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, 



