lift up thy 
 mynde to Heaven where an everlastinge and most plea- 
 saunt life is prepared for thee. Men in this worlde are 
 lyke trees 1 , some slender, some great, some florishing, 
 some bearing frute, some witheringe, some growinge, 
 some bio wen downe, and some frutefull, which in one 
 harueste time are brought togeathers and laide uppon one 
 stacke. Neither is there afterwards sene any difference 
 among them, what they be or haue bene, al at one time 
 be cut downe neuer more to growe agayne. Even so al 
 pryde, ambicion, ryches, authoritye, children, frendes, 
 and glory doe in shorte space grow olde and perishe, 
 neither dothe it make matter whether thou were Irus 
 or vile Galba, Antaxerses or noble Hercules. Onelye 
 honestye and vertue of mynde doth make a man happy, 
 and onely a cowerdlie and corrupt conscience do cause 
 
 1 Cardan's image was taken from the bean-fields; but the translator 
 thinking it a mean thing to compare men to beans, wrote trees, and 
 took away the beauty of the image, substituting the odd notion of trees 
 harvested together, and all laid upon one stack. Tims the passage 
 runs: " Homines enim in hoc mundo ut fabse sunt, aliao enim pusillae, 
 aliae magnae, aliee florent, alias fructibus conspicuae, alias aridoe, alias 
 luxuriantes, aliae exiles, fruticosae alife: omnes tameu unus autumnus 
 quam brevi in inanes stipulas redigit." De Consol. p. 131. 
 
THE BAREFOOTED GODDESS. 197 
 
 thine unhappines. Because the worste that the good man 
 can feare, is the best that the evyll can wishe for : whiche 
 is the destruction of the soule in death. But as he ought 
 not to hope thereof, so should not the other feare it. 
 For God the eternal father hath sent us into this worlde 
 as children and heyres of hys kingdome, and secretly 
 beholdeth how we fighte and defend our selves, against 
 our sences, the world and the Devyll. And who so in 
 this battell, valyantly fighteth, shal bee called and placed 
 among the Prynces of heauenlye kingedome. And who 
 so slothfully or cowerdly behaueth himself, as a slave in 
 featres shall for evermore be bounde. 
 
 " This worldly stage was purposely prepared, that God 
 the father might secretlye beholde us. Such foolishe 
 children then, as in his sighte wantonlye, slouthfully, and 
 sediciouslye lyve, shoulde they not thinke he doth be- 
 holde them. When so ever therefore thou haste taken 
 that last leaue of Life 1 , thy soule like unto a lover 
 embracinge his death, shall enjoy e that sweteness and 
 security, whyche we can neither wryte of nor conceive. 
 For sith these worldlye lovers (amongest whom be many 
 
 1 In Cardan's words the succeeding image is expressed more strongly 
 than by the translator. " Cum itaque stremum agonem anima supe- 
 raverit, tarn quam amans amanti copulata, ea dulcedine ac securitate 
 fruitur, quam nee scribere, nee cogitare possumus," &c. p. 132. To the 
 brief account of Cardan's books on Consolation given in the text, it 
 will perhaps be well specially to add, that although in some parts 
 occupying the same ground, they do not resemble, or equal, the five 
 books of Boethius on the Consolations of Philosophy. 
 
198 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 mislykings without assurance or eternity) can scarcely 
 expresse their joyes in loue: Happy, yea thrise happy is 
 this heauenly lover, who forgettinge all others, wythe his 
 one love is united. For within this kingdom he loveth 
 and liueth in the sight of him, that can do all thinges, and 
 therefore lyke a good sonne to his father is ever readye 
 to do his pleasure." 
 
 So wrote the first among the atheists of the second 
 order. 
 
BAD READING BY STARLIGHT. 199 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE WOLF AT THE BOOK. 
 
 JEROME certainly was not living a brilliant life before 
 the world when his three books of Consolation were first 
 issued to the public. After the events of the year 1539 
 he began to breathe; but it was not until four years 
 afterwards that he experienced any real change of for- 
 tune. The stars were supposed to have predicted that 
 his death would take place before he reached the age of 
 forty, certainly before he should attain to the full age of 
 forty-five; "but," says Cardan, "it was when I ought to 
 have died that I began really to live 1 ." The error lay of 
 course, however, not with the stars, but with the imper- 
 fect readers of their language. 
 
 At that time which should have been the close of his 
 
 1 '" Et astrologiae cognitio quam tune liabebam, et ut mini videbatur 
 et omnes aiebant, me non excessurum xl. vitae annum, certc non ad 
 xlv. perventurum multum obfuit. Ego interim partim necessitate, 
 partim ofierentibus se voluptatibus quotidie, cum recte vivere delibe- 
 rarern, dclinquebam. Negligens ob malam spem res ipsas : in deli- 
 berando aberrabam, et frequentius in opere peccabam. Donee eo ven- 
 tum est, ut qui finis vitae futurus credebatur, viveudi initium fecerit, 
 xliii. scilicet annus." De Vit. Prop. p. 44. 
 
200 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 life, the house he occupied belonged to his mother, who 
 lived with him; it was a house near the church of St. 
 Michael. He earned very little indeed as a physician, 
 but something as an almanac-maker something by the 
 sale of astrological opinions; a little help he had occasion- 
 ally from his friend Archinto, and a friend who be- 
 longed to the household probably paid her way in it as 
 a lodger 1 . With these resources and the Plat lecture- 
 ship he kept house as he could. There was the resource 
 also of the gambling-table. 
 
 Though the Milanese College of Physicians so far 
 honoured the recommendations made in favour of Cardan, 
 that already in the year 1541 we find him in office as its 
 rector 2 , it does not appear that Jerome troubled himself 
 much to acquire a social standing that consisted with his 
 newly-acquired privileges. In that year, 1541, he was 
 scarcely practising at all ; his energies were all spent upon 
 Greek and gambling. Neither in that year, nor in the 
 year preceding, had he worked much with his pen. In 
 1540 he had found leisure as an author for no more than 
 the correction of his previous books. In 1541 he wrote 
 
 1 De VitaPropria, cap. xxv. p. 95, for the preceding. 
 
 3 He states the fact incidentally in the history of a case attended by 
 him in that year. De Vit. Prop. cap. xxx. The servant of a Genoese 
 colonel came from Switzerland, where he had slept between two men 
 who subsequently died of plague, and had himself taken the infection. 
 Cardan found him not dead, but apparently so, and the colonel urged 
 that he should at once be carried to the dead-house. Cardan would 
 not permit that. The man recovered. 
 
WORK AND WANT. 201 
 
 something about the Consolation of Lovers and the Ira- 
 mortality of the Soul. At Greek he did work. In the 
 last-named year, being admonished by a dream, he betook 
 himself to the study of that language with so much 
 earnestness of purpose, that the smattering which he had 
 begun to acquire six years before, and beyond which he 
 had not passed, was in four months enlarged into a con- 
 siderable acquaintance with the language; he became 
 able to understand it so well that he might read for hours 
 without being checked by any difficulty, and spent time 
 in writing Greek, not, he says, as a sign of scholarship, 
 but of the energy with which he studied 1 . 
 
 During these years, 1540 and 1541, and during the 
 first part of the year 1542, Jerome allowed all other work 
 to fall into neglect, because the Fates had sent to him a 
 golden goose 2 . Antonio Vicomercato, a patrician of 
 Milan, was inclined to amuse himself daily with the poor 
 mathematician and physician over the dice-table, very 
 well content to lose. Cardan of course was alike glad to 
 play at dice, and glad to win. He went to Antonio's 
 house daily, and stopped .often the whole day; they 
 played for from one to three or four reals a game, and as 
 
 1 "Non enim veteranus, sed tyro militabat, turn maxime 
 
 existens. Express! ibi vim non eruditionem." De Sapientia, &c. 
 pp. 429, 430. The reference substantiates the account given in the text 
 of Cardan's literary work in the years 1540 41. 
 
 2 All that relates to Vicomercato will be found in the 38th chapter 
 of the book De Vita Propria. 
 
202 JEKOME CARDAN. 
 
 Jerome always rose a winner, he was al>le to take home 
 about a gold piece daily, sometimes more and sometimes 
 less. For two years and some months almost all other 
 sources of income dried away from him, while he culti- 
 vated this. His credit sank; even pen, ink, and paper 
 were neglected. 
 
 With money so earned, or with money however earned, 
 in the midst of his poverty he was improvident. He 
 enjoyed musical evenings, and music, as he said, led to 
 unprofitable company. The taste of the period was for 
 part-singing, and it was not easy to collect four or five 
 men who could sing readily together, and who could 
 think and feel together also. If he had musical com- 
 panions to his house they cost him heavily for suppers, 
 and corrupted the minds of his children. For most 
 singers, he said and I suspect that he could not easily 
 libel the good table-companions of the sixteenth century 
 most singers are drunken, gluttonous, impudent, un- 
 settled, impatient, stolid, inert, ready for every kind of 
 lust. The best men of that sort are fools 1 . Upon such 
 men, despising them but relishing their music, Cardan 
 squandered a good deal of his money. 
 
 One day, at the end of August (1542), Vicomercato 
 announced a sudden change in his own life, and he was 
 not to be satisfied unless Cardan would swear as he did 
 1 De Util. 6x Adv. Cap. Opera, Tom. ii. p. 1 17. 
 
VICOMERCATO, OR THE GOLDEN GOOSE. 203 
 
 swear by all the gods never to come to him again for 
 the purpose of dice-playing. Jerome took wholly to 
 study, but his golden goose was dead, and his penury was 
 sudden and extreme. He had neglected all legitimate 
 resources. We can scarcely doubt the object of the trip 
 to Florence which immediately followed, since we are told 
 that he went to join the free-handed Marquis d'Avalos. 
 D'Avalos, Marquis del Guasto, was always even more 
 ready to give than Cardan to take; he offered in the 
 course of his intercourse with the philosopher, by whom 
 he had been courted, more than Jerome thought it 
 proper to receive, but he had received from D'Avalos 
 some help, and that not inconsiderable 1 . On his way 
 home he visited his patron Sfondrato, who was then Go- 
 vernor of Sienna. Then he came back to Milan, fortune 
 frowning 2 . 
 
 While matters were in this state with Cardan, fortune 
 was, as usual, frowning upon Italy, and the distracting 
 wars of which the traces lie about this narrative, as they 
 must leave marks on the life of almost every man who 
 
 1 " Sua ecccllentia e di prima di Millano di dottrina, ed il Marchese 
 dal Vasto gli ha dato una gran prorisione per la sua sofficientia," said 
 Cardan's agent to Tartaglia in 1539. Quesiti et Inventione diverse, 
 p. 116. This will be discussed in the next chapter. See also De Vita 
 Propria, cap. iv. 
 
 2 De Libris Propriis. Liber ultimus. Opera, Tom. i. p. 106. 
 
204 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 worked in that most miserable age, compelled a removal to 
 Milan of the University of Pavia 1 . As the same wars 
 crippled the university funds, and the professors could 
 not get their salaries, very few of them thought it worth 
 their while to come to Milan with their chairs; many 
 chairs, therefore, were vacant, and among them that of 
 Medicine, which was again offered by the senate to 
 Cardan 2 . He had before refused it, because he did not 
 think the salary secure ; when, however, the office was 
 brought home to his own door, at which the wolf was sit- 
 ting all day long, the poor philosopher thought very 
 wisely, that even to have money owing to him would 
 beget a financial state much more respectable than hope- 
 less want; there was also a decided gain of respectability 
 in point of position. The Plat lectureship only required 
 his services on holidays, and was no introduction to a re- 
 gular professor's chair. As for his duties to the University 
 of Pavia, while its lectures were delivered at Milan they 
 would not take him far out of his way, or require the 
 abandonment of any of his home resources. He could 
 cultivate his practice, indeed, all the more easily for hold- 
 ing rank in his own town as a Professor of Medicine as 
 well as Mathematics. Work he must, for at this time a 
 
 1 D&Libris Propriis. Liber ultimus. Opera, Tom. L p. 106. 
 
 2 De Vita Propria, cap. xxxvii. ; where will be found authority for 
 all that follows on this subject. 
 
CARDAN TAKES A PROFESSORSHIP AT PAVIA. 205 
 
 third child was born to him, a boy, whom he named 
 Aldoi. 
 
 He therefore accepted office, and delivered lectures, like 
 his colleagues, to bare benches until the conclusion of that 
 academic year 3 . The academy proposed then the tide 
 of war having retreated to return to its own groves, and 
 Cardan certainly did not propose to go to Pavia with it, 
 deterred by the old reason, the broken fortunes of the 
 place, and the extreme uncertainty connected with the 
 stipends payable for teaching. Quite prepared to re- 
 main where he was, Jerome went to bed as usual on 
 the night before he was to return his answer to the 
 senate, which required to know whether he would abide 
 by his professorship and teach in Pavia. He went to 
 bed in the usual way with his wife, his eldest boy, Gio- 
 vanni Batista, ten years old, and Aldo, the baby, all 
 under one cover; but wonderful to relate, on that night 
 the house tumbled down. Nobody was hurt, but his home 
 in Milan being thus suddenly and literally broken up, as 
 he believed of course, by a special and miraculous dispen- 
 sation, he changed the tenor of his answer to the senate, 
 and in the year 1544 consented to remove. 
 
 The salary to be received by him at Pavia would be two 
 hundred and forty gold crowns 3 . For the anxiety shown 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, p. 20. 2 Ibid. cap. vi. 
 
 3 De Lib. Propr. Op. Tom. i. p. 108. 
 
206 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 by the senate to retain his sendees, and for his first ap- 
 pointment as a teacher in the university, Cardan knew 
 himself to be indebted to his patron, Cardinal Sfondrato, 
 who had by good chance returned to Milan, and assisted 
 his much-trusted physician in the hour of need 1 . 
 
 1 De Vita Propria, cap. xv. 
 
ALGEBRA. 207 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF THE GREAT ALGEBRAIC QUARREL THAT AROSE BETWEEN MES8ER 
 HIERONIMO CARDANO AND MESSER NICOLO TARTAGLIA WHAT LET- 
 TERS PASSED, ANL> HOW TARTAGLIA FELT THAT IT WAS DUE TO HIM- 
 SELF TO MAKE THE CORRESPONDENCE PUBLIC. 
 
 BUST and restless, never spending his time wholly 
 upon one pursuit, Jerome, in his mature years, led a life 
 of which the annals would be now and then distracting if 
 they were too strictly told off year by year. The events, 
 therefore, of the period between the years 1539 and 1545, 
 with which we are at present occupied, I think it best to 
 group according to their nature. Of his public literary 
 life up to the year 1542, and of his domestic life to the end 
 of the year 1544, sufficient account has now been given. 
 In the year 1539, however, there commenced a connected 
 series of studies and endeavours that were concurrent with 
 a multitude of other labours, and that remained private 
 until the year 1545. They then resulted in the publica- 
 tion of a book, which was, in fact, Jerome's greatest work, 
 and which must at all times form an important topic in 
 
208 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 connexion with the history of Mathematics. The whole 
 story of this book I shall attempt now to tell in a connected 
 way. The work in question is Cardan's Book of the Great 
 Art his Algebra a volume so especially important, and 
 begotten in so quaint a way, that whether I wished this 
 narrative to be read chiefly for information or amusement, 
 it would equally be fit that it should therein be put pro- 
 minently forward. 
 
 That a long chapter upon Algebra should be one of the 
 most essential parts in the biography of a physician, is a 
 fact perfectly characteristic of the state of learning in the 
 sixteenth century. Physic was then allied not only with 
 chemistry, but had an alliance equally strong with alchemy, 
 astrology, and mathematics. There is a relic of this old 
 state of things left to us in the continued imputation of a 
 well-known astrological almanac to Francis Moore, Phy- 
 sician. The first book of algebra published in this country, 
 entitled the Whetstone of Witte, which is the seconde 
 parte of Arithmetike, by Robert Recorde, describes its 
 author (he died in the Fleet Prison) as " teacher of mathe- 
 matics and practitioner in physic at Cambridge 1 ." A more 
 
 1 Robert Recorde taught mathematics at Oxford, and was admitted 
 to practise physic afterwards at Cambridge. I cannot precisely verify 
 the above reference, which I adopt from Button's Mathematical Dic- 
 tionary; it may be correct. In the first edition of " The Whetstone of 
 Witte" the only one I have seen the author, whose name is not on 
 the title-page, writes himself in the dedication, " Robert Recorde, Phy- 
 sitian," only. He was a man abounding in inventions, the first ven- 
 
CONNEXION BETWEEN ALGEBRA AND PHYSIC. 209 
 
 striking illustration of the intimate connexion that existed 
 formerly between these sciences, is to be found in that 
 part of Don Quixote which relates how the bachelor 
 
 turer in many arts. Poor fellow! He, if not his teaching, fell among 
 thorns. Soon after the publication of the Whetstone, he died in gaol 
 for his poverty. In England, at any rate, they were not in those days 
 the learned who grew rich. At the close of the preface to this book 
 he deprecated hasty criticism; for, he said, " by occasion of trouble 
 upon trouble, I was hindered from accomplishing this worke, as I* did 
 intende. But yet is here moare, then any manne might well looke for 
 at my hands, if thei did knowe and consider myne estate." The abrupt 
 close of the book (it is all written in English dialogue) is very touch- 
 ing, and may awaken now, three centuries too late, many a warm feel- 
 ing of sympathy. An abstruse dissertation upon Universal Roots is 
 suddenly thus interrupted : 
 
 " MASTER. You saie truth. But harke, what meaneth that hastie 
 knockyng at the doore? 
 
 SCHOLAR. It is a messenger. 
 
 MASTER. What is the message? tel me in mine eare. 
 
 Yea, sir, is that the matter? Then is there no remedie, but that I 
 must neglect all studies and teaching, for to withstande those daungers. 
 My fortune is not so good, to have quiete tyme to teache. 
 
 SCHOLAR. But my fortune and my fellowes is much worse, that your 
 unquietnes so hindereth our knowledge. I praie God amende it. 
 
 MASTER. I am inforced to make an eande of this mater : But yet 
 will I promise you, that whiche you shall chalenge of me, when you see 
 me at better laiser : That I will teache you the whole arte of universall 
 rootes. And the extraction of rootes in all square surdes: with the 
 demonstration of theim, and all the former woorkes. 
 
 If I might have been quietly permitted to reste but a little while 
 longer, I had determined not to have ceased till I had ended all these 
 thinges at large. But now, farewell. And applie your studie diligently 
 in this that you have learned. And if I maie gette any quietnesse 
 reasonable, I will not forget to performe my promise with an augmen- 
 tation. 
 
 SCHOLAR. My harte is so oppressed with pensivenes, by this sodaine 
 unquietnesse, that I can not expresse my grief. But I will praie, with 
 all theim that love honeste knowledge, that God of his merciewill sone 
 ende your troubles" (soon, indeed, in death), " and graunte you suche 
 
 VOL. I. P 
 
210 JEBOME CARDAN. 
 
 Samson Carrasco, being thrown from his horse by the 
 knight, and having his ribs broken, sent it is said quite 
 naturally for an algebrist to heal his bruises 1 . Keeping 
 in mind this old association of ideas, we find that there 
 was nothing exceptional in the position of Cardan as 
 teacher of mathematics and practitioner in physic, nothing 
 odd in his combination of the callings of an almanac- 
 maker, an algebrist, and a physician. 
 
