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 



