284 JEROME CARDAN. 



Pavia, were furnished the revised sheets of the first book 

 of the Contradictions of Doctors, published by a Scoto at 

 Venice 1 . These publications caused a continual increase of 

 reputation, and close upon them followed, in the year 1545, 

 as a grand climax, the Book of the Great Art, already dis- 

 cussed. Jerome became from that time forward one of 

 the most popular among the learned authors of his day. 

 A few more publications caused him to be more widely 

 talked about perhaps than any other scholar of the time 

 who did not take part in the great religious movement, 

 or express any of the passions it aroused. 



Prosperity had not come to Cardan, but he had brought 

 it to himself ; in spite of everything that had warred 

 against him, he had at length achieved as a philosopher 

 his conquest of the world. Dishonoured by his birth, 

 discredited by his first training as a child, frowned upon 

 as a youth by his university, rejected as a man by the 

 physicians of his own town, with an ill-looking and sickly 

 body, an erratic mind and a rough manner, a man to be 

 disliked at first sight, and shrugged at by all that was 

 dull and respectable ; in spite of all, by the force of in- 

 tellect and by the force of incessant, unrelaxing work, he 

 had at last won ample recognition of his merits. He had 



1 This was republished, with the addition of another book, at Paris, 

 by Jacobus Macaeus, in 1546 ; and by Gryphius, at Lyons, two years 

 later. It was then called " Contradicentium Medicorum Libri duo, 

 quorum uterque centum et octo contradictiones continet," &c. 



