220 JEROME CARDAN. 



mathematical knowledge or doctrine of Tartalea which 

 placed him in advance of other scholars of his time. He 

 understood thoroughly the mathematical knowledge of 

 his day, and used it very skilfully. His new rules con- 

 cerning cubic equations he maintained as his private pro- 

 perty, cherishing them as magic arms which secured to 

 him a constant victory in algebraic tilts, and caused him 

 to be famed and feared. That was a selfish use to make 

 of scientific acquisitions, with which no scholar of the 

 present day would sympathise, and which, also, in the 

 sixteenth century, would have been thought illiberal 

 by students like the pattern man of letters, Conrad 

 Gesner, or even our erratic and excitable Cardan. 



Cardan, when his work upon arithmetic approached 

 completion, made an attempt to procure the publication 

 of Tartalea's rules. Four years had elapsed since the 

 famous contest of Tartalea with Fior (or Florido), when, 

 in the beginning of 1539, Cardan applied through a book- 

 seller to the victor, with compliments, and a submission 

 of critical problems after the customary fashion. Then 

 there were sown the seeds of a great quarrel, the growth 

 of which Tartalea himself has chronicled with jealous 

 care. 



It should be understood that not many months before 

 the commencement of the correspondence between Nicolas 

 Tartalea and Jerome Cardan, Tartalea had published a 