 Robert Recorde's book, just mentioned, was published 
 in 1557, and as Cardan's book of the great art was then 
 already twelve years old, it may T)e justly inferred that 
 Cardan was one of the first European writers upon 
 algebra. It is necessary that we should now understand 
 
 reste as your travell doth merite. And all that love learnyng say 
 thereto, Amen. 
 
 MASTER. Amen, and amen." They were the last words he printed. 
 Robert Kecorde's books had quaint titles, fanciful and witty, some- 
 times half-metrical, prefaces, and had bits of his verse scattered upon 
 the front of them. The spirit of the title to the work mentioned above 
 may be briefly expressed in four lines writ on the title of a previous 
 book, The Pathwaie of Knowledg: 
 
 " Geometries Verdicte. 
 All fressha fine wittes by me are filed ; 
 
 All grosse, dull wittes wishe me exiled. 
 Though no mann's witte reject will I, 
 Yet as they be, I wyll them trye." 
 
 1 " En esto fueron razonando los dos hasta que llegaron a un pueblo 
 donde fue' ventura hollar un Algebrista con quien se euro el Sanson des- 
 graciado." D. Quijote. Part. ii. cap. xv. I was directed to this 
 passage by Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary, article Algebra. The 
 general information contained in this chapter is chiefly derived from 
 the same source, and from Montucla's History of Mathematics when 
 no other authority is cited. 
 
ROBERT RECORDE. 211 
 
 somewhat accurately his true place in the history of 
 that science. Of the antiquities of algebra nothing need 
 here be said, unless, perhaps, it is worth while to note 
 that the art probably was born in Hindostan, and that its 
 present name is that given to it by the Arabs, through 
 whom it reached Europe. The Arabic name "al-jebr" is 
 a term which denotes one method of reducing equations, 
 namely by transposing or adding the negative terms so as 
 to make them all affirmative. From the Moors algebra 
 came first into Europe by way of Italy and Spain. The 
 first person known to have brought the art into Italy 
 before there existed printed books was Leonard Bonacci, 
 of Pisa, who composed an arithmetic in the year 1202, and 
 wrote more on the subject twenty-six years afterwards, 
 adding some information upon algebra, the knowledge of 
 which extended then only to the solution of equations of 
 the first and second degree. Bonacci's language was a 
 barbarous mixture of Latin with Italian, and there was in 
 his time no notation by the use of signs. From Pisa the 
 art spread through Tuscany and Italy, so that there were 
 authors who obtained much reputation in it before there 
 was any press from which their works could issue. 
 
 The first printed author upon algebra 1 was a cordelier, 
 
 1 After the discovery of printing, in mathematics, as in other depart- 
 ments of learning, the press was at first employed chiefly in the repro- 
 duction of the writings of the ancients. In 1505, Luca de Borgo trans- 
 lated Euclid. In 1518, Plato of Tivoli translated the Spherics of Tlieo- 
 
 P2 
 
212 JEROME CAIIDAN. 
 
 or minorite friar, Luca Paccioli, commonly called Fra 
 Luca di Borgo, of Borgo San Sepolcro. He is the same 
 Fra Luca whose errors Cardan pointed out in his " Arith- 
 metic." Luca di Borgo had been trained at Venice by 
 Domenico Bragadini, and having increased his knowledge 
 by long travel in the East, taught his science afterwards 
 at Naples, Venice, and Milan, in which last place he was 
 the first who filled a chair of mathematics. It was founded 
 for him by Lodovico Sforza. He had many disciples/ 
 whom he names in his works. He translated Euclid into 
 Latin ; or, more properly speaking, he revised the already 
 existing translation of Campanus, and augmented it with 
 notes. He also wrote several treatises, that were printed 
 between the years 1470 and 1494, the last being entitled 
 (in the second edition) " Summa de Arithmetica, Geo- 
 metria, Proportioni e Proportionalita, nuovamente im- 
 pressa in Toscolano su la riva dil Benacense e unico car- 
 pionista laco: amenissinio sito," &c., the rest of the title- 
 page is further praise of the place in which the good monk 
 had resided during the printing of his book; the same 
 lake of Benacum, or Lago di Guardo, in which Cardan, 
 
 dosius. Memmius, a noble Venetian, translated at the same time 
 Apollonius, Venatorius (Jager?) and Herweg, printers of Basle, pub- 
 lished in 1544 a Latin translation of Archimedes and his commentator 
 Eutochius. Tartalea, in 1557, translated the fifteen books of Euclid 
 into bad Venetian Italian, with a commentary. See Montucla's His- 
 toire des Mathematiques, vol. i. bk, 3. 
 
LUCA DI BOKGO. 213 
 
 during his student days, was nearly drowned. It will be 
 remembered that Cardan related how, at supper, after 
 their escape, he was the only one who had a ready appe- 
 tite for the fine pike that was brought to table. Fra 
 Luca, with a clerical enjoyment of good living, took so 
 heartily to the fine carp of the lake, that he could not for- 
 bear from making honourable mention of them on his title- 
 page ; indeed, the directing attention to the carp, and the 
 antiquities of the locality, occupies more space there than 
 the actual naming of the book 1 . 
 
 In the time of Luca di Borgo, the great art extended to 
 
 1 The preceding details concerning Luca di Borgo are drawn from 
 Montucla, Hist, des Mathematiques. Paris (an vii.), vol. i, p, 549. The 
 first edition of the book referred to in the text being very scarce, 
 Montucla had not seen it. Copies of both the first and second editions 
 (the latter with its curious title-page deficient) are in the British 
 Museum. The first was printed at Venice in 1494, before Brother 
 Luke had made acquaintance with the carps of the Lago di Guardo. 
 It is entitled simply, " Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportion! 
 e Proportionalita," and has the contents printed on the title-page. The 
 title-page to the second edition is formed in precisely the same way, 
 with this interpolation, " Nouamente impressa in Toscolano su la 
 riua dil Benacense et unico carpionista Laco ; Amenissimo Sito: deli 
 antique ed euidenti ruine di la nobil cita Benaco ditta illustrate : Cum 
 numerosita de Imperatorij epitaphij di antique e perfette littere scul- 
 piti dotato : e cum finissimi e mirabil colone marmorei : innumeri 
 fragment! di alabastro porphidi e serpentini. Cose certo letto mio 
 diletto oculata fide miratu digne sotterra si ritrouano." The date of 
 this second edition is 1523, so that Brother Luke's enthusiasm on the 
 subject of the carp, and of the fine remains of the old city of Benacum 
 on its shores, was being excited at about the same time when Cardan 
 and his companions broke their mast upon the lake, and supped upon a 
 pike at Sermione. Of the imperial inscriptions, the fine marble columns, 
 
214 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 quadratic equations, of which only the positive roots were 
 used ; there was but one unknown quantity assumed, and 
 there was no use made of marks or signs, except a few 
 abbreviations. Algebra was then used only for the solu- 
 tion of a small class of numeral problems. 
 
 In or about the year 1505, the first rule for resolving 
 one case of a complex cubic equation (x 3 -J- bx = c) was 
 discovered by Scipio Ferreus, of Bologna. This is the 
 discovery to which a reference was made at the beginning 
 of the ninth chapter of the present work; and from 
 this point the history of Algebra in Italy has an im- 
 mediate bearing on the story of Cardan. Ferreus taught 
 his rule to a pupil named Antonio Maria Fior (Latin- 
 ised, Florido, or, we should say in English, Flower), who, 
 thirty years afterwards, presuming on his knowledge of it, 
 challenged and triumphed over his contemporaries. It 
 was at that time usual for men skilled in any art or science 
 to send tough questions to each other for solution, and 
 to provoke each other to stake money or reputation upon 
 intellectual encounters. The advancement of learning 
 was unquestionably hastened by such means. Master 
 Flower's unanswerable problems, and the pains he took to 
 flout his knowledge of a secret rule in the face of his 
 brother mathematicians, caused him to be rather trouble- 
 
 the innumerable fragments of alabaster, porphyry, and serpentine, to 
 which Era Luca called attention, no trace, I believe, remains to excite 
 notice in the present day. 
 
NICOLO TARTAGLIA. 215 
 
 some. Antonio Maria Fior, who was a Venetian, at last, 
 in 1535, provoked into a wager a hard-headed man of 
 Brescia, Nicolo Tartaglia, then resident in Venice. Each 
 algebrist was to ask of the other thirty questions ; and he 
 who had first answered the questions put to him should 
 win from the other as many entertainments for himself 
 and friends; it was a bet, in fact, of thirty suppers. 
 Plenty of time was given for the concoction of the pro- 
 blems, and a distant day fixed upon which the match was 
 to come off. 
 
 Tartaglia (Latinised, Tartalea) was a hard-headed man. 
 He was born of a very poor and humble family. His 
 father, Michele, was known only by his Christian name, 
 or rather by its diminutive ; for being a very little fellow 
 (the son, Nicolo, was little too) he was called Micheletto; 
 Micheletto the Rider, since he was a postman. He 
 kept a horse, and his business was to carry letters from the 
 noblemen and gentlemen of Brescia the town in which 
 he lived to Verona, Bergamo, and other towns. Mi- 
 cheletto was an honest little being, who contrived to find 
 rude schooling for his children; Nicolo, therefore, when 
 four or five years old, had some instruction. But it was 
 only in his early childhood that he had it, for when he 
 was but six years old his father died, leaving him with a 
 brother older than himself, a younger sister, and a widowed 
 mother in the extremest poverty. When afterwards the 
 
216 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 French, under Gaston de Foix, sacked Brescia 1 , the 
 poor widow, with Nicolo and her little daughter, fled for 
 refuge, following a crowd of helpless men, women, and 
 children into the cathedral. There, however, they were 
 not entirely safe; and Nicolo, a boy of twelve, received 
 five sword wounds upon the head that were almost 
 mortal three upon the skull and two upon the face. 
 The stroke upon the face cleft both lips, struck through 
 his upper jaw into the palate, and broke many of his teeth. 
 Having those wounds he could not speak, or take any but 
 liquid food. His mother took him home, and, being much 
 too poor to pay a surgeon or to buy ointments, treated 
 him herself upon a system which she borrowed from the 
 dogs. Knowing that the whole system of canine surgery 
 consisted in incessant licking of all wounds, she supposed 
 that she might heal her son by frequent washing and most 
 scrupulous regard to cleanliness. Under such care from 
 his mother's hands, Nicolo's wounds did really heal in a 
 few months, leaving scars, he tells us, that would after- 
 wards have made a monster of him, if they had not been 
 covered by his beard. The boy, when recovered, was for 
 a long time so hardly able to pronounce his words, that 
 he was called by his young companions " Tartaglia," stut- 
 terer; and as his father had not transmitted to him any 
 
 i The sack, it may be remembered, lasted seven days, during which 
 the French boasted of having slaughtered indiscriminately forty-six 
 thousand inhabitants. 
 
EARLY LIFE OF TARTAGLIA. 217 
 
 known family name, he was content to adopt, seriously, 
 the nickname given to him, as a perpetual memorial of 
 his misfortune. 
 
 The mother of Tartaglia was unable to provide for him 
 any instruction. Therefore, when he was about fourteen 
 years old, he put himself to school to learn to write, and 
 in fifteen days learnt to make letters as far as k, but 
 there his schooling ended. The schoolmaster's first copy- 
 book reached only to k; when that was finished by a 
 pupil he received another, upon which were the remain- 
 ing letters. Nicolo had put himself to school without the 
 means of paying for instruction, so that the fifteen days re- 
 presented the extent of his credit; that being exhausted, 
 since he had no money, he had nothing more to spend, 
 and very properly retired. He contrived to go away, 
 however, with the master's second copy-book, out of which 
 he taught himself, and which he did not afterwards return. 
 In plain words, he stole instruction in the rudiments of 
 writing. From that day he declares that he had no other 
 teaching than what he could get through the help of a 
 daughter of Poverty, called Industry 1 . 
 
 1 The above sketch of the early life of Tartaglia is taken from the 
 autobiographic details given in his own work, " Quesiti et Invention! 
 Diverse de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano," Venice, 1546, where it occurs 
 in a dialogue between himself and the Prior di Barleta. Lib. vi. 
 Quesito 8, pp. 75, 76. The end of it, " da quel giorno in qua, ma piu 
 fui ne andai da alcun precettore, ma solamente in compagnia di una 
 figlia di poverta, chiamata industria," is at variance with the details 
 
218 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Tartaglia carried his own tale no further ; others, how- 
 ever, who were his neighbours, hare done that, for him; 
 and, if their report be true, he was not so entirely self-in- 
 structed as he claimed to be. In any case, there can be 
 no doubt that he may still fairly enough be said to have 
 become wholly by his own exertions a distinguished 
 mathematician, as it is also certain that he grew to be like 
 many other self-taught men, rugged and vain. It is said 
 of him, that, in the year 1499, by the earnest entreaties of 
 his mother, who could not support him,, he was taken to 
 study at Padua by Lodovico Balbisonio a noble youth 
 of his own town. That he returned to Brescia with his 
 patron, and there showed himself to be so avaricious, so 
 morose, and rude, that he was hated by his fellow-citizens. 
 That being obliged to quit them and to live elsewhere, he 
 travelled and made money ; thriving especially at Venice. 
 That, he returned to Brescia to teach. Euclid, but that 
 again his fellow-townsmen would not tolerate him, and 
 that thereupon he again went to Venice, prospered, and 
 died old- He did not acquire any command over Latin ; 
 and when he wrote, it was in his own bad Venetian dia- 
 lect. He must, however, have known how to read, 
 although he did not trust himself to write the learned lan- 
 
 which follow, for which lam indebted to Papadopoli, Gymn. Patav, 
 vol. ii. pp. 210, 211. Papadopoli whose little biographic sketches of 
 men who hare been, connected with his university, are by no means 
 always accurate cites Rubeus, one of Tartaglia's contemporaries, a 
 writer very well acquainted with Venetian affairs and people. 
 
TARTAGLIA DISCOVERS CERTAIN RULES. 219 
 
 guages, for he translated Euclid, and was compelled to 
 study Latin works on mathematics. 
 
 Tartaglia then, settled in Venice, set to work with all 
 his might to prepare himself for his contest with the 
 before-mentioned Antonio Maria Fior ; and while in bed 
 one night, eight days in advance of the time of meeting, 
 he thought out his rival's secret; discovering not only the 
 rule of Scipio Ferreus for the case x 3 -^- bx = c, but also 
 a rule for the case x 3 = bx + c. He prepared himself 
 accordingly. He took care to propose for the perplexing 
 of his antagonist several problems that could be solved only 
 according to the latter rule, then first discovered by him- 
 self. The questions put to him in return he knew would 
 hinge upon the rule of Ferreus. The event proved that 
 he was right; and when the day of trial came Tartaglia 
 answered all the questions on the list presented to him by 
 his adversary in two hours, before Florido had solved one 
 of the problems offered to him. The victor waived his right 
 to thirty entertainments, but achieved a lasting triumph. 
 
 These rules were discovered by Tartaglia on the 12th 
 and 13th of February, 1535. Five years earlier he had 
 discovered two other rules (for the cases x 3 -J- ax 2 = c 
 and x 3 = ax 2 -[- c) on the occasion of questions proposed 
 by a schoolmaster at Brescia, Zuanne da Coi (which would 
 in English be, John Hill). 
 
 Except these discoveries, there was nothing in the 
 
220 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 mathematical knowledge or doctrine of Tartalea which 
 placed him in advance of other scholars of his time. He 
 understood thoroughly the mathematical knowledge of 
 his day, and used it very skilfully. His new rules con- 
 cerning cubic equations he maintained as his private pro- 
 perty, cherishing them as magic arms which secured to 
 him a constant victory in algebraic tilts, and caused him 
 to be famed and feared. That was a selfish use to make 
 of scientific acquisitions, with which no scholar of the 
 present day would sympathise, and which, also, in the 
 sixteenth century, would have been thought illiberal 
 by students like the pattern man of letters, Conrad 
 Gesner, or even our erratic and excitable Cardan. 
 
 Cardan, when his work upon arithmetic approached 
 completion, made an attempt to procure the publication 
 of Tartalea's rules. Four years had elapsed since the 
 famous contest of Tartalea with Fior (or Florido), when, 
 in the beginning of 1539, Cardan applied through a book- 
 seller to the victor, with compliments, and a submission 
 of critical problems after the customary fashion. Then 
 there were sown the seeds of a great quarrel, the growth 
 of which Tartalea himself has chronicled with jealous 
 care. 
 
 It should be understood that not many months before 
 the commencement of the correspondence between Nicolas 
 Tartalea and Jerome Cardan, Tartalea had published a 
 
TARTAGLIA'S RULES. 221 
 
 small tract at his own expense on the New Science of 
 Artillery (its preface is dated December 20, 1537) 1 . He 
 was indeed one of the first men who perceived that there 
 was any science to be taught at all to men having the 
 care of cannon. Another and larger original work was 
 published, also at his own expense, in the year 1546, at 
 Venice, where he lectured publicly on mathematics. It 
 is entitled Divers Questions and Inventions 2 , is dedicated 
 to our Henry VIII. , and contains nine books, which are, 
 in fact, the diary and commonplace-book of his life as a 
 mathematician. In it are set down, year after year as 
 they came, the questions proposed to him at different 
 times by friends and rivals on mechanics, statics, hydro- 
 statics, &c. 9 during twenty years ending in 1541. It con- 
 
 1 " Nova Scientia inventa da Nicolo Tartalea B." The title-page is 
 chiefly occupied by a large plate, which represents the courts of Phi- 
 losophy, to which Euclid is doorkeeper, Aristotle and Plato being 
 masters of an inmost court, in which Philosophy sits throned, Plato 
 declaring by a label that he will let nobody in who does not understand 
 Geometry. In the great court there is a cannon being fired, all the 
 sciences looking on in a crowd such as Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, 
 Astronomy, Cheiromancy, Cosmography, Necromancy, Astrology, Per- 
 spective, and Prestidigitation! A wonderfully modest-looking gentle- 
 man, with his hand upon his heart, stands among the number, with a 
 you-do-me-too-much-honour look upon his countenance; Arithmetic 
 and Geometry are pointing to him, and under his feet his name is 
 written NICOLO TABTALEA. 
 
 2 " Quesiti et Invention! Diverse de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano." 
 " Stampata in Venetia per Venturino Ruffinelli ad instantia et requi- 
 sitione, et a propria spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autore, Nel 
 mese di Luio L'anno di nostra salute. M.D.XLVI." 
 
