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 



