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. 