222 JEEOME CARDAN. 
 
 tains forty-two dialogues, in the last of which one speaker is 
 Mr. Richard Wentworth, an English gentleman who had 
 been taught by Tartalea at Venice. Among other matter 
 in the ninth book of this volume is the record kept by 
 the jealous Nicolo of all his early dealings with Cardan, 
 minutes of conversations and copies of correspondence 
 which he there printed, as he threatened that he would , 
 when he considered himself to have been grievously ill- 
 used by Jerome, as a way of publishing his misdeeds to 
 the world. The chronicle begins with Jerome's applica- 
 tion before mentioned, of which Tartalea had made in 
 his diary an ample memorandum in the manner follow- 
 ing : (I should explain that two old terms employed in 
 mathematics, where they occur occasionally, in the course 
 of this correspondence, I have thought it proper to re- 
 tain. The quantity represented now by x used to be 
 called the cosa, or in Latin, res, and x 2 was known as the 
 census.) 
 
 " Inquiry made by M. Zuan Antonio, bookseller, in the 
 name of one Messer Hieronimo Cardano, Physician and 
 public reader of Mathematics in Milan, dated January 
 2nd, 1539 1 . 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. Messer Nicolo, I have been directed to 
 you by a worthy man, physician of Milan, named Messer 
 1 Op. cit. Lib. ix. p. 115. 
 
ANTONIO MARIA PIOR. 
 
 Hieronimo Cardano, who is a very great mathematician, 
 and reads Euclid there in Milan publicly, and who is at 
 present causing to be printed a work of his on the Prac- 
 tice of Arithmetic and Geometry and Algebra, which 
 \vill be of some note. And because he has understood 
 that you have been engaged in disputation with Master 
 Antonio Maria Fior, and that you agreed each to propose 
 thirty cases or questions, and did so ; and his excellency has 
 understood that the said Master Antonio Maria proposed 
 to you all his thirty which led you in algebra to a case of 
 the cosa and cube equal to the number. And that you 
 found a general rule for such case, and by the so great 
 strength of your invention you had resolved all the said 
 thirty questions proposed to you at the end of two hours. 
 Therefore his excellency prays you that you will kindly 
 make known to him that rule discovered by you, and 
 if you think fit he will make it public under your name 
 in his present work, but if you do not think fit that it 
 should be published he will keep it secret. 
 
 NICOLO. Tell his excellency that he must pardon me; 
 when I propose to publish my invention, I will publish it 
 in a work [of my own, and not in the work of another 
 man, so that his excellency must hold me excused. 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. If you object to make known to 
 him your discovery, his excellency has bidden me to pray 
 that you will, however, give him the said thirty questions 
 
224 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 that were proposed to you, with your resolution of them, 
 and at the same time the thirty questions that were pro- 
 posed by yourself. 
 
 NICOLO. I cannot do that, because as soon as he shall 
 have one of the said cases with its solution, his excellency 
 will at once understand the rule discovered by me, with 
 which many other rules may perhaps be found, based on 
 the same material. 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. His excellency has given me eight 
 questions to give you, praying that you will resolve them 
 for him. The questions are these : 
 
 1. Divide me ten into four parts in continued propor- 
 tion, of which the first shall be two. 
 
 2. Divide me ten into four parts in continued propor- 
 tion, of which the second shall be two. 
 
 ***** 
 
 6. Find me four quantities in continued proportion, 
 of which the second shall be two, and the first and fourth 
 added shall make ten. 
 
 7. Make me often three parts in continued proportion, 
 of which the first multiplied by the second will make 
 eight. 
 
 8. Find me a number which multiplied by its root plus 
 three will make twenty-one. 
 
 NICOLO. Those are questions put by Messer Zuanne 
 da Coi, and by no one else. I know them by the two 
 
ZUANNE DA COI. 225 
 
 last, because a similar one to that sixth" [seventh ?] " he 
 sent to me two years ago, and I made him confess that he 
 did not understand the same, and a similar one to that 
 last (which induces an operation of the square and cube 
 equal to the number) I gave him out of courtesy solved, 
 not a year ago, and for that solution I found a rule 
 specially bearing upon such problems. 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. I know well that these questions 
 were given to me by his said excellency, Messer Hiero- 
 nimo Cardano, and no other. 
 
 NICOLO. Then the said Messer Zuanne da Coi must 
 have been to Milan and proposed them to his excellency, 
 and he, being unable to resolve them, has sent them to be 
 worked out by me, and this I hold for certain, because 
 the said Messer Zuanne promised me a year ago that he 
 would come here to Venice, but for all that he has never 
 been, and I think he has repented of his purpose and 
 given its turn to Milan. 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. Do not think that his excellency 
 would have sent you these problems if he had not under- 
 stood them and known how to solve them, or that they 
 proceed from another person, for his excellency is one of 
 the most learned men in Milan, and the Marquis dal 
 Vasto has given him a great provision for his compe- 
 tency. 
 
 NICOLO. I do not deny that his excellency is most 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 JEKOME CABDAN. 
 
 learned and most competent. But I affirm that he would 
 not know how to solve these seven problems which he 
 sent for me to work out by the general rule. Because if 
 his excellency does not know how to solve that of the cosa 
 and cube equal to the number (which you have besought 
 of me with so much entreaty), how could he know how to 
 solve the greater part of these, which conduct to opera- 
 tions of a much stranger kind than that of the cosa and 
 cube equal to the number; so that if he knew how to 
 solve all these problems, much more easily would he know 
 how to solve that of the cosa and cube equal to the 
 number, and if he knew it I am sure that he would not 
 go begging and seeking for it. 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. I know not how to answer you, 
 because I do not understand these things, but whenever 
 you speak with him I believe that he himself will know 
 what to reply. However, let all those matters pass, and 
 that I may not have lost my pains in coming, give me at 
 any rate the simple copy of the thirty cases that were 
 proposed to you by the said Master Antonio Maria Fior, 
 and if you can also give me a copy of the thirty questions 
 that were asked by you of him you will do me the 
 greatest favour. 
 
 NICOLO. Of his (though I can ill spare time) I will 
 make you a copy, but mine I cannot let you have, be- 
 cause I have no copy at hand, and I cannot exactly re- 
 
TARTAGLIA HOARDS II1S KNOWLEDGE. 227 
 
 member what they all were, because they were all dis- 
 similar; but if you go to the notary, he will no doubt be 
 able to give you a copy. 
 
 ZUAN ANTONIO. Be pleased, then, to give .me his. 
 NiCOLO. They are these precisely as he wrote them : 
 1 Glory to God, 1534, the 22nd day of February, in 
 
 Venice. 
 
 * These are the thirty arguments proposed by me, An- 
 tonio Maria Fior, to you, Master Nicolo Tartaglia.' " 
 It is not requisite to quote them here. From this 
 account given, by Tartalea himself, it appears that Jerome's 
 application was of a reasonable kind. Tartalea had been 
 during four years in possession of his knowledge, and had 
 published nothing but his small work on Artillery, that 
 too, though he was a poor man, at his own expense. 
 There was no reason to believe that Tartalea designed to 
 publish what he knew in any independent work on ma- 
 thematics. Moreover, there seems to have been no pub- 
 lisher willing to print at his own cost the writings of a 
 man who could not address the learned in the language 
 properly appointed for their use, or could not write even 
 Italian otherwise than in the very dialect to which he had 
 been born. It was therefore just and natural that Car- 
 dan should propose the embodiment in his own treatise of 
 Tartalea's additions to the science about which he wrote, 
 with a due publication of his claims as a discoverer. If, 
 
 Q2 
 
228 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 however, Nicolo desired to keep his knowledge to him- 
 self, then it was necessary for the advance of his favourite 
 science that Cardan should acquire it in some other way. 
 Something he had already discovered, and he hoped from 
 any calculations that he might persuade Tartalea to fur- 
 nish that he could obtain hints by which he would be 
 assisted in discovering the whole of the secret kept with 
 too much jealousy from the science to which it be- 
 longed. Tartalea repelled every advance of this kind, 
 so unceremoniously, that Jerome, who was hot in dis- 
 putation, fell into a rage, and wrote a very angry 
 letter, which Tartalea has printed, and which I ap- 
 pend in full. It was of course not written for print, 
 and is an example of the kind of impatient violence 
 which Cardan used in private arguments, but always 
 abstained from carrying into his books. Had not Tar- 
 talea published the whole quarrel, very little trace would 
 have been left of it, for Jerome put no wrath or malice 
 into works deliberately written for posterity. I desire 
 also, for a reason that will afterwards appear, to call 
 attention to the manner in which mention is made of the 
 Marquis del Guasto in the dialogue just quoted, and in 
 the succeeding letter. 
 
LETTER TO TARTAGLIA. 229 
 
 Letter from Cardan to Nicolo Tartalea, dated the 12th of 
 
 February, 1539 1 . 
 " I wonder much, dear Messer Nicolo, at the unhand- 
 
 1 Tartalea. Quesiti et Invcntiori Diverse. Lib. ix. p, 1 17. In trans- 
 lating these letters I provide them with more stops than I find in the 
 original. Tartalea wrote his book in the Venetian dialect, to which 
 he was accustomed a kind of Italian most familiar to English readers, 
 as it is to be seen moderately caricatured in some of Goldoni's plays, 
 as, for example, in the Poeta Fanatico. Moreover, Tartalea corrected 
 the press badly, and allowed sentences to be printed one into another 
 in a very reckless way. I quote in illustration the first sentence of 
 this letter by Cardan, as printed by Nicolo Tartalea: "Mi marauiglio 
 molto Messer Nicolo caro de si disconueneuole risposta haueti data a 
 uno Zuan Antonio da Bassano libraro el quale da mia parte ui ha pre- 
 gato li uolesti dare la risposta di sette, ouer otto question! le quale ui 
 mandai, e la coppia delle proposte fatte tra uoi e Maestro Antonio 
 Maria Fior con le sue solution! alle quale non ui e bastato di non man- 
 darmene niuna saluo che quelle de Maestro Antonio Maria le quale 
 sono 30 proposte ma re uera quasi una sola sostantia, cioe cubbo e cosa 
 equal a numero, pero mi doglio tra Paltre disgratie di questa arte che 
 quello li danno opera sono tanto discortesi e tanto presumeno di se 
 stesso, che non senza cagion sono indicati dal uulgo apresso che pazzi 
 a cio ui caui fora de questa fantasia della quale cauai nouamente messer 
 Zuanne da Coi, cioe d'essere il primo homo del mondo donde se partito 
 da Millano per disperato, ne uoglio scrivere amoreuolmente e trarui 
 fori di fantasia che uoi ui crediati essere si grande ui faro conoscere 
 con amoreuole admonitioni per le uostre parole medesime che seti piu 
 apresso a la ualle che alia sumita del monte, potria ben essere che in 
 altra cosa fosti piu esercitato, e ualente che non dimostrati per la 
 rispesta e prima ui auiso pero che ui ho hauuto in bon conto e subito 
 ariuo li uostri libri sopra le artegliarie ne comprai doi che solo porto 
 Zuan Antonio delli quali uno ne dette al Signer Marchese, e 1'altro 
 tene per mi et oltra cio ui laudai molto al Signer Marchese pensando 
 fosti piu gentil reconoscitore, e piu humano e piu cortese, e piu suffi- 
 ciente de Messer Zuanne qual uoi allegati, ma mi pare poca differentia 
 da luna a laltro se altro non mostrati hora peruenire a fatti ne accuso 
 in quatro cose de momento." That is a tolerable scolding for a man 
 to utter in a single breath. Tartalea was evidently determined to 
 allow no point to remain in Cardan's abuse of him. 
 
230 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 some reply you have made to one Zuan Antonio da Bas- 
 sano, bookseller, who on my part prayed that you would 
 give him answers to the six or eight questions that I 
 sent you, and the copy of the propositions exchanged 
 between you and Master Antonio Maria Fior, with their 
 solutions, to which it was not enough for you to return 
 nothing but the questions of Master Antonio Maria, 
 which are thirty in number but one only in substance, 
 that is to say, treating of cube and cosa equal to the 
 number, but it grieves me much that among other dis- 
 comforts of this science those who engage in it are so 
 discourteous, and presume so much on their own worth, 
 that it is not without reasons they are called fools by the 
 surrounding vulgar. I would pluck you out of this con- 
 ceit, as I plucked out lately Messer Zuanne da Coi, that 
 is to say, the conceit of being the first man in the world, 
 wherefore he left Milan in despair ; I would write to 
 you lovingly" [he writes in a rage] " and drag you out of 
 the conceit of thinking that you are so great would 
 cause you to understand from kindly admonition, out of 
 your own words, that you are nearer to the valley than the 
 mountain-top. In other things you may be more skilled 
 and clever than you have shown yourself to be in your 
 reply ; and so I must in the first place state that I have 
 held you in good esteem, and as soon as your book upon 
 Artillery appeared, I bought two copies, the only ones 
 that Zuan Antonio brought, of which I gave one to 
 
JEROME IN WKATII. 231 
 
 Signer the Marquis, thinking you capable of more cour- 
 teous recognition, more refined, more gentlemanly, and 
 more competent than Messer Zuanna as you allege your- 
 self to be, but I see little difference between one and 
 the other ; if there be any you have not shown it. 
 Now to come to facts, I accuse you upon four important 
 points. 
 
 The first is, that you said my questions were not mine, 
 but belonged to Messer Zuanne Colle; as if you would 
 have it that there is no man in Milan able to put such 
 questions. My master, clever men are not discovered by 
 their questions, as you think, but by their answers ; 
 therefore you have been guilty of very grave presump- 
 tion. There are many in Milan who know them ; and I 
 knew them before Messer Zuanne knew how to count 
 ten, if he be as young as he would make himself. 
 
 The second is, that you told the bookseller that if one 
 of the questions of Master Antonio Maria could be 
 solved, all mine would be solved. I ask you, for mercy's 
 sake, with whom you think that you are speaking ? 
 With your pupils, or with men ? Where did you ever 
 find that the discovery of the root pronica media 1 , which 
 lies at the bottom of the solution of all the thirty ques- 
 tions of Master Antonio Maria, which is founded on the 
 
 1 "Doue trovasti noi mai che la inyentione de la radice pronica 
 media, la quale e il fondainento de . . . . posse essere la resolutione 
 d'una questione di cubo c numero equal a censo." 
 
232 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 eighth problem of the sixth book of Euclid, could resolve 
 a question of cube and number equal to the census, under 
 which section is to be ranked the proposition which says, 
 4 Find me four quantities, in continuous proportion, of 
 which the second shall be two, and the first and fourth 
 shall make ten.' I speak in the same way of the others, 
 so that while you wished to show yourself a miracle of 
 science to a bookseller, you have shown yourself a great 
 ignoramus to those who understand such matters ; not 
 that I myself esteem you ignorant, but too presumptuous ; 
 as was Messer Zuanne da Coi, who thinking to get credit 
 for knowing what he did not know, lost credit for know- 
 ing what he did. 
 
 The third point is, that you told the said bookseller 
 that if one of my questions were solved all would be 
 solved, which is most false, and it is a covert insult to say 
 that while thinking to send you six questions, I had sent 
 but one, which would argue in me a great confusion of 
 understanding ; and certainly, if I were cunning, I would 
 wager a hundred scudi upon that matter ; that is to say, 
 that they could not be reduced either into one, or into 
 two, or into three questions. And, indeed, if you will 
 bet them, I will not refuse you, and will come at an ap- 
 pointed time to Venice, and will give bank security 
 here if you will come here, or will give it to you there 
 in Venice if I go thither. This is not mere profession, 
 
A STUMBLE ON THE LAW OF GRAVITATION. 233 
 
 for you have to do with people who will keep their 
 word. 
 
 The fourth is a too manifest error in your book en- 
 titled the New Science of Artillery, in which you will 
 have it, at the fifth proposition of the first book, that no 
 body of uniform weight can traverse any space of time or 
 place by natural and violent motion mixed together; 
 which is most false, and contrary to all reason and natural 
 experience. The argument with which you prove it is 
 still more extraordinary than the answer you gave to the 
 bookseller. Do you not know that it is unsuitable? In 
 its descent a body moves with increased velocity, and in 
 forward progress it moves with diminishing speed, as we 
 see in the throwing of a stone, which, as it descends, 
 comes faster and faster to the earth, but when it left the 
 hand went more and more slowly, from which you may 
 draw other strange arguments in the said book, if you 
 have it in mind that men of sense are not to be contra- 
 dicted lightly. I shall be held excused, I hope, for con- 
 tradicting you, because, in treating of artillery, which 
 was little in your vocation, you exerted yourself to say 
 something notable, and you must not, for my rudeness, 
 think that I am like yourself and Messer Zuan Colle. 
 
 I send you two questions with their solutions, but the 
 solutions shall be separate from the questions, and the 
 messenger will take them with him ; and if you cannot 
 solve the questions he will place the solutions in your 
 
234 JEROME CAKDAN. 
 
 hand. You shall have them each to each, that you may 
 not suppose I have sent rather to get than to give them ; 
 but return first your own, that you may not lead me to 
 believe that you have solved the questions, when you 
 have not. 
 
 In addition to this, be pleased to send me the propo- 
 sitions offered by you to Master Antonio Maria Fior, and 
 if you will not send me the solutions, keep them by you, 
 they are not so very precious. And if it should please 
 you, in receiving the solutions of my said questions 
 should you be yourself unable to solve them, after you 
 have satisfied yourself that my first six questions are dif- 
 ferent in kind to send me the solution of any one of 
 them, rather for friendship's sake, and for a test of your 
 great skill, than for any other purpose, you will do me a 
 very singular pleasure. 
 
 The first question : Make me of ten four quantities in 
 continued proportion whose squares added shall make 
 sixty. A like question is put by Brother Luca, but he 
 does not answer it. 
 
 The second: Two persons were in company, and pos- 
 sessed I know not how many ducats. They gained the 
 cube of the tenth part of their capital, and if they had 
 gained three less than they did gain, they would have 
 gained an amount equal to their capital. How many 
 ducats had they ? 
 
 HIERONIMO CARDANO, Physician." 
 
FIRST STAGE OF THE DISPUTE. 235 
 
 To this letter Tartalea replied categorically on the 18th 
 of February, 1539 1 , at such very great length, that I 
 must be content to quote only the few passages which bear 
 immediately on our present subject. It must be quite 
 obvious that the mention made in the preceding letter of 
 Alphonso d'Avalos, Marquis del Guasto, was altogether 
 natural. Cardan knew when the tract on artillery came 
 out, that Tartalea possessed a bit of mathematical know- 
 ledge which he himself was desiring greatly to acquire. If 
 only in the hope of finding some clue to his secret, it was 
 natural that he should have bought anything mathematical 
 written by Nicolo, and as the subject was the management 
 of artillery, it would occur to him most readily to present 
 a copy to his patron, who, possessing the tastes of a 
 scholar, was appointed general in the district, and was 
 concerned very actively in the prevailing wars. That 
 Jerome had not only bought the tract but read it care- 
 fully, is evident from the perfectly just criticism of one of 
 its propositions contained in the preceding letter. The 
 first point of accusation in that letter consisted, I need 
 scarcely say, of a prevarication. I have pointed out the 
 vicious clause in the ethics sanctioned by his Church, and 
 almost universal in his time, which allowed truth of mind 
 to be put out of sight for any useful purpose, if the truth 
 of the lip only was preserved. Cardan was preserved 
 1 Op. cit. pp. 118 122. The pages are numbered in pairs. 
 
