LUCIA DEAD. 303 



Lucian, among whose works there is a dramatic tribute 

 to the might of the same despot, and throughout Cardan's 

 works it is evident that he read Lucian and liked him. 

 At the same time Jerome wrote also an Encomium of 

 Nero ; these works being exercises less of satire than of 

 ingenuity. It" was an old scholastic manner of amusement 

 to heap up in an uncompromising way all possible argu- 

 ments in favour of some obvious paradox. So earnestly 

 did Jerome set to work, that we might be misled by his 

 writing into the belief that he did really take Nero for 

 a great and good man, if we did not know that not a 

 doubt had then been cast on the good faith of those 

 by whom he was originally painted as a monster. In 

 the sixteenth century it would have been almost heretical 

 to separate from Nero seriously the ideas of cruelty and 

 wickedness. That Cardan chose Nero for his white- 

 washing because he was the blackest man of whom he 

 knew, is evident upon referring to another of his works 

 that contained the set of horoscopes recently mentioned. 

 Among them is the horoscope of Nero, properly adapted 

 to a character of superhuman wickedness. 



So Jerome was occupied, he being then forty-five 



years old, when, towards the close of the year 1546, his 



young wife died 1 . He was left in charge of his three 



motherless children, of whom the eldest, Gianbatista, 



1 De Morte. Opera, Tom. i. p. 676. 



