262 JEROME CARDAN. 



questions, Nicolo replied that two of his pupils had 

 answered it one of them, Richard Went worth, the 

 English gentleman, whom he praised much ; and he sent 

 the two solutions by his pupils, written with their hands. 

 He further talked about his Euclid, and in various ways 

 heartily abused Cardan's Arithmetic, which he pronounced 

 to be a confused mess, and supposed must have been not 

 got out of his own head, but " collected and copied by 

 the pen from divers books, at divers times, just as they 

 chanced to come into his hands." Upon another mathe- 

 matical matter he was further " amazed and astounded" 

 at Cardan's persistent ignorance, laughed at his having 

 once said to him in his own house that if a certain kind 

 of solution had not been considered impossible by Luca 

 di Borgo, he should have tried to discover it (as if he 

 could discover anything indeed I), and thought it a pity 

 that he did not know physic enough for the cure of his 

 own errors. He ended by saying, " once I held you in 

 good esteem, but I see now that I deceived myself 

 grossly 1 ." 



Cardan replied briefly to his friend on the 18th of 

 October, after having perhaps waited until he had cooled 

 from the anger which Tartalea's rude letter must have at 



1 " Et certamente el fu gia che ni haueua in bon conto, ma al pre- 

 sente uedo che me ingannaua de grosso, non altro Iddio ui conserui in 

 Venetia alii .7. Agosto. 1539. Mcolo Tartalea Brisciano." Op. cit. 

 p. 127. 