236 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 rather by his ruggedness than by his virtue from any 
 frequent exercise of this dishonest right of circumvention. 
 In his reply to Tartalea concerning Zuanne da Coi, and 
 his questions, he wrote, however, with a manifest inten- 
 tion to deceive. He said only that he had long known 
 of such problems, he meant it to be understood, that he 
 had long known how to solve them. Tartalea, however, 
 knew his ground, and walked into no pitfall: " Con- 
 cerning your first accusation," he wrote to the " Most 
 Excellent Messer Hieronimo," " I answer and say, that it 
 is time that I said that such questions came from Messer 
 Zuanne da Coi, because a year and a half ago he proposed 
 to me one like the last but one (only in other words), of 
 which I made him himself confess here in Venice that he 
 did not understand it, and that he did not know the 
 answer, so that for such reason, and from other indications, 
 I judged those questions to be his, and that he had him- 
 self sent them to me under your name. But when that 
 bookseller assured me that he had them of your excel- 
 lency, I judged that the said Messer Zuanne da Coi had 
 been to Milan, and that they were there proposed to you 
 by him (as I still judge, and believe firmly), and that you, 
 being unable to solve them, sent them to me to be solved, 
 for reasons that will presently be mentioned 1 ." 
 
 i " Ma quando chel libraro me acerto hauerle hauute da uostra ec- 
 cellentia giudicai die il detto Messer Zuanne da Coi fusse uenuto a 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS LAY BETS. 237 
 
 Cardan, I think, had worked his way by that time 
 somewhat further than Tartalea supposed ; the gist of 
 Tartalea's argument upon the matter was, however, true, 
 and when writing the above passage he had certainly the 
 best of the discussion. He answered well and boldly. He 
 showed equal courage, when, having explained that Car- 
 dan's challenge was founded on a misunderstanding of his 
 answer to the bookseller, he picked up the gage that had 
 been thrown before him. Jerome's complaint was super- 
 fluous, he said : " But inasmuch as I may consider that 
 your excellency very much desires to try your skill with 
 me, which being so, if I were sure to be a loser, I would 
 not refuse such a challenge, that is to say, to bet upon 
 this matter the said hundred ducats, and I will come per- 
 sonally for the purpose to Milan, if you will not come to 
 Venice." 
 
 Tartalea will be much perplexed to find a hundred 
 ducats should he lose the wager, and I know that Jerome 
 sent out his defiance from a home into which ducats did 
 not come even by scores. Each combatant can afford 
 only to win, but gamblers are not always wise, and men 
 could then gamble not less readily in algebra than over 
 cards or dice. 
 
 Tartalea met more boldly than wisely the objection 
 
 Millano et die li hauesse proposte a quella (come che anchor giudico 
 ct tengo per fermo) et che quella per non saperle risoluere me le hab- 
 bia mandate da risoluere a me per le ragioni che di sotto se dira." 
 
238 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 made by Cardan to the fifth proposition of his science of ar- 
 tillery, which proposition, in modern language, amounted 
 to the assertion that a body could not move at once under 
 the influence of a transmitted force and the force of gravi- 
 tation. Jerome knowing of course nothing of the theory 
 of gravitation, saw the facts, and urged them very properly. 
 Nicolo, like a good disputant, replied: " I answer and say 
 that the reasons and arguments adduced by you for the 
 destruction of my said fifth proposition, are so weak and 
 ill-conditioned, that an infirm woman would be strong 
 enough to beat them to the ground." He then endea- 
 voured in a technical way to reduce Cardan's suggestion 
 to an absurdity, and summed up by addressing to Jerome 
 the retaliatory comment, that " You thinking to make 
 yourself appear a miracle to me with your ridiculous oppo- 
 sitions, have proved yourself, I will not say a great 
 ignoramus, as you said to me, but a man of little judg- 
 ment." 
 
 In reply to the unphilosophical sneer against the study 
 of artillery, Tartalea spoke very worthily, in the following 
 passage, which contains also the next reference to the 
 Marquis d'Avalos, whose precise relation to the matter 
 in dispute ought to be understood distinctly. Of the 
 artillery: "As to that particular, I answer and say, that 
 I take pleasure in new inventions, and in treating and 
 speaking of things about which other men have not 
 
TARTAGLIA DEFENDS HIS " ARTILLERY." 239 
 
 treated or spoken, and I take no pleasure in doing as some 
 do, who fill their volumes with things robbed from this 
 or that other author. And although the speaking of 
 artillery, and of the firing of it, is not a thing very honour- 
 able in itself, yet, since it is a new matter, and not barren 
 of speculation, I thought well to say a little on it 1 , and in 
 connexion with that subject, I am at present bringing out 
 two sorts of instruments belonging to the art, that is to 
 say, a square to regulate the discharging of the said 
 artillery, and also to level and examine every elevation. 
 Also, another instrument for the investigation of distances 
 on a plane surface, the description of which instruments 
 will be published with my said work on artillery. And 
 because you have written to me that you purchased two 
 of my said books, one of which you gave to his excel- 
 lency the lord marquis, and the other you kept for 
 yourself, I have thought good to send you four copies of 
 the said instruments, and have given them to the house of 
 Messer Ottaviano Scoto, who will see that they are sent 
 to you by some messenger, to be added to those volumes ; 
 
 1 Tliis passage, so creditable to Tartalea in its sense and temper, 
 stands in his own words thus : " Circa a questa particolarita ve rispondo 
 et dico, che me diletto, de noue inuentioni et di trattare, et parlare de 
 cose che altri non habbia trattato, ne parlato, et no me diletto di for 
 come fanno alcuni, chi impiono li suoi uolumi di cose robate da questo 
 et da quello altro autore. Et quantunque a parlare delle artegliarie, 
 et lor tiri non sia cosa molto honereuole in se, pur per esser una 
 materia noua, et di non puoca speculatione me apparso di parlarue 
 alquanto. . . ." Op. cit. p. 119. 
 
240 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 of which four instruments you will give two to his excel- 
 lency the lord marquis, and the other two keep as your 
 own. 
 
 It was practically an important gain to Tartalea, if he 
 could suggest, through any friend who would get for 
 them proper attention, a knowledge of his inventions to 
 a military chief able if he chose to bring them into use 
 and notice. The complaints made by Tartalea have led 
 to the supposition that Cardan made artful use of the 
 name and influence of his patron, in a deep design for 
 the wresting from Nicolo of the small bit of knowledge 
 he desired to get 1 . The supposition is quite incorrect. 
 
 1 In Button's Mathematical Dictionary the spirit of the next letters 
 between Cardan and Tartalea is expressed in the following manner, 
 and it is the usual version of the story: "Finding he could not thus 
 prevail with all his fair promises, Cardan then fell upon another scheme. 
 There was a certain Marquis dal Vasto, a great patron of Cardan, and, 
 it was said, of learned men in general. Cardan conceived the idea of 
 making use of the influence of this nobleman to draw Tartalea to Milan, 
 hoping that then, by personal entreaties, he should succeed in drawing 
 the long- concealed rules from him. Accordingly, he wrote a second 
 letter to Tartalea, much in the same strain with the former, strongly 
 inviting him to come and spend a few days in his house at Milan, and 
 representing that, having often commended him in the highest terms 
 to the marquis, this nobleman desired much to see him ; for which 
 reason Cardan advised him, as a friend, to come and visit them at 
 Milan, as it might be greatly to his interest, the marquis being very 
 liberal and bountiful; and he besides gave Tartalea to understand, that 
 it might be dangerous to offend such a man by refusing to come, who 
 might, in that case, take offence, and do him some injury. This 
 
 manoeuvre had the desired effect " Button's Philosophical and 
 
 Mathematical Dictionary (ed. 1815), vol. i. p. 81. So the tale is gene- 
 rally told against Cardan. From his entire letter which follows, and 
 the rest of the story as narrated in the text, the reader may judge how 
 far this version is a fair one. 
 
JEROME NEGOTIATES FOR PEACE. 241 
 
 On Tartalea's own showing, nothing could be more 
 natural and gradual than the succession of steps by which 
 the marquis rose into importance during the correspond- 
 ence between the two mathematicians. I very much 
 doubt, also, whether we ought not to attribute the tone 
 of Jerome's next answer to Tartalea, not only to a pru- 
 dent desire to maintain friendly negotiations, but in an 
 equal degree to the fact that his anger, always shortlived, 
 being at an end, he desired to heal the wounds that he 
 had made, and behave with the courtesy due from one 
 scholar to another. The reply, dated the 19th of March, 
 1539, now follows 1 : 
 
 "My very dear Messer Nicolo, I have received a very 
 long letter of yours, and the longer it was the more it 
 pleased me; I could have wished it doubled, if only you 
 would not think that my biting words proceeded either 
 from hate, for which there was no cause, or from ma- 
 lignity of nature, since I do good, when I can, much 
 more readily than harm: it is my business to heal: let 
 me do that; not bitten with envy at the question whether 
 you are my equal or my inferior; I should have no cause 
 to be so if you were my master in this art ; I should struggle 
 to soar with you, not speak you ill. Besides, the envious 
 malign in absence not in presence ; but I wrote that abuse 
 
 1 Quesiti et Invention! (ed. cit.), Lib. ix. p. 122. The letter begins, 
 " Messer Nicolo mio carissimo." 
 
 
 
242 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 to stir you up to write again, judging, with out-of-the-way 
 craft, what sort of a man you were from the relation of 
 Messer Zuan Colle, who has been here. I liked him 
 much, and did my best to give him pleasure, so that 
 from his account I learned to think well of you, and even 
 designed to send to you a letter ; but he behaved ungrate- 
 fully, speaking ill of me privately and publicly, and in- 
 viting me improperly with placards and writings, which 
 things not succeeding to his own content (he had to one 
 question three answers one from Euclid, the other from 
 Ptolemy, the other from Geber), he became so confounded 
 that he left in despair, quitting a school of about sixty 
 pupils, for which I was sorry enough. So that if I wrote 
 sharply to you I did it willingly, thinking to cause that 
 to follow which has followed ; that is to say, to have your 
 answer, together with the friendship of a man so singu- 
 larly able in his art as I judge you to be by the things 
 written in your letter. Thus I have committed an offence 
 of which I am not willing to repent. 
 
 Now you must know, that in addition to your letter, I 
 received a placard of the things which you are now about 
 to read publicly in San Zuanne Polo, which bill has 
 given me the highest pleasure; and besides that, you 
 promised me four instruments, two to give to the lord 
 marquis and two for me : and Signer Ottaviano writes to 
 me that he sends four, though I have yet received neither 
 
A PACIFIC DESPATCH. 243 
 
 two nor four; but he says that they shall come with cer- 
 tain books that he is sending. I should have been glad 
 to have them to give to the lord marquis ; when I have 
 them I will give them to him. 
 
 As for the answers to my four accusations, I need only 
 reply to two ; one concerns the attack on your fifth pro. 
 position in the Arte Nova, the other is about coming to a 
 trial against you, who are the more able man in your own 
 art. With regard to that second point, I would much 
 rather live something of a poltroon than die a hero, the 
 rather, as you concede my position by saying that Zuan 
 Antonio had misunderstood, which puts an end to the 
 occasion of our combat. I hope that you will come to 
 Milan and learn to know me without the deposit of a 
 hundred ducats, because in truth, I know you to be a very 
 able man, and knowing one another we might both be 
 able to deliberate together. 
 
 As for the disputation on the subject of your fifth pro- 
 position, certainly, you do well to use bold words, and de- 
 fend the opinion you have published. And certainly when 
 you come (as I hope, please God, you will) to Milan, we 
 will talk of it more at our ease, and the rather, as I had 
 your letters only yesterday evening" [which implied that a 
 month passed before they could be transmitted from Tar- 
 talea in Venice, to Cardan in Milan], " and to-day I am 
 obliged to write to you by command of the lord marqui?, 
 
244 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 so that I have not had time to reflect upon your other 
 propositions. 
 
 I pray you, at any rate, to send or bring me what re- 
 mains of your thirty deductions which you gave to Master 
 Antonio Maria. If you will also send me some solutions 
 of your two rules, or will give them to me when you come, 
 I shall be in the highest degree obliged ; for you must 
 know that I take pleasure in all courtesy, and that I have 
 sent to press a work entirely on the practice of Geometry, 
 Arithmetic, and Algebra, of which up to this date more 
 than the half is printed, and if you will give them to me 
 so that I may publish them in your name, I will publish 
 them at the end of the work as I have done with all others 
 who have given to me anything of value, and will there 
 put you down as the discoverer, and if you wish me to 
 preserve your secret, I will do as you desire. 
 
 I told the lord marquis 1 of the instruments you had 
 
 1 "Io avisai la eccellentia del Signer Marchese de gli istromenti 
 quali gli mandati (anchor che non siano per fina hora gionti) et li dissi 
 del cartello, e sua eccellentia mi commando lo legesse e tutte queste 
 uostre cose piacque grandamente a sua eccellentia. Et mi commando di 
 subito ui scriuesse la presente con grande istantia in nome suo, auisan- 
 doui che uista la presente douesti uenir a Millano senza fallo che 
 uoria parlar con uoi. Et cosi ue esorto a douere uenire subito, et 
 non pensarui su, perche ill detto Signer Marchese e si gentil remune- 
 ratore delli uirtuosi, si liberate, et si magnanimo che niuna persona 
 chi serue sua excellentia mentre sia da qualche cosa resta discontenta. 
 Si che non restati de uenire e uenereti a logiare in casa mia non altro 
 Christo da mal ui guardi alii. 13. di Marzo, 1539. Hieronimo Cardano, 
 medico." To which Tartalea subscribes: "Per costui son ridutto a 
 
AN INVITATION FROM I/AVALOS. 245 
 
 given him they are not yet come to hand and told him 
 of the placard, and his excellency commanded me to read 
 it; and all your things pleased his excellency greatly. 
 And he commanded me at once to write the present letter 
 to you with great urgency in his name, to advise you that 
 on receipt of the same you should come to Milan without 
 fail, for he desires to speak with you. And so I exhort 
 you that you should come at once, and not deliberate 
 about it, because the said marquis is a courteous remu- 
 nerator of men of genius, so liberal and so magnanimous, 
 that no person who does a service to his excellency, no 
 matter in what respect, is left dissatisfied. So do not de- 
 lay to come, and come to lodge in my house. So no 
 more. Christ keep you from harm. Written on the 13th 
 of March, 1539. 
 
 HIEKONIMO CARDANO, Physician." 
 
 That the desire of the marquis to see Tartalea was 
 genuine I see no reason to doubt. That Jerome was glad 
 to have a chance of talking to his jealous correspondent, 
 and persuading him, if possible, by word of mouth, is, of 
 course, equally certain. The brief comment appended by 
 Tartalea to the preceding letter is not good-humoured. 
 
 " NICOLO. I am reduced by this fellow to a strange 
 
 un stranio passo, perche se non uado a Millano il Signer Marchese il 
 potria hauer per male, et qualche male me ne potria reusire, et mal 
 uolontiera ui uado, pur ui uoglio andare." Op. cit. pp. 123, 124. 
 
246 JEKOME CARDAN. 
 
 pass, because if I do not go to Milan the lord marquis 
 may take offence, and such offence might do me mischief, 
 I go thither unwillingly ; however, I will go." The sug- 
 gestion that there was any danger in not going sprung 
 entirely, it should be noticed, from Tartalea himself. 
 Cardan had only urged, that as D'Avalos was a free- 
 handed patron a point upon which all chroniclers who 
 speak of him agree Nicolo should not fear that he would 
 be a loser by the journey. 
 
 Accordingly, Tartalea went to Milan, and happening 
 to arrive at a time when D'Avalos was absent, stayed for 
 three days in Cardan's house as his guest. The result of 
 the visit Nicolo represented to himself in his common- 
 place-book by the succeeding dialogue 1 : 
 
 " Result of personal intercourse with his Excellency the 
 said Messer Hieronimo Cardano, at his house in 
 Milan, the 25th of March, 1539. 
 
 MESSER HIERONIMO. I am very pleased that you 
 have come just at this time when his excellency has 
 ridden to Vigevano, because we shall have leisure to 
 enjoy ourselves and talk together over our affairs till he 
 returns. Certainly you were somewhat too discourteous 
 in resolving not to give me the rule you discovered upon 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 123. 
 
TARTAGLIA'S VISIT TO CARDAN. 247 
 
 the subject of the cosa and cube equal to the number, 
 especially when I had so much entreated for it." 
 
 To this the reply of Tartalea was not unreasonable, and 
 it may be well to say beforehand that it is to be read as 
 in every main point true. He not only was at that time 
 translating Euclid, but he was also reserving himself for a 
 work of his own on arithmetic, geometry, and algebra, 
 which he in the end did publish at Venice, seventeen 
 years .afterwards that is to say, just before his death. 
 It extended even then no further than quadratic equa- 
 tions, being his Book the First of Algebra, and did not 
 contain the whole of his knowledge, nor does his know- 
 ledge of the two contested rules appear to have fructified 
 at all in his own mind during all that time, as he justly 
 supposed that it might, and as it began to do the moment 
 it had found its way into the richer soil of Cardan's 
 genius. Nicolo replied thus : 
 
 " NICOLO. I tell you that I am not so very chary on 
 account of the simple rule or the calculation made by use 
 of it, but on account of those things that by knowledge 
 of it may be discovered, because it is a key that opens the 
 way to the investigation of an infinity of other rules, and 
 if I were not at present occupied upon a translation of 
 Euclid into the vulgar tongue (and by this time I have 
 translated as far as his thirteenth book), I should have 
 already found a general rule for many other cases. As 
 
248 JEROME CARDAX. 
 
 soon as I shall have finished my labour upon Euclid 
 already commenced, I am intending to compose a work 
 on the practice of arithmetic, and together with it a new 
 algebra, in which I propose not only to publish to every 
 man all my said discoveries concerning new cases, but 
 many others, to which I hope to attain, and I hope to 
 show the rule for investigating an infinity of other 
 things, which I hope will be a good and useful work. 
 That is the reason why I deny my rules to everybody, 
 though I at present make no use of them (being, as I 
 said, occupied on Euclid), and if I taught them to any 
 speculative person like your excellency, he could easily 
 from such evidence find other cases to join to the dis- 
 covered ones, and publish with them as himself their dis- 
 coverer, by doing which he would spoil all my design. So 
 that this is the chief reason why I have been so dis- 
 courteous towards your excellency, and the rather, as you 
 are now printing your work on the same subjects, and 
 have written to me that you propose to publish such my 
 inventions under my name, and to make me known as 
 the discoverer. Which, in fact, does not at all please me, 
 because I wish to publish such my discoveries in my own 
 works and not in the works of other people. 
 
 M. HIERONIMO. And I also wrote to you that if you 
 were not content that I should publish them, I would 
 keep them secret. 
 
CONFERENCE BETWEEN CARDAN AND TARTAGLIA. 249 
 
 NiCOLO. Enough that on that head I was not willing 
 to believe you. 
 
