222 JEEOME CARDAN. 



tains forty-two dialogues, in the last of which one speaker is 

 Mr. Richard Wentworth, an English gentleman who had 

 been taught by Tartalea at Venice. Among other matter 

 in the ninth book of this volume is the record kept by 

 the jealous Nicolo of all his early dealings with Cardan, 

 minutes of conversations and copies of correspondence 

 which he there printed, as he threatened that he would , 

 when he considered himself to have been grievously ill- 

 used by Jerome, as a way of publishing his misdeeds to 

 the world. The chronicle begins with Jerome's applica- 

 tion before mentioned, of which Tartalea had made in 

 his diary an ample memorandum in the manner follow- 

 ing : (I should explain that two old terms employed in 

 mathematics, where they occur occasionally, in the course 

 of this correspondence, I have thought it proper to re- 

 tain. The quantity represented now by x used to be 

 called the cosa, or in Latin, res, and x 2 was known as the 

 census.) 



" Inquiry made by M. Zuan Antonio, bookseller, in the 

 name of one Messer Hieronimo Cardano, Physician and 

 public reader of Mathematics in Milan, dated January 

 2nd, 1539 1 . 



ZUAN ANTONIO. Messer Nicolo, I have been directed to 

 you by a worthy man, physician of Milan, named Messer 

 1 Op. cit. Lib. ix. p. 115. 



