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. 