 M. HIERONIMO. I swear to you by the sacred Gospel, 
 and on the faith of a gentleman, not only never to publish 
 your discoveries, if you will tell them to me, but also I 
 promise and pledge my faith as a true Christian to put 
 them down in cipher, so that after my death nobody shall 
 be able to understand them. If you will believe me, do; 
 if not, let us have done 1 . 
 
 NiCOLO. If I could not put faith in so many oaths I 
 should certainly deserve to be regarded as a man with no 
 faith in him ; but since I have made up my mind now to 
 ride to Vigevano to find his excellency the lord mar- 
 quis, because I have been here already three days, and 
 am tired of awaiting him so long, when I am returned I 
 promise to show you the whole. 
 
 M. HIERONIMO. Since you have made, up your mind 
 at any rate to ride at once to Vigevano to the lord mar- 
 quis, I will give you a letter to take to his excellency, in 
 order that he may know who you are ; but before you go 
 
 " M. HIERO. lo ui giuro, ad sacra del evangelia, e da real gen- 
 til'huomo, non solamente da non publicar giamai tale uostre inven- 
 tioni, se me le insignate. Ma anchora ui prometto, et impegno la 
 fede mia da real Christiano, da notarmele in zifera, accioche dapoi la 
 mia morte alcuno non le possa intendere, se mel uoleti mo credere 
 credetilo se non lassatilo stare. NICOLO. Non uolendo io prestar fede 
 a tanti uostri giuramenti io meritaria certamente da esser giudicato 
 huomo senza fede, ma perche ho deliberate caualcare per fina a 
 Vegevene . . . ." &c. Op. cit. p. 124. 
 
250 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 I should wish you to show me the rule for those cases of 
 yours, as you have promised. 
 
 NiCOLO. I am willing; but you should know, that in 
 order to be able on any sudden occasion to remember my 
 method of operation, I have reduced it to a rule in rhyme, 
 because, if I had not used this precaution, it would often 
 have escaped from my mind ; and although these rhymes 
 of mine are not very neat, I have not minded that, be- 
 cause it was enough that they served to bring the rule into 
 my memory whenever I repeated them. That rule I will 
 write for you with my own hand, in order that you may 
 be sure that my discovery is given to you fairly and 
 weU." 
 
 The verses then follow which contain the rule for the 
 three case, a? 3 -J- bx z: c; # 3 bx -f- c and <*? 3 -}" c &# 
 discovered by Tartalea in 1534. Translated into the 
 language of modern mathematics, they read thus 1 : 
 
 i The mystic rhymes themselves here follow. Tartalea's effusion 
 was a thing to puzzle Petrarch : 
 
 " Quando chel cubo con le cose apresso 
 Se agualia & qualche numero discrete 
 Trouan dui altri different! in esso 
 Dapoi terrai questo per consueto 
 Ch'el lor produtto sempre sia eguale 
 Al terzo cubo delle cose neto 
 El residue poi suo generale 
 Belli lor lati cubi ben sottratti 
 Varra la tua cosa principale. 
 In el secondo de cotesti atti 
 
 Quando chel cubo restasse lui solo 
 
TARTACLIA REVEALS HIS SECRET. 251 
 
 Find two numbers z and y, so that z y c in the first 
 case or z -}-?/ c in the second and third cases, and 
 zy :n (-J-6) 3 : then x ^/ 3 z y/ 3 y in the first case, and 
 x = y% -f- y^j/ in the other two. The original verses 
 are given in a note below. Tartalea was not by any 
 means singular in his practice of converting such a rule 
 into a versified enigma. In this respect he followed the 
 example set by the first of the Italian printed algebrists, 
 Luca di Borgo, who had for each of the three forms of 
 which an equation of the second degree is susceptible, a 
 particular rule, instead of one general rule that sufficed for 
 all. The three rules he expressed in three Latin quatrains, 
 of which one will be found cited below as a specimen of 
 the manner 1 . It was not, therefore, any individual con- 
 
 Tu osseruarai quest 'altri contratti 
 Del numer farai due tal part' a uolo 
 Che luna in 1'altra si produca sclrietto 
 El terzo cubo delle cose in stolo 
 Delle qual poi, per commun precetto 
 Torrai li lati cubi insierae gionti 
 Et cotal summa sara il tuo concetto 
 El terzo poi de questi nostri conti 
 Se solue col secondo se ben guardi 
 Che per natura son quasi congionti 
 Questi trouai, et non con passi tardi 
 Nel mille cinquecent'e quatro e trenta 
 Con fondamenti ben said' e gagliardi 
 Nella citta dal mar' intorno centa." 
 
 Quesiti et Invention^ p. 123. 
 
 I have not ventured to interfere with the allowance originally made by 
 Tartalea to his poem, of one full stop and two commas. 
 1 Primi canonis versus. 
 
 " Si res et census numero coequantur a rebus 
 
252 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 ceit which caused Tartalea to put his process into 
 rhyme. 
 
 " Which rhyme/' having quoted it, he went on to say, 
 " speaks so clearly, that, without other example, I think 
 your excellency will be able to understand the whole. 
 
 M. HIERONIMO. I shall no doubt understand it, and 
 have almost understood it at once ; go however, and when 
 you have returned, I will let you see whether I have 
 understood. 
 
 NICOLO. Now your excellency will remember not to 
 fail of your promised faith, because if by ill fate you 
 should fail in it, that is to say, if you were to publish these 
 cases either in that work which you are now printing, or 
 in any other, though you published it under my name, 
 and gave it as my own discovery, I promise and swear 
 that I will cause a book to be printed immediately after- 
 wards that you shall not find very agreeable. 
 
 M. HIERONIMO. Do not doubt that I shall perform 
 what I have promised; go, and feel secure upon that 
 point ; give this letter of mine to the lord marquis on 
 my part. 
 
 NICOLO. Now I bid you farewell. 
 
 Dimidio surapto censum producere debes 
 Addere que numero: cujus a radice totiens 
 Tolle semis rerum census latusque redibit." 
 
 Luca di Borgo. Summa de Arithmetica Geometria, 
 &c. (ed. 1494) Dist. viii. Tract 5, p. 145. 
 
TARTAGLIA RETURNS HOME SUDDENLY. 253 
 
 M. HiERONlMO. May the hour be lucky in which you 
 depart. 
 
 NlCOLO (aside). By my faith, I shall not go gallanting 
 to Vigevano. So I shall just travel back to Venice, come 
 of it what may 1 ." 
 
 1 "NicoLO. Hor su me aricomando. M. HIERO. Andati in bon' 
 hora, 
 
 NICOLO. Per la fede mia che non uoglio andare altramente a Vige- 
 vene, anci me uoglio uoltare alia uolta de Venetia, uada la cosa come 
 si uoglio." Ques. et Inv. p. 124. 
 
254 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE BEST OF THE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE TWO MATHEMATICIANS IN 
 THIS CHAPTER IS CONTAINED AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND POR- 
 TUNES OF LODOVICO FERRARI, CARDAN'S FOREMOST PUPIL. 
 
 NiCOLO went off by no means easy in his mind. The 
 secret was no longer his own, and Cardan was a busy- 
 headed fellow. Jerome at once went to work upon 
 Tartalea's rules, but being misled by the badness of the 
 verses, into the reading of (4- b) 3 as -J b 3 , he could not 
 work with them ; he therefore wrote the following note 
 to Venice on the 9th of April 1 . 
 
 " My very dear Messer Nicolo, I am much surprised 
 at your having left so suddenly, without speaking to the 
 lord marquis, who came on Easter Sunday, and could 
 not have your instruments until the Tuesday afterwards, 
 
 1 Ques. et Inv. p. 124. The letter begins, " Messer Nicolo mio 
 carissimo." All these letters end, it may be observed, with "Non 
 altro," the " So no more," not yet extinct among our humble letter- 
 writers. It is followed as regularly by the phrase " God " [or Christ] 
 " keep you from harm," " Iddio da mal ui guardi." Thus the ending 
 of this letter, for example, was " Non altro Christo da mal ui guardi. 
 In Millano alii 9 Aprile 1539. Hieronimo Cardano medico, tutto vostro." 
 
CARDAN EXPOSTULATES. 255 
 
 and with great difficulty. However, he had them, and 
 understood them ; I presented them on the same Tuesday 
 in the evening. Truly I think you were wrong in not 
 making yourself known to his excellency, because he is 
 a most liberal prince, and a g reat lover and abettor of 
 genius, and he valued your instruments and desired to 
 have them explained to him, and I showed him succinctly 
 their value ; now that must suffice ; the time may yet 
 come when you may be glad to be known by the lord 
 marquis. When I know for what reason you left, or by 
 whom you were advised to do so, I will tell him. 
 
 As for my work, I think it will be complete next week, 
 for there are only three more leaves to be filled. As for 
 the question of your case of the cosa and cube equal to the 
 number, I thank you much for having given me the 
 rule, and I will let you see that I shall not be ungrateful. 
 But, however, I must confess my fault in not having had 
 ingenuity enough yet to understand it, therefore I beg 
 you, for the love you bear me, and for the friendship that 
 is between us, and that will, I hope, last while we live, to 
 send me solved this question one cube, three cosas equal 
 to ten; and I hope that you will have as much good-will 
 in sending as I in receiving it. So no more. Christ keep 
 you from harm. In Milan, on the 9th of April, 1539. 
 
 HTERONIMO CARDAN, Physician. 
 " All" [we should say ever] " yours." 
 
256 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Nicolo in reply did not return Jerome's " Mio Caris- 
 simo," or sign himself all his, but explained to the " Ho- 
 norando Messer Hieronimo," that nobody must be blamed 
 for advising him to return to Venice, because he had 
 promised his friends that he would be with them at 
 Easter, and as it was he had much trouble in getting 
 home by Holy Sunday. " Concerning your work," he 
 said, " I much desire that it shall be out soon, and should 
 like to see it, because if I do not see it I shall be suspect- 
 ing that you have broken your word, that is to say, may 
 have interpolated my rules in some part of it 1 ." Certainly 
 if Nicolo had had blood-guiltiness upon his conscience, 
 and had betrayed his secret to a woman, he could not 
 have been more nervously expectant of the terrors of 
 exposure. Seeing at once what part of his rhyme had 
 puzzled Cardan, he gave the required explanation, and 
 concluded his letter thus: " So no more. God keep you 
 from harm. In Venice, on the 23rd of April, 1539. 
 Remember your promise. 
 
 NICOLO TARTALEA, of Brescia." 
 
 On the 12th of May Jerome set his friend's mind at 
 ease by sending a copy of his book, with the following 
 letter: 
 
 1 " Circa alia vostra opera molto desidero che la se fornisca presto, 
 et ui uederla, perche per fin che non la uedo sto suspettoso che quella 
 non mi manchi di fede, cioe che quella non ue interponga, li miei capi- 
 toli." Tartalea, p. 124. 
 
TARTAGLIA WARNS CARDAN ASSEVERATES. 257 
 
 " In answer to your letter of the 23rd of April, received 
 the other day, very dear Misser Nicolo, I will reply to 
 you succinctly part by part, and first as to the excuse of 
 your departure without going to Vigevano. I desire 
 nothing but what you desire, and regret that you have 
 been put to so much trouble on my account, without any 
 advantage for yourself. 
 
 " As to my work, just finished, to remove your sus- 
 picion I send you a copy, but I send it unbound, for I 
 would not have it beaten while it was so fresh. As for 
 your rule and my case solved by you, I thank you very 
 particularly, and praise your ingenuity above all with 
 which I have met, and am more pleased than if you had 
 given me a hundred ducats. I hold you as my very 
 dear friend. I have tried the rule and found it universal. 
 As to the doubt you have lest I should print such your 
 inventions, my faith that I have given you with an oath, 
 ought to suffice 1 , because the hastening of my book was 
 nothing to the purpose, for whenever I like I can add to 
 it. But I hold you excused by the importance of the 
 
 1 "... la mia fede che ui ho data con giuramento, ui doueua bas- 
 tare, perche la speditione del mio libro non faceua niente a questo, 
 perche sempre che mi pare gli posso sempre aggiongere, ma lie ho per 
 escuso che la dignita della cosa, non ui lassa fondare sopra quello che 
 ui doueti fondare, cioe sopra la fede d'un gentil'huomo e ui fondati 
 
 sopra una cosa che non ual niente, cioe ma el ponto e qua chel 
 
 non e mazor tradimento. che a esser mancator di fede, e far dispiacere 
 a chi 1'ha fatto appiacere." Op. cit. p. 125. 
 
 VOL. I. 8 
 
258 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 matter for not resting content with that which ought to 
 content you, that is to say the word of a gentleman, and 
 depending on a thing that is of no worth at all, that is to 
 say the finishing of a book to which a capitulum novum 
 or capitula nova could at any time be added, and there are 
 a thousand other ways, but the point is that there is no 
 greater treachery than to break faith and to displease 
 those who have given us pleasure, and if you were to try 
 me you would find whether I shall be your friend or not, 
 and whether I shall be grateful for your friendship and 
 the favours you have done me. 
 
 " I send word to you also,, and earnestly beg concerning 
 these my printed works for my love of him who has 
 printed them, and will send some into your town for 
 sale, that you will not lend them about more than neces- 
 sary, for my sake. If they had been printed, at my own 
 expense I would not say a word, because I care more for 
 the profit of my friends than for my own. So no more. 
 God keep you from evil. In Milan, the 12th of May; 
 1539. 
 
 " HIERONIMUS CARDANUS medicus, totus vcster" 
 
 Nicolo, partly appeased, or glad of something new to 
 grumble at, replied on this occasion to the " Honoran- 
 dissimo Messer Nicolo," and signed himself " Nicolo Tar- 
 talea of Brescia, all yours." He had received the book, 
 
TARTAGLIA HEARS FROM MASTER MAPHIO. 259 
 
 but being busy over his Euclid, had only found time to 
 glance at it and fall at once upon a shocking error, " so 
 gross/ 1 he says, " that I am amazed at it, for one would 
 have thought that it might have been seen with only half 
 an eye 1 ." He is quite " sorry for the honour" of his 
 friend. Nicolo had verily the temper of a thistle. 
 
 On the 10th of July in the same year the restless 
 mathematician was further excited by a letter from an old 
 pupil settled at Bergamo, one Master Maphio, asking 
 help in the untying of some knot of a problem, and 
 ending with a scrap of gossip, to the effect that a friend 
 from Milan had written word to him that the physician 
 Cardan was engaged over a new algebraical work, treat- 
 ing of certain new discoveries. Could they be Tartalea's? 
 Certainly they were, Tartalea replied, if the news were 
 true, and cited the grim proverb: "If you wish your 
 counsel kept, make confidant of nobody." He begged 
 Maphio to be on the alert, and send him if he could more 
 tidings on the matter. The rumour, I need not say, was 
 false. Jerome made his promise in good faith, and it was 
 not until five years afterwards that any book of his was 
 published upon Algebra. Tartalea, however, had left 
 
 1 " Vostra eccellentia erra tanto de grosso che me ne stupisco, 
 perche cadauno che hauesse solamente mezzo un' occhio lo potria ve- 
 
 dere cosa rnolto redicolosa cosa molto lontano dalla 
 
 verita, della qualcosa molto me ne rincresce per honor uostro. Non 
 altro Iddio da mal, &c. Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano tutto vostro." 
 
 62 
 
260 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Milan, sulky, and already considered that he had a right 
 to quarrel with Cardan. Jerome's next letters were not 
 answered, nor are they published in Tartalea's book. 
 
 On the 4th of August, however, Cardan wrote a letter, 
 which is printed, complaining courteously of the fact 
 that he had written many other letters, which were not 
 honoured with any reply, asking for information upon 
 various points, and chiefly requesting help in clearing up 
 the difficulty of the irreducible case <t? 3 = bx -\- c, at 
 which Jerome had arrived in the course of his own studies. 
 To this letter Tartalea appends the note that follows: 
 " I have a good mind to give no answer to this letter, no 
 more than to the other two. However, I will answer it, 
 if it be but to let him know what I have been told of 
 him. And as I perceive that a suspicion has arisen con- 
 cerning the difficulty or obstacle in the rule for the case" 
 (# 3 bx -J- c), " I will try whether he can change the data 
 that he has in hand, so as to remove the said obstacle and 
 alter the rule into some other form ; though, indeed, I 
 believe that it cannot be done, nevertheless there can be 
 110 harm in trying 1 ." He wrote therefore a letter, which 
 began, omitting altogether Honorando, or Honorandis- 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 126. " Et dapoi che uedo che sta suspettando sopra la 
 retta via de la regola del capitolo di cose, e numero, equal a cubo, 
 uoglio tentare se gli potesse cambiare li dati che ha in mane cioe re- 
 mover lo di tal ilia retta e farlo intrare in qualche altra a ben che 
 credo non ui sara mezzo, nondimeno il tentar non noce." 
 
A MATHEMATICIAN SULKING. 26 I 
 
 simo, to say nothing of Carissimo, thus : " Mcsscr Hie- 
 ronimo, I have received a letter of yours, in which you 
 write that you understand the rule for the case a? 3 rr bx + c ; 
 but that when (^) 3 exceeds (^c) 2 you cannot resolve the 
 equation by following the rule, and therefore you request 
 me to give you the solution of this equation X s 9# -f 10 1 . 
 To which I reply" (it will be understood that to himself 
 also the case was insoluble) " to which I reply, and say, 
 that you have not used the good method for resolving 
 such a case ; also I say that such your proceeding is 
 entirely false. And as to resolving you the equation you 
 have sent, I must say that I am very sorry that I have 
 given you already so much as I have done, for I have 
 been informed, by a person worthy of faith, that you are 
 about to publish another algebraical work, and that you 
 have gone boasting through Milan of having discovered 
 some new rules in Algebra. But take notice, that if you 
 break your faith with me, I shall certainly not break 
 promise with you (for it is not my custom) ; nay, even 
 undertake to visit you with more than I had promised." 
 
 The rest of the letter, which is very long, was chiefly 
 intended to be disagreeable. To another of Cardan's 
 
 1 In the old algebraical language, " haueti inteso il capitolo de cubo, 
 equale a cose, et nuraero, ma che quando il cubo della terza parte delle 
 cose eccede il quadrato della mita del nutnero che alPhora non poteti 
 farli seguir la equatione, et che per tanto me pregati che ue dia resolto 
 questo capitolo de .1. cubo. equale a .9. cose piu .10." 
 
262 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 questions, Nicolo replied that two of his pupils had 
 answered it one of them, Richard Went worth, the 
 English gentleman, whom he praised much ; and he sent 
 the two solutions by his pupils, written with their hands. 
 He further talked about his Euclid, and in various ways 
 heartily abused Cardan's Arithmetic, which he pronounced 
 to be a confused mess, and supposed must have been not 
 got out of his own head, but " collected and copied by 
 the pen from divers books, at divers times, just as they 
 chanced to come into his hands." Upon another mathe- 
 matical matter he was further " amazed and astounded" 
 at Cardan's persistent ignorance, laughed at his having 
 once said to him in his own house that if a certain kind 
 of solution had not been considered impossible by Luca 
 di Borgo, he should have tried to discover it (as if he 
 could discover anything indeed I), and thought it a pity 
 that he did not know physic enough for the cure of his 
 own errors. He ended by saying, " once I held you in 
 good esteem, but I see now that I deceived myself 
 grossly 1 ." 
 
 Cardan replied briefly to his friend on the 18th of 
 October, after having perhaps waited until he had cooled 
 from the anger which Tartalea's rude letter must have at 
 
 1 " Et certamente el fu gia che ni haueua in bon conto, ma al pre- 
 sente uedo che me ingannaua de grosso, non altro Iddio ui conserui in 
 Venetia alii .7. Agosto. 1539. Mcolo Tartalea Brisciano." Op. cit. 
 p. 127. 
 
THE WINTER OF TARTAGLIA'S DISCONTENT. 263 
 
 first occasioned. He replied to the " most honourable 
 Messcr NicoloY' that he must have been beside himself to 
 write as he had written to one " who was his great friend, 
 and had without envy praised him to the skies." He 
 added, " for the other matter I reply that you have been 
 misinformed about my intention to publish on Algebra, 
 and to make known your rules. I think you must have 
 been hearing something from Messer Ottaviano Scoto 
 about the Arcana of Eternity, which you imagine to 
 be the Algebra I am about to publish. As to your 
 repentance at having given me your rules, I am not to be 
 moved by that or by any words of yours to depart from 
 the faith I pledged you 2 ." 
 
 To this letter Tartalea sent no answer ; still Jerome did 
 not quarrel with him; and another letter from Cardan, 
 the last in Nicolo's collection, dated the 5th of January, 
 1540, stated how " that deuce of a Messer Zuanne da 
 CoiV' by whom Nicolo, Jerome, and all mathematicians 
 in that part of Italy were bored, had come to Milan, be^ 
 lieving that Cardan was desirous to give up to him his 
 arithmetical lectures, and professing, apparently with 
 truth, that he had found out certain rules. Cardan 
 
 1 " Ho receputa una uostra, Messer Nicolo osseruandissimo, . . , ." 
 
 2 " .... Quanto al pentirue hauermi dato quel uostro capitolo, per 
 questo non mi mouo, per uostre parole a niuna cosa contra la fede ui 
 promisse." 
 
 3 " Eglie ritornato qui quel diauolo de Messer Zuanne Colle, . . ." 
 
264 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 having had some contests with their ancient rival, desired 
 Tartalea to assist in capturing the ground which Zuanne 
 held as his exclusive property. To this letter Nicolo 
 added in his diary a number of saturnine and mathema- 
 tical comments, and summed up by waiting that he 
 should not choose to send Cardan an answer, because he 
 said " I have no more affection for him than for Messer 
 Zuanne, and therefore I shall leave them to themselves 1 .'* 
 One of the questions put by the pertinacious Messer 
 Zuanne Tonini da Coi, not soluble at the time by any 
 one, and thought insoluble by some, was the following: 
 " Find me three numbers continually proportional, of 
 which the sum is ten and the product of the second by 
 the first is six." This led to the following troublesome 
 equation: z 4 -}- 6# 3 + 36 rr 60#. Cardan worked very 
 industriously at it, and urged his friend and pupil Lodo- 
 vico Ferrari to do the same. Tartalea, we have seen, de- 
 clined contemptuously to take the field. An ingenious 
 method of solution was eventually discovered by Ferrari, 
 which consisted in adding to each side of the equation 
 arranged in a certain way quadratic and simple quan- 
 tities, of a kind calculated to render the extraction of the 
 square root of each possible. By this method of resolving 
 
 1 " Non li uoglio dar altra risposta, perche fe non ui ho phi afletione 
 a lui che a Messer Zuanne, e pero li utiglio lassar far tra loro." Tar- 
 talea, p. 129. 
 
LODOVICO FERRARI. 265 
 
 an equation of the fourth degree, by the reduction of the 
 biquadratic into a cubic, Ferrari secured for himself the 
 right of being honourably named in every history of 
 mathematics. 
 
 Honourably named and little more, for he died young, 
 and left no written works behind him. His friend Car- 
 dan, through whom he rose, has left a brief sketch of his 
 life and character 1 . I have already related how, after the 
 introductory omen of a magpie, young Ferrari had been 
 brought by his uncle to Cardan's house as a servant. 
 Some minute detail connected with that event may now 
 be given. A certain Bartholomew Ferrari, a man of 
 humble fortunes, having been exiled from Milan, settled 
 in Bologna, where he had two sons, Vincent and 
 Alexander. Vincent was Lodovico's uncle, Alexander 
 was his father. Alexander being killed, the boy went to 
 his uncle's house, and lived there. Vincent Ferrari had 
 an unmanageable son named Luke, who, flying one day 
 from his father's anger, went to Milan, and by chance 
 hired] himself as famulus into the service of Cardan. 
 After a time he slipped away from his new master, with- 
 out warning given, and went back to his old home. 
 Jerome applied there for him, and his father Vincent 
 took that opportunity of getting Lodovico off his hands. 
 As a substitute for his son Luke he sent his nephew off to 
 be the doctor's servant, and so it happened that on a day 
 1 Opera, Tom. ix. p. 568. I take from it the following details. 
 
266 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 before mentioned, Lodovico Ferrari, then fifteen years 
 old, went, poor and uninstructed, into Jerome's service. 
 But he was a boy of very extraordinary natural ability; 
 Cardan soon put him to use as an amanuensis, and 
 accepted him next as a pupil and a friend not indeed 
 because he was a good boy, for he was nothing of the 
 kind. His temper was so bad that Jerome went near 
 him with caution, and shrunk often from the task of 
 speaking to him. He grew up also irreligious, given to 
 habitual and open scorn of God. The friendship between 
 him and Cardan grew out of their common love of know- 
 ledge, out of the problems upon which they had worked 
 together, out of Lodovico's sense of obligation to the man 
 by whose hand he was raised, and out of Jerome's pride 
 at having fairly brought before the world so fine an intel- 
 lect. Ferrari also was a neat and rosy little fellow, 
 wicked as he may have been, with a bland voice, a 
 cheerful face, and an agreeable short nose, attentive in 
 trifling things, and fond of pleasure. By his manners 
 and his brilliant genius he made way for himself in the 
 world with wonderful rapidity. His worldly career pre- 
 sented, in its early course, a great contrast to that of the 
 unlucky philosopher who taught him Latin, Greek, and 
 mathematics, and upon whose shoulders he knew how to 
 rise. 
 
 At the age of eighteen Ferrari began to teach, and 
 excited universal admiration in the town. He was 
 
THE FORTUNES OF A YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN. 267 
 
 scarcely twenty years old when he contested publicly 
 with Zuanne da Coi and Tartalea: Tartalca declares in 
 his own book that he, Tartalea, was left the victor: 
 Cardan states that Ferrari overcame them both, and 
 appeals confidently, in support of his assertion, to the 
 public records then extant, and the common understand- 
 ing in the town. Two years afterwards the brilliant 
 young scholar was held in so much esteem, that the 
 possession of- his services was contended for by the great 
 men around him. He was tempted by simultaneous 
 offers from the gay Brissac, from the emperor himself, 
 who desired him as a teacher for his son, and from the 
 Cardinal of Mantua. An offer of court service did not 
 lure Ferrari, who cared less for nominal honour than for 
 actual profit. The Cardinal's brother, Ferrando Gonzaga, 
 then governor at Milan, having given to the flourishing 
 youth the office of surveyor of the province, with a salary 
 of four hundred gold crowns; and the cardinal himself 
 offering largely, Lodovieo went into. the churchman's train, 
 and was so well rewarded, that in eight years he received 
 nearly four thousand gold crowns, in addition to free 
 entertainment for himself, two servants, and a horse. The , 
 cardinal's good living after a time aggravated a fistula 
 with which Ferrari became troubled, and unreasonably 
 angry with his patron because he was unable to escape the 
 consequences of his own too free indulgence in the plea- 
 
268 JEBOME CARDAN. 
 
 sures of the table, the ill-humoured young mathematician 
 quitted abruptly his not very dignified position as a re- 
 tainer. Then retiring into independence, he built for 
 himself a house, in which he went to live with his sister, 
 Maddalena, orphan and widow, whom he truly loved. We 
 shall meet with him hereafter, teaching mathematics at 
 Bologna ; but it is expedient to complete the sketch of his 
 career by adding in this place, that he died suddenly and 
 prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, in the first year 
 of his professorship, as it was said by poison. Nearly all 
 sudden deaths did in those days of ignorance prompt 
 rumours about poison ; but in this case there was some 
 colour given to the rumour by the fact that his sister 
 the one person towards whom his wayward heart had 
 really turned in love inherited his property, scorned to 
 lament at his funeral, married fifteen days after his death, 
 and at once gave all his money, goods, and chattels, to 
 her husband. That reads like the sequel to a wild story 
 of Italian passion. But the sequel is not there. The 
 sequel is, that Maddalena lived to be repudiated by the 
 man to whom she gave her own soul and her brother's 
 wealth. When Cardan wrote the brief sketch that he 
 has left of the career of his old pupil, she was a miserable 
 old woman, living in the country in a state of abject 
 poverty, unpitied and unaided by the man whom her 
 guilt, as it was suspected, had enriched. Ferrari left no 
 
CARDAN'S BREACH OP FAITH. 269 
 
 other fruit of his great genius than the formula which 
 Cardan has referred to him, and in connexion with which 
 his name therefore has remained to us. He wrote no 
 books, and engaged himself during his unhappy life in 
 little other literary labour than the collecting of the dicta 
 left by former authors. He had indeed written some 
 comments upon Caesar and Vitruvius, and of those his 
 sister's husband took possession, with all other property. 
 He laid them by, as he himself told Cardan, until his son 
 by a first wife was old enough to receive credit for having 
 written them, as he intended them to have then pub- 
 lished in his name. In every way the enemy resolved to 
 fatten on Ferrari's substance. That is the story of 
 Ferrari; a story of great powers wasted for the want of 
 guiding energy and principle. He was born on the 2nd 
 of February, 1522, and he died on the 5th of October, m 
 the year 1560. 
 
 Cardan, in publishing Ferrari's discovery, attributed it 
 duly to its author - y and in that respect he was not less 
 just to Tartalea, though the secret of the latter was made 
 public by a breach of faith which, says Nonius (Nunez), 
 a contemporary Spanish mathematician, made Tartalea 
 so wild, that he was like one who had gone out of his 
 mind. Jerome's breach of faith I shall not justify. It 
 will shortly be seen that there was no palliating circum- 
 stance possible in such a case which he was not able to 
 urge to himself fairly; the promise he made was ridicu- 
 
270 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 lous, and if the wrong consisted rather in making than in 
 breaking it, Tartalea had not the less cause to complain. 
 Sympathy for Tartalea we cannot, indeed feel. The at- 
 tempt to assert exclusive right to the secret possession of 
 apiece of information, which was the next step in the 
 advancement of a liberal science, the refusal to add it, 
 inscribed with his own name, to the common heap, until 
 he had hoarded it, in hope of some day, when he was 
 at leisure, turning it more largely to his own advantage, 
 could be excused in him only by the fact that he was 
 rudely bred and self-taught, that he was not likely to 
 know better. Any member of a liberal profession who 
 is miserly of knowledge, forfeits the respect of his fra- 
 ternity. The promise of secrecy which Cardan had no 
 right to make, Tartalea had no right to demand. In 
 respect to three- fourths of the case it was indeed pecu- 
 liarly absurd; because of the four rules discovered by 
 Tartalea, and communicated to Cardan, he could claim 
 rights of invention over one only, that with which he 
 had turned the tables against Antonio Maria Fior, on 
 the occasion of their contest. The other rule then dis- 
 covered by him had been known not only to Fior, but 
 even to Scipio Ferreo, at least forty years before Cardan 
 published it; and the other two rules discovered by 
 Tartalea in 1530, had then been for some time known 
 to Zuanne da Coi. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE QUARREL. 271 
 
 Of the conversations and correspondence between Car- 
 dan and. Tartalea on this subject we have only, as 
 has been seen, the ex parte statement of Tartalea, 
 who gives his own version of the conversations, and 
 does not publish all the letters that passed on the 
 subject. Yet it is evident, even from this hostile 
 account, that Jerome made a promise in good faith, and 
 that Tartalea never seemed to consider that it was suffi- 
 ciently binding. Tartalea himself proves that Cardan 
 bore gross rudeness very good humouredly, and that 
 though his good faith was doubted and contemned, he 
 did not consider himself entitled to take any advantage of 
 its ungenerous rejection. Tartalea's rule was not put into 
 the Arithmetic, nor was it communicated to the world by 
 Cardan until it had grown, in the good soil of his own 
 mind, out of a seed into a tree. He considered then that 
 it had become so far fairly his own that he was entitled to 
 make public distribution of its fruits, if he gave, as he was 
 quite ready to give, and did give, proper credit to Tar- 
 talea for his part in their production. If he was still 
 bound by the letter of his promise, since mathematical 
 facts could be explained only step by step, he, who 
 proved himself to be decidedly the best mathematician of 
 his time, was bound to stand still near the threshold of his 
 science till Tartalea, by moving forward and himself pub- 
 lishing his rule, left the path open for him. Tartalea, 
 however, was in no mood to be hurried, and he actually 
 
272 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 died about thirty years after the acquisition of two of his 
 rules, and a quarter of a century after the acquisition of 
 the others, without having either published them or used 
 them so that it could be known of him that he had done 
 so as the stepping-stones to higher knowledge. Cardan 
 committed most undoubtedly a breach of faith, and was 
 guilty of an abstract though not therefore the less real 
 wrong; practical wrong he did to nobody, for his book 
 on Algebra was a great gain to science, and did no actual 
 injustice to Tartalea, to whom Cardan rendered in it that 
 which was his due. When to the preceding facts we add 
 the reflection that this great algebraic quarrel took place 
 in the most corrupt of European states at one of the cor- 
 ruptest periods of modern history, when the promise of a 
 pope himself was good for nothing, we shall be likely to 
 decide fairly upon the degree in which the details of this 
 controversy should affect our estimate of Cardan's cha- 
 racter. 
 
 The Book of the Great Art, the Algebra 1 , published by 
 Cardan in the year 1545, which was the tenth book of his 
 Arithmetic, was published by Petreius, of Nuremberg, and 
 dedicated to the scholar in that town for whose courtesy 
 he was indebted for his introduction to its presses, Andrew 
 
 1 " De Arte Magna, sive de Kegulis Algebraicis." It was published 
 in folio, says Naudaeus, who appears not to have seen the first edition. 
 I believe it is not in any English public library. 
 
CARDAN'S u BOOK OF THE GREAT ART." 273 
 
 Osiandcr. To him Jerome dedicated, with a proper sense 
 of gratitude and literary courtesy, his Algebra, as to a 
 man " most learned in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Mathe- 
 matics, but rather," he says, " because it appeared to me 
 that this my work could be dedicated to no man more 
 fitly than to yourself, by whom it may be emended (if my 
 erring hand has ill obeyed the mandates of the mind) and 
 read with enjoyment and understanding, from whom also 
 it can receive authoritative commendation. . . . Accept, 
 therefore, this lasting testimony of my love towards you, 
 and of your kind offices towards me, as well as of your 
 distinguished erudition 1 ." 
 
 Very genuine in Cardan is the feeling that prompts all 
 his dedications. His books are always inscribed in acknow- 
 ledgment of kindness to the men who had a claim upon 
 his gratitude, never to men whom he hoped thereby to 
 make grateful and liberal towards himself. They were the 
 scholar's courtesies bestowed where they were due; he 
 never carried them to market. 
 
 Cardan stated at the beginning of his Algebra that, as 
 his work chiefly went into new ground, he should <; deco- 
 rate with the names" of the discoverer inventions not his 
 own, and that all matter not ascribed to other men would 
 be his own. The whole book was original, in fact, with 
 the exception of those few rules from which he started, 
 1 Ars Magna. Opera, Tom. iv. p. 221. 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
274 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 and of existing rules the demonstrations were all his with 
 exception of four, said to have been left attached to his 
 four elementary rules by Mahomet ben Musa, and two of 
 which Lodovico Ferrari was the author. Cardan, in his 
 first chapter, ascribes to every man his own ; does honour 
 to Pisanus and Era Luca ; then, after coupling the dis- 
 covery of Scipio Ferreo with a high eulogy of the mathe- 
 matician and his divine art, Jerome adds: " In emulation 
 of him, Nicolo Tartalea of Brescia, our friend, when in 
 contest with the pupil of Ferreus, Antonia Maria Fior, 
 that he might not be conquered, discovered the same 
 rule, which he made known to me besought by many 
 prayers 1 ." He is nowhere chary of acknowledgment. In 
 the sixth chapter of this book he ascribes to Tartalea 
 the credit of having taught him in what way to push 
 forward all his algebraical discoveries, owning freely that 
 a hint given by Tartalea led to his use of the method by 
 which all the rules in the work are demonstrated, and all 
 that is new was first discovered. " When I understood," 
 he says, "that the rule taught to me by Nicolo Tartalea 
 had been discovered by him through a geometrical demon- 
 stration, I thought to myself that must be the golden way 
 up to all algebraical discovery 3 ." That golden way, there- 
 
 1 Op. Tom, iv. p. 222. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 235. The details that have here been given are further 
 illustrated by a highly characteristic portrait of himself, prefixed by 
 Tartalea to his " Quesiti et Inventione." A fac-simile of that por- 
 trait, reduced in size, will be found upon the title-page of the second 
 volume of the present work. 
 
CARDAN'S DISCOVERIES IN ALGEBRA. 275 
 
 fore, Cardan prosecuted, and the result was a work of 
 remarkable completeness and originality. In it he laid 
 down rules for all forms and varieties of cubic equations, 
 having all their terms or wanting any of them, and having 
 all possible varieties of signs. Every rule given he demon- 
 strated geometrically. He treated very fully of almost all 
 kinds of transformations of equations, in a manner before 
 wholly unknown. In the same book he for the first time 
 made frequent use of the literal notation, a, b, c, d. He 
 therein gave a rule for biquadratics suiting all their cases, 
 and in the invention of that rule made use of an assumed 
 indeterminate quantity, and afterwards found its value by 
 the arbitrary assumption of a relation between the terms. 
 He therein first applied algebra to the resolution of 
 geometrical problems. 
 
 The list could be made more minute, but it would in 
 
 
 
 that case be more technical ; the citation of those main 
 points is enough to show the very great importance of 
 Cardan's Book of the Great Art, in which the whole doc- 
 trine of cubic equations was first published to the world 1 . 
 In that department of algebra, Tartalea had indeed turned 
 the first sod, but it was Cardan who ploughed the field 
 and raised the crop upon it. No algebraical book equal in 
 
 1 In Button's Mathematical Dictionary, art. Algebra, there may be 
 seen a list of the chief improvements introduced into the art by Car- 
 dan, sixteen in number. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 importance to Cardan's was published in his time. The 
 Germans, who were not much read in Italy, had advanced 
 beyond the Italians in mathematics, but Cardan's book 
 published in Germany placed him easily and indisputably 
 at the head of all. One of the best of the German mathe- 
 matical books, the Arithmetica Integra of Michael Stife- 
 lius (Englished, Michael Boot), had issued from the press, 
 also of Nuremberg, less than a year before the publication 
 in that town of Cardan's Ars Magna. Before I close these 
 details in the life of a primitive algebrist, it may help to 
 suggest to us how truly primitive he was, if we consider 
 that in that book by Stifelius the signs -f~> > and ^/, 
 were for the first time used. 
 
A PROLIFIC AUTHOR. 277 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CONQUEST OF AN ADVERSE WORLD. 
 
 TARTALEA could not get on with algebra for twenty 
 years because he was translating Euclid; Cardan in five 
 years had advanced the science by great strides, and was 
 at the same time engaged upon a dozen other works 1 . In 
 the year 1543 the separate works written by him amounted 
 to the number of fifty-three, divided into a hundred and 
 fifty-eight books, technically so called 2 ; and from that 
 date the number of them multiplied so rapidly that an 
 attempt to give even the shortest tolerable account of 
 them all would make this narrative unreasonably long. 
 
 A very few more notes will enable us to complete in 
 sufficient detail that essential part of Jerome's life which 
 describes the steps by which he worked his way to fame 
 and general acceptance as an author. After the publica- 
 tion of the Book of the Great Art his way was easy, and 
 
 1 " Neque enim mens tandiu intenta uni negocio esse potest." De 
 Libr. Prop. (1557) p. 12. 
 
 2 Ibid. The same authority or reference to the subsequent book 
 De Libris Propriis will justify whatever else is said in this chapter 
 upon the order of publication of Cardan's writings. 
 
278 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 there were on all sides publishers willing to buy what he 
 would suffer them to print. He was not idle, and his 
 love of print, rather than his love of money, caused him 
 to degenerate often into a hack writer, to drag all manner 
 of disquisitions into his books for the sole purpose of 
 filling sheets ; but even such interpolations and digressions 
 always carefully retouched and digested having on 
 them his own stamp of eccentricity and genius, very 
 likely helped to make his works more popular. The pub- 
 lications issued by Cardan between the years 1542 and 
 1545 contributed to the foundations of his fame, and 
 these, which I left out of sight in order to trace uninter- 
 ruptedly the history of his most valuable treatise, include 
 the last of his less prominent works that will need special 
 mention. 
 
 In the first place there was that astrological book 
 which he sent in reply to the application made from Nu- 
 remberg by Osiander and Petreius. Joannes Petreius pub- 
 lished it in the year 1543, and it was entitled " Two Tracts 
 by Girolamo Cardano, Physician of Milan. One a Sup- 
 plement to the Almanac, the other on the Restitution of 
 the Celestial Times and Motions. Also Forty-seven Na- 
 tivities, remarkable for the Events they Foretcl, with an 
 Exposition 1 ." The book was dedicated gratefully to 
 
 1 " Libelli duo: unus, de Supplemento Almanach. Alter, de Restitu- 
 tione temporum et motuurn cselestium," &c. 4to. Norimb. 1543. 
 
CARDAN'S NATIVITY. 
 
 279 
 
 Cardan's Milanese friend and patron, Filippo Archinto. 
 So far as it is a supplement to the almanac, it contains 
 various useful directions, sucli as how to find the pole, to 
 recognise planets at sight, and so forth, with some useless 
 matter, then accounted precious, of an astrological descrip- 
 tion. The nativities are very curious. Among them are 
 the horoscopes each with an exposition of Petrarca, of 
 Luther, of the Emperor Charles V, and of King Francis I, 
 of Fazio Cardan, of Jerome himself, of his friend Ar- 
 chinto, and his other patrons; of Venice, from the date of 
 its establishment, and, in the same way, of Florence and 
 Bologna. The horoscope of Jerome himself I append 
 for the benefit of any person who is able to understand 
 such mysteries, or may have a desire to see in what fashion 
 these things were drawn. 
 
 150lDlE24:SEPHMBRIS 
 HORA6.MI.40.AMERIDIE 
 
 CORCdLllM6.CAPRICOR 
 HIERON.CARDANI.AUTORI.S 
 
280 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Minute explanation of the twelve houses of the twelve 
 signs, and of what Mars meant by being in one, and 
 what the Sun and Venus meant by being together in 
 another, while the Moon was in a third, is rendered the 
 less necessary by the fact that the sketch of his own future, 
 drawn by Cardan from this nativity, was emphatically 
 incorrect. What the stars pronounced strongly against 
 did happen, and what did happen the stars did not 
 indicate at all. 
 
 Concerning his skill as an astrologer, Cardan said in 
 his dedication that " the ungrateful condition of the times 
 was such that no prayers or rewards would induce him 
 again to exercise his art." A certain bishop at Rome 
 held, he said, unwittingly, the last example of his skill 
 in it. 
 
 Although there was at the time, happily, some ten- 
 dency to ridicule astrology, still the supporters of that 
 science were not few, nor had its professors, when gain 
 only was their object, any reason to complain, for it 
 was among the wealthy that it found most liberal support; 
 princes and nobles still amused themselves as amateur 
 astrologers, and these were ready to pay liberally for the 
 aid and countenance they had from scientific men. 
 Cardan's way to the favour of the rich at any rate might 
 have been much more difficult had there been less to 
 favour superstition in his character. The practice of 
 astrology Jerome abjured as vainly as the toper might 
 
WRITING FOR THE FIRE. 281 
 
 abjure his tankard. He both practised it again and 
 wrote of it again ; twice again in successive works he 
 discussed, among others, his own horoscope. In doing so 
 for the last time, when the events of his life lay chiefly in 
 the past, his comment upon it, and upon all nativities 
 by which it was influenced and modified, became so 
 elaborate that it assumed by itself almost the proportions 
 of a book. He returned then thoroughly to his astro- 
 logy, for how could he forswear it while he believed the 
 science to be true, and there were yet kings to urge that 
 he would exercise his skill in it on their behalf? 
 
 In the same year, 1543, Jerome had begun the writing 
 of a life of Galen, which it does not appear that he ever 
 finished. He also laboured at a book on the art of Meto- 
 poscopy, illustrated with numerous physiognomical draw- 
 ings. He wrote other matter, much that he has himself 
 designated as prodigious folly, on the hint of which he 
 expressed his opinion, and that no foolish one, that there 
 is in the mind, as in the body, a necessity for getting rid 
 of waste, that the active literary man must write things 
 for the fire as well as for the press. Such a work was 
 Cardan's " Convivium," or treatise on Example in Love. 
 In the same year, stirred by the restless spirit that would 
 never suffer him to be content with one work at a time, he 
 was engaged in philological research, and wrote a dialogue 
 in his own tongue upon a comparison between the respec- 
 
282 JEROME CARDAN". 
 
 tive qualities of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish lan- 
 guages. Spanish armies were so much at home in Italy, 
 and the Spanish language is. so easily to be acquired by 
 an Italian, that Jerome's busy mind could not have failed 
 to fasten on it, and to add it to all other acquisitions. 
 Still in the same year, 1543, another of Cardan's domestic 
 occupations was the collection into one manuscript volume 
 of his epigrams and poems. His fervid temperament had 
 often, of course, found relief in verse, but Cardan's poems 
 were not in any set form given to the world. One or 
 two are included in his works, and are so directly illus- 
 trative of his life, that in their proper place they will 
 become a part of this biography. 
 
 In the succeeding year Jerome issued his Five 
 Books on Wisdom 1 , from the press of Petreius at Nu- 
 remberg, and added in the same volume a revised re- 
 issue of the three books on Consolation, and one book on 
 his own written works. In issuing an account of his 
 own works, he professed only to follow the example set 
 by Galen of old, and in his own time by Erasmus. This 
 volume, containing works on three distinct topics, was 
 supplied with an ample index, and dedicated to that 
 
 1 " De Sapientia Libri V. quibus omnis humanae ritoe cursus viven* 
 digue ratio explicatur : item de Consolatione Libri tres et Ephemerus 
 sive libellus de Libellis Propriis." Norimb. 1544. This contains the 
 first book De Libris Propriis to which reference has been made in 
 preceding notes, under the title of " De Sapientia," &c. 
 
SUCCESSIVE PUBLICATIONS. 283 
 
 patron whose strength had chiefly been of service in re- 
 moving for him the obstructions offered to his progress 
 by the Milanese College of Physicians. It was dedicated 
 to Francisco Sfondrato, Senator and (when the book was 
 published) Governor of Sienna, who in the dedication 
 was lauded for the splendour and intellectual refinement 
 of his private life, for his public piety, the innocence and 
 extreme prudence and moderation of his conduct as a 
 magistrate, his lenity, and his simplicity of manners. 
 
 In the fourth of the five books on Wisdom there 
 occurs the statement concerning supposed cures of con- 
 sumption, which was destined to affect the current of 
 his after-life. " When we ourselves long laboured in 
 this city against envy, and our income was not so much as 
 our expenses (so much harder is the condition of a merit 
 that is seen than of one that is unknown, and a prophet 
 is of no honour in his own country), we made many 
 attempts to discover new things in our art, for away from 
 the art no step could be made. At length I thought out 
 the cure of phthisis which they call phthoe, despaired of 
 for ages, and I healed many who now survive." So the 
 physician wrote, believing what he stated to be true. 
 
 In the same year, Petreius published Cardan's treatise 
 on the Immortality of Souls, which was republished in the 
 succeeding year at Lyons by Sebastian Gryphius. Out of 
 the first fruits of his industry as Professor of Medicine at 
 
284 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Pavia, were furnished the revised sheets of the first book 
 of the Contradictions of Doctors, published by a Scoto at 
 Venice 1 . These publications caused a continual increase of 
 reputation, and close upon them followed, in the year 1545, 
 as a grand climax, the Book of the Great Art, already dis- 
 cussed. Jerome became from that time forward one of 
 the most popular among the learned authors of his day. 
 A few more publications caused him to be more widely 
 talked about perhaps than any other scholar of the time 
 who did not take part in the great religious movement, 
 or express any of the passions it aroused. 
 
 Prosperity had not come to Cardan, but he had brought 
 it to himself ; in spite of everything that had warred 
 against him, he had at length achieved as a philosopher 
 his conquest of the world. Dishonoured by his birth, 
 discredited by his first training as a child, frowned upon 
 as a youth by his university, rejected as a man by the 
 physicians of his own town, with an ill-looking and sickly 
 body, an erratic mind and a rough manner, a man to be 
 disliked at first sight, and shrugged at by all that was 
 dull and respectable ; in spite of all, by the force of in- 
 tellect and by the force of incessant, unrelaxing work, he 
 had at last won ample recognition of his merits. He had 
 
 1 This was republished, with the addition of another book, at Paris, 
 by Jacobus Macaeus, in 1546 ; and by Gryphius, at Lyons, two years 
 later. It was then called " Contradicentium Medicorum Libri duo, 
 quorum uterque centum et octo contradictiones continet," &c. 
 
FAME ACQUIRED. 285 
 
 used no worldly tact. His first published book would 
 have been the last book issued by a prudent man, for it 
 put new determination into the antagonism of his oppo- 
 nents. Nevertheless, he had steadily continued at his 
 work, using a strong mind not as a toy but as a tool, and 
 the result ensued which sooner or later must, in such case, 
 always ensue. Man has but to will and work. The 
 objects of a high ambition are not instantly secured. 
 Cardan had not enough tact to create for himself popu- 
 larity, but he had talent enough to create for himself 
 fame. To create it for himself, laboriously, by endurance 
 and exertion, because no man who moves at a lounging 
 pace is likely to outmarch his neighbours. Jerome had 
 forced his way up through years of discouragement, 
 against contempt and poverty, in spite of severe bodily 
 infirmities, and at the age of forty-four he was at length 
 a recognised physician, occupying a professor's chair, and 
 renowned through Europe as a man of letters. It should 
 be remembered, however, that he had based his reputa- 
 tion on the writing of more works than there were years 
 in his life, and that of those works none had been pub- 
 lished until they had been reconsidered, polished, and 
 rewritten more than once, commonly twice, but among 
 his publications there are many passages that had been 
 written five and even ten times by his pen before they were 
 committed to the printer's types. The whole writings of 
 
286 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 
 Cardan, closely printed, constitute as heavy a load as 
 any one man would desire to carry on his back. Very 
 familiar with the pen, therefore, his hand must have be- 
 come, for to the last he printed nothing that had not been 
 thus written, rewritten, and again, and perhaps yet again 
 and again, revised 1 . " For," said Cardan, " they who 
 write without digestion are like men who eat crude things : 
 for a slight and temporary satisfaction they inflict upon 
 themselves a grave and lasting harm 2 ." Even now we 
 have not a right impression of the whole amount of 
 student's work which Cardan's writings represent, for it 
 remains to be added that his memory was very bad, and 
 for the vast store of facts and illustrations in almost every 
 department of the science of his day which his many 
 books contain, he had to depend almost exclusively on 
 written memoranda 3 . 
 
 This persevering habit of hard work, then, was the root 
 of Cardan's fame, for genius is a sap that will not go far to 
 produce flower and fruit, still less to beget solid timber, if 
 there be not in its due place, hidden from the world's eye, 
 a root like that to keep it fresh and stirring. There were, 
 however, other qualities in Cardan's writings to which 
 we must look for an explanation of the very wide popu- 
 
 i De Libr. Propr. (1557) p. 74. 
 
 a De Vita Propria, cap. 1, 
 
 3 " Quantum potui minus memoriae reliqui quam scriptis." ' 
 
BOOTS OF FAME. 287 
 
 larity that they obtained in Ins own day. He was not 
 too much before his time. His intellect was strong and 
 bold ; he dared attempt all themes ; and there were few of 
 the world's mysteries on which he did not reason in his 
 books ; but while his power and originality of mind com- 
 manded universal recognition, learned and unlearned 
 were glad to read the works of a philosopher who shared 
 their weaknesses. He was perhaps loved by many not 
 the less for being in certain respects weaker than them- 
 selves. On all the attractive and delusive pseudo- sciences 
 of his own day, on ghosts, dreams, portents, palmistry, 
 signs in the heavens and wonders upon earth, Cardan 
 reasoned with good faith, and displayed in their discus- 
 sion a profundity that flattered and encouraged shallower 
 believers. Then, too, he wrote upon these and all 
 things not only more profoundly, but more pleasant!}' 
 than the great body of his neighbours. As a writer he 
 was at once learned and amusing. His quick natural 
 wit made him a brisk narrator even when he was most 
 garrulous : there was pith in what he wrote, and his works 
 always sparkled more or less with those well-considered 
 and well-pointed sayings in which learned and unlearned 
 equally delight. Mysteries of heaven and earth thus 
 written about in a credulous and marvel-loving spirit, 
 made the subject of a curious philosophy, would of course 
 yield matter for attractive books. They were not less 
 attractive because they were, or appeared to be, practical. 
 
288 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 Cardan had always a purpose in his writing. Astrology 
 and kindred topics were supposed nearly to concern the 
 daily interests of life ; Arithmetic and Algebra concerned 
 them really. " Make a book," said Cardan, in another 
 of his aphorisms 1 "make a book that will fulfil a pur- 
 pose, use will give it polish; then, but not till then, 
 it will be perfect." Probably his popularity was more 
 advanced by qualities of this kind in his writings than 
 by the great and absolute merit of his discoveries in 
 Algebra, whereupon chiefly his fame must rest. The 
 Book of the Great Art must, however, have assured to 
 Cardan among the most learned men of his day that 
 high respect and consideration which could be secured 
 from the more ignorant by works of less essential value. 
 
 There is another element in Cardan's writings by which 
 they were characterised from the first, and by which they 
 were made interesting and amusing to their readers, 
 namely, the tendency to become autobiographical, and to 
 perform self-dissection. We should now very fairly turn 
 from a writer who had the bad taste to obtrude himself 
 in his own writings ; but three hundred years ago, when 
 modern literature was in its infancy, it had a right to prattle 
 the right age for talking properly was yet to come. Now 
 the events of Cardan's life, and more especially those of his 
 
 1 The aphorisms cited in this chapter, with one exception, are all 
 from the fiftieth chapter of the book De Vita Propria. 
 
1545. 289 
 
 later years, were of a kind calculated to excite men's 
 sympathies, so that the fragments of self-revelation had 
 always a life and charm in them ; they were a pleasant 
 sauce that heightened very much the relish of the reader 
 for the entire book. 
 
 Another source of Cardan's popularity was a deficiency 
 of liveliness in other learned writers. There were many 
 isolated pleasant books, but there was no grave utterer of 
 tome upon tome of Latin who had much more than his 
 wisdom to dispose of. The readers of Cardan were sure 
 to be amused with wit and eccentricity, at the same time 
 that they were impressed with the conviction of his being 
 the most learned man of his own time, for there was no 
 other whose philosophy embraced so wide a range of 
 subjects. In this respect, and in the charm -of nimbleness 
 and suppleness as a writer, his chief rival, Scaliger, was 
 greatly his inferior. 
 
 In the year 1545, then, at which date this narrative 
 now stands, Cardan lectured on medicine in the Univer- 
 sity of Pavia as he had lectured during the previous year, 
 almost to empty benches. The confusion caused by war 
 in the finances of the university did not check very 
 seriously his career, and the position attained by him was 
 at length a safe one. As a physician of much more than 
 common penetration he was widely sought, and as an 
 author, the series of works ending with his real master- 
 
 VOL. I. U 
 
290 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 piece, the Book of the Great Art, had at last won for him 
 an extensive reputation, Europe being then one republic 
 of letters, which was addressed by every man who pub- 
 lished books in Latin. The political boundaries of states 
 then circumscribed no man's literary credit, and authors 
 seeking publishers looked about Europe, not about their 
 own town only. So the works of Cardan and of many 
 another learned man were first issued, now from a press 
 in his own country, now by a German publisher, and at 
 another time perhaps in Basle or Paris. It was, as we all 
 know, no mere spirit of pedantry that first prompted the 
 use of Latin as an universal language. 
 
 We ought not to turn from these considerations of the 
 source of the fame earned by Jerome among those of his 
 own day without one or two comments, that may save 
 him, and his age also, from too hasty contempt. There are 
 superstitions current among ourselves. Credulity is now 
 in some respects as gross, though not as common, as it 
 was during the sixteenth century. If we have made what 
 we believe to be astounding strides in knowledge, let it 
 be borne in mind that the men of that age moved forward 
 not less rapidly than we are moving now, in spite of the 
 great mixture of error with their wisdom which appears 
 so strange to us wherever it is obsolete. The political 
 movements of rulers, the devastation of lands, the demo- 
 ralisation and impoverishment of the people, were then 
 
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 291 
 
 indeed deplorable, and we excel that period in wisdom 
 by the sum of all experience that has been since acquired. 
 Yet we should know that it was then possible to boast not 
 less loudly or less justly than we now boast in our day of 
 railways and electric telegraphs, and to believe that intel- 
 lect had few more triumphs to achieve. " We should 
 exult 1 ," said Cardan, writing in this vein " we should 
 exult in a field covered with blossom. For what is more 
 wonderful than pyrotechny or the thunderbolt aimed by 
 the hands of mortals, which is more devastating than the 
 thunder of celestial beings ? Nor will I be silent con- 
 cerning thee, great magnet, by whom we are led through 
 the vastest seas in the darkness of night, through fearful 
 storms, into strange, unknown regions. Add also the in- 
 vention of typography, achieved by mortal handicraft and 
 heavenly wit, rival to the divine miracles, and what more 
 is there to be done unless we occupy the heavens ?" 
 
 Again we should remember, if we would do justice 
 not to his age only, but also to Jerome himself, that the 
 strange combination in one character of high intellectual 
 endowment with superstitions of incredible absurdity 
 the kind of mixture we have noticed in Cardan was 
 common among the foremost men of all that time. Kepler 
 himself, like Cardan, cast nativities ; Tycho Brahe kept 
 an idiot, whose mouthings he received as revelations from 
 
 1 De Vita Propriti, cap. xlr. 
 u2 
 
292 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 on high ; Melancthon was an interpreter of dreams ; and 
 Luther, who abounded in many superstitions of his day, 
 had so certain a belief in killcrops, or devil's changelings, 
 that having seen a boy at Dessau whom he took for a 
 changeling, he did not scruple to advise his murder. " I 
 told the Prince of Anhalt, that if I were prince of that 
 country, I would venture homicidium thereon, and would 
 throw it into the river Moldau 1 ." 
 
 The self-revelations of Cardan may furnish us with a 
 more vivid picture of such inconsistencies than could be 
 had from others using the subdued tone common among 
 men in intercourse with one another. I do not, however, 
 think that he was in such matters a greater curiosity than 
 many of the learned men about him. His eccentricity 
 consisted perhaps more in the extent of his candour than 
 in his peculiarities of conduct or opinion. 
 
 It is not, for example, every writer who is ready, to 
 amuse his readers with a chapter upon what he likes to 
 have for breakfast or for supper, and how long he likes 
 to be in bed. When he was old and garrulous, Cardan 
 poured out a rich store of such details, which now serve 
 pleasantly not only in aid of a minute depiction of him- 
 self, but also in illustration of the manners of his time 2 . 
 
 1 For these hints I am indebted to Dugald Stewart's preliminary 
 article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
 
 2 Authority for all the succeeding details upon food and dress will be 
 found in chaps, vi. viii. and xx, of the book De Vita Propria. 
 
CARDAN IN HIS BEDROOM. 293 
 
 Cardan had a constitution that required to be refreshed 
 with a full measure of sleep. He avoided night-watching! 
 as much as possible ; he liked to spend ten hours in bed, 
 during eight of which he slept if his health happened to 
 be pretty good, otherwise he had not more than four or 
 five hours of proper rest. When he was wakeful he was 
 accustomed to get up and walk round his bed counting 
 thousands, with the hope of making himself sleepy. He 
 took but little medicine, being a doctor ; but when his 
 sleeplessness grew to be troublesome he abstained very 
 much from food, or put himself upon half diet. The 
 medicinal remedies most used by him to procure sleep 
 were bear's grease, or an ointment of poplar, applied 
 externally in seventeen places. It is an edifying thing 
 for us to figure to ourselves one of the most eminent 
 physicians of the sixteenth century rising at night weary 
 of watching to grope for his little jar of bear's grease, 
 and then patiently sitting down on the edge of the bed 
 to anoint the top of his head and the soles of his feet, his 
 elbows, his heels, his thighs, his temples, his jugulars, the 
 regions of his heart and liver, and his upper lip, according 
 to the formula prescribed, then creeping into bed again 
 to try the value of his remedy. 
 
 Two hours after the sun Jerome rose for the day. He 
 was not much troubled with the putting on of clothes, for 
 he was careless about the purchasing of new dress ; during 
 
294 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 the days of which the story has been thus far told, care- 
 less upon compulsion. His private opinion was that four 
 garments ought to suffice for a man, one heavy and one 
 heavier, one light and one lighter. With those he could 
 make fourteen respectable combinations of attire, not 
 counting one that consisted in the wearing of them all at 
 once. He did not quite act up to that theory, but he 
 had not a predilection for new clothes, and was commonly 
 to be found wearing dress of a past fashion, or when he 
 became more of a traveller, wearing out in one country 
 clothes bought in another. Thus, for example, after his 
 return from the Scotch journey, presently to be related, 
 he caused remark among his neighbours by continuing 
 to wear the dress that he had bought in Edinburgh, 
 Edinburgh fashions being foolish in the eyes of Pa via, 
 Milan, and Bologna. 
 
 Cardan liked a heavy supper and a light breakfast, 
 supper being his chief meal during the day. The light 
 breakfast consisted in his mature and later life of bread, 
 water, and raisins, tea and coffee being in those days 
 unknown. To his wife and children he was attached 
 very warmly, though Aldo, his youngest son, proved a 
 young scapegrace, and began early to trouble him. His 
 eldest boy, Gian Batista, was good and amiable ; trained 
 by Cardan to his own profession, he was simple-minded 
 and of quiet ways ; Clara, the daughter too, was a good 
 
OF CARDAN'S EATING AND DRINKING. 295 
 
 girl ; and we may suppose that wife and children were 
 not shut out of the philosopher's study. There he worked 
 with his feet naked, dipping his pen into a costly inkstand, 
 and not unwilling to bend his sickly face sometimes over 
 one of the pet animals, whether it were cat, dog, goat, 
 or bird, that was allowed to scratch or hop among his 
 papers. Then he had patients to see, and his lecture to 
 deliver. When his dinner came it was a light one. It 
 was never less, however, than the yolk of an egg, with 
 two or more ounces of bread, and with or without a 
 modicum of wine. On Friday or Sunday he had shell- 
 fish, of which he was very fond. There was no solid 
 food not counting fish as solids that he liked better 
 than veal, and the way to cook veal to his utmost satis- 
 faction was to stew it in a pot without liquor, after it had 
 been well beaten with the backs of knives. It was then, 
 he considered, moister and richer than meat roasted on a 
 spit. After dinner Cardan liked a little music. 
 
 Supper tea being of course an unknown meal was 
 the great gastronomic event of Cardan's day. There was 
 always a dish of beet, or else rice with a salad ; but he 
 preferred endive. Fish, he tells us, he liked much better 
 than meat ; but then it must needs be good and fresh. 
 Fond too of angling, he was glad when he had fish of his 
 own catching. Of all fish he preferred fresh- water shell- 
 fish, and of those above all others river mussels, because, 
 
296 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 we are told, his mother longed for them before he came into 
 the world ; but he had a. great partiality for oysters too, 
 and cockles. He is particular to specify his regard for 
 codfish, halibut, and sturgeon, for turbot, mullet, gudgeon, 
 soles, flounders, and others ; also for pike and carp ; also 
 for land tortoises. He liked tunny in all states ; and her- 
 rings, whether salt or fresh, but best of all when dried. 
 After all he is not sure whether the best of all eatables is not 
 a well- selected carp, weighing from three to seven pounds. 
 From large fishes he lets us know that he removed the head 
 and belly, but from small fishes only the backbone and tail. 
 
 Of flesh meats he preferred veal and pork, roasted or 
 minced. He was particularly fond of chickens' wings, 
 and of the livers of capons and pigeons, and of giblets 
 generally. 
 
 He had a partiality for sweets; and records his power 
 of appreciating the delights of honey, of ripe grapes, of 
 melons, figs, cherries, peaches, and the like; he is at the 
 same time particular in stating that none of these things 
 disagreed with him. In oil he delighted beyond measure, 
 whether mixed with salt or with sweet olives. Onions 
 always did him good ; and he found rue also of great virtue 
 in preserving him from poisonous influences of all kinds. 
 He derived benefit, also, from the use of Roman worm- 
 wood. He allowed himself at supper about half a pint 
 
A SCHOOLMAN UPON VICTUALS. 297 
 
 of sweet wine, to which he put an equal, or rather more 
 than an equal, quantity of water. 
 
 Having in his old age told the world these things, 
 Jerome amused himself with the manufacture of a little 
 burlesque sketch of the philosophy of victuals, which 
 may be taken as a satire upon some of his own graver 
 generalisations. " There are," he says, " seven summa 
 genera of things air, sleep, exercise, food, drink, medi- 
 cine, preservatives. And there are fifteen species air, 
 sleep, exercise, bread, meat, milk, eggs, fish, oil, salt, 
 water, figs, rue, grapes, and onions. There are fifteen 
 preparatives fire, ashes, the bath, water, pot, fryingpan, 
 spit, gridiron, knife-back and knife-edge, a grater; parsley, 
 rosemary, and laurel." Here, it maybe observed, the list, 
 made up at random, wants one article more. " Of exer- 
 cises, there are the grinding-wheel, walking, riding, the 
 small pestle and mortar, cart, making of cutlery, riding 
 (this item is repeated), the saddle, navigation, cleaning 
 of platters, friction or lotion; fifteen," adds Jerome, sud- 
 denly counting them up, though they are but a ragged 
 ten, into conformity with his abstruse system of fifteens. 
 " These things," he adds, writing no doubt after supper, 
 with a twinkle in his eye, "I have reduced to a com- 
 pendium, after the manner of the theologians, not with- 
 out exercise of profound thought, and a great display 
 
298 JEROME CAEDAN. 
 
 of reason. There are five things," he goes on to say, 
 " that may be taken freely by all except old men ; they 
 are, bread, fish, cheese, wine, and water. Two may be 
 used as medicines, mastix and coriander ; sugar is used 
 in many things. Two things are condiments, saffron 
 and salt, which also is an element. Four things are to 
 be taken moderately ; they are, meat, yolk of egg, raisins, 
 and oil: the last," he adds, " a latent element, answering 
 in properties, when burnt, to the element of the stars !" 
 
 So, considering Cardan as an animal, the day, with its 
 edifications, passed away, and there returned with night 
 the period of sleep and dreams. By dreams, as we have 
 seen already, the philosopher considered himself to be 
 sometimes lifted out of animal existence, and brought 
 into communication with things spiritual. His nights 
 were as eventful as his days. He was beset by portents. 
 He saw one evening a meteor which approached his 
 court-yard, and, bright for a minute or two, was extin- 
 guished suddenly. That, we are told, preceded his ac- 
 quisition of the favour of the Marquis d'Avalos, a profit- 
 able honour that was not of long duration. He dreamt one 
 night 1 a strange dream of Alexander the Great, Hephses- 
 tion, and a lion, that preceded and portended his admis- 
 sion into the Milanese College of Physicians. Alexander 
 
 1 The dreams here quoted are related in the fourth book Syne- 
 siorum Somniorum (ed. Bas. 1562), pp. 252, 267. 
 
VISIONS AND GHOSTS. 299 
 
 was d'Avalos or the Cardinal Sfondrato, the lion was the 
 college, and Hephaestion was Luca della Croce. Ghosts 
 of the dead came to the bedside of the excitable and ner- 
 vous man. In 1537, a year after her death, his mother 
 stood at the foot of his bed in the scarlet dress she used to 
 wear when occupied in household avocations. She came 
 to call him to her. Did she not know that she was dead? 
 he asked. She did, and summoned him to come to her 
 next year. But he had work to do, and did not wish to 
 leave it. An accident, a narrow escape from serious hurt 
 or death, in the succeeding year, was the fulfilment of that 
 warning. There was an old college friend, also, who has 
 been named on a former page, Prosper Marinon, a friend 
 who had died in the flower of years, and with whom 
 Jerome had formerly discoursed of ghostly things, and of 
 the state of the soul after death. Prosper Marinon had 
 come to his bedside, also a year after death, and he too being 
 asked, had said that he knew himself to be dead, and had 
 stooped down over his old friend, and kissed him on the 
 lips. A second time, later in Cardan's life, the ghost of 
 Prosper Marinon visited at night his old companion. 
 
 Such visions were a portion of his bodily infirmity. His 
 flesh was tainted from the first with evil humours, and the 
 gout, which appeared soon after he removed to Pavia, was 
 no more than a link in a long chain of maladies produced 
 at one time by the irritable state of his nervous system, 
 
300 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 and at another time by the impure condition of his blood. 
 But it is just to balance these considerations of his weak- 
 ness with a few more suggestions of his strength. By the 
 help of a few aphorisms taken from his works, this can 
 be done very briefly. The first two of the following 
 ideas I quote, not for their truth they wrong humanity 
 but because they are at once clever and characteristic of 
 the morbid feelings out of which they sprung; the rest 
 are wisely thought as well as shrewdly uttered : 
 
 " To a man saying, * I pity you,' I replied, * You have 
 no right to do so.' 
 
 I told a youth whom I was warning against evil com- 
 pany, ' I can show you many an apple that has become 
 rotten through lying with others in a heap, but I can 
 show you no heap that has made a rotten apple sound 
 again.' 
 
 I said to a servant from whom I parted, ' You please 
 me, but I don't please you; therefore I am obliged to leave 
 you.' 
 
 Better omit a hundred things that should be said, than 
 say one thing that ought to be omitted. 
 
 If you were without money, children, friends, and had 
 the other gifts of life, you could be happy. Wanting 
 those, and these also, there would remain to you few 
 days for sorrow. 
 
 The vulgar admire knowledge that comes of expcri- 
 
APHORISMS JEROME'S WIFE. 301 
 
 ence ; the knowledge valued by the learned is that 
 which is obtained by reasoning from the effect up to the 
 cause. 
 
 When you mean to wash, first see that you have a 
 towel handy." 
 
 Jerome tells us that the occupations in his study served 
 to moderate the great sense of his love for wife and chil- 
 dren. We have now traced his career to the conclusion 
 of that long period of struggle with adversity which Lucia 
 had shared with him. She was not to take part in his 
 prosperity. The white-robed maiden who had tempted 
 him to marriage had been a true wife to him for sixteen 
 years. She had left a home in which there was no want, 
 to starve with him in Milan, to struggle with him in Gal- 
 larate, to bear with him the scoffs of neighbours, to sus- 
 tain his spirit in a thousand hours of sorrow. She must 
 have shed her woman's tears over the loss of those jewels 
 and those bits of bridal finery that had paid gambling 
 debts, or been converted into bread. But she had not 
 been weak. She was brave, says her husband, and of 
 indomitable spirit ; gentle, affectionate, and rather good- 
 looking 1 . While Jerome laboured with his pen, she had 
 spent anxious days in meditations upon dinner, and in the 
 rearing of her children, when adversity hung as a heavy 
 cloud over the house. But with the cloud she also was 
 1 Geniturarum Exemplar (ed. Lugd. 1555), p. 113. 
 
302 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 to fade away; she did not live to see her husband's 
 utmost hope of fame accomplished. She lived out the 
 long struggle, and (perhaps worn down by the succession 
 of anxieties), just when the years of triumph were at hand, 
 the young wife died. Married in girlhood, she could 
 have been scarcely more than thirty-three years old when 
 Cardan lost her tender ministrations. 
 
 Jerome had gone to Pavia with his wife, where, in spite 
 of deserted lecture-rooms, and the great loss of income suf- 
 fered in war times by the university, he did on the whole 
 maintain his position; but to Lucia the change seemed 
 no success. In the second year of office money was de- 
 ficient, and in the year 1546, there being no funds at 
 all in the hands of the senate, public salaries could 
 only be regarded as bad debts. The house which had 
 belonged to his mother, and which had fallen down, 
 having in the mean time been rebuilt, Jerome returned 
 with his family to Milan. In the next year the difficulty 
 was removed ; that year, however, the failing Lucia did 
 not live to see. 
 
 The return to Milan caused a year of forced leisure 
 and care. Cardan had to rely mainly on his pen, and 
 spent six months in writing without intermission. It 
 was then that he amused his anxious mind by writing 
 his Encomium on Gout, to whom he was just pledged as 
 a subject; thereto incited, perhaps, by the authority of 
 
LUCIA DEAD. 303 
 
 Lucian, among whose works there is a dramatic tribute 
 to the might of the same despot, and throughout Cardan's 
 works it is evident that he read Lucian and liked him. 
 At the same time Jerome wrote also an Encomium of 
 Nero ; these works being exercises less of satire than of 
 ingenuity. It" was an old scholastic manner of amusement 
 to heap up in an uncompromising way all possible argu- 
 ments in favour of some obvious paradox. So earnestly 
 did Jerome set to work, that we might be misled by his 
 writing into the belief that he did really take Nero for 
 a great and good man, if we did not know that not a 
 doubt had then been cast on the good faith of those 
 by whom he was originally painted as a monster. In 
 the sixteenth century it would have been almost heretical 
 to separate from Nero seriously the ideas of cruelty and 
 wickedness. That Cardan chose Nero for his white- 
 washing because he was the blackest man of whom he 
 knew, is evident upon referring to another of his works 
 that contained the set of horoscopes recently mentioned. 
 Among them is the horoscope of Nero, properly adapted 
 to a character of superhuman wickedness. 
 
 So Jerome was occupied, he being then forty-five 
 
 years old, when, towards the close of the year 1546, his 
 
 young wife died 1 . He was left in charge of his three 
 
 motherless children, of whom the eldest, Gianbatista, 
 
 1 De Morte. Opera, Tom. i. p. 676. 
 
304 JEROME CARDAN. 
 
 was thirteen years old ; the girl Clara was eleven ; and 
 Aldo, the younger boy, was four. Delicate charge for a 
 busy and eccentric student ! Cardan's own mother was 
 dead ; but there remained to the children still their 
 grandmother Bandarini, the Thaddsea before mentioned, 
 who, when her daughter died, had survived by fifteen 
 years her husband Aldobello. She, while she lived, 
 occupied imperfectly the mother's place in Jerome's 
 household 1 . 
 
 Had Lucia lived on, how different the future might 
 have been ! The terrible calamity that cannot be 
 averted now, might then never have crushed her hus- 
 band's heart. They might have taken delight together 
 in the great fame of the philosopher, with which during 
 his own lifetime all Europe was to ring, and while 
 the note of triumph was resounding out of doors, there 
 might have been other voices murmuring about the walls 
 of home than the dull echoes of the mourning of a very 
 desolate old man. 
 
 1 De VitaPropria, cap. xxvii. p. 99. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND. 
 
RE RETURN TO DESK FROMWHICH BORROWED 
 
 Th; This book is due on the last date stampecf below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 KLG. Gift. M i 
 
 76 
 
 
 
 fc HEC, ClfcAUG 23 77 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 BHUIR./IIBZ 78 
 
 
 
 
 1980 
 
 
 BEC.CIR. MAY ? 1980 
 
 
 fMTPD/ rnn/irni 
 
 
 "*'C-rufLJhA;- 
 
 
 , n ' 
 ifcj. 
 
 
 l *!-eNIV. OF CALIF., BERK. 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 LD 21-327^-3, '74 General Library 
 (R7057slO)476 A-32 University of California 
 Berkeley 
 
 LD 21-1007n-2,'55 General Library 
 (Bl39s22)476 University of California 
 Berkeley 
 
YB 
 
 ,--.,/-' - 
 ^ / / 1 ,-- 
 
 L " 
 
 M. f 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY