76 JEROME CARDAN. 



So that on account of their virtue and probity we even love 

 those whom we have not seen, and so great is virtue's force, 

 that (what is more) we even love her in an enemy. 



" "Wherefore, by as much as we despise those men who are 

 useless to themselves or others, in whom there is no work, 

 no industry, no care, so it is our common usage in life to 

 extol to the skies with fame and good- will those who have ex- 

 celled in benefiting their own race. We elevate and bring 

 our highest praise to those in whom we think that we per- 

 ceive excellent and rare virtues, those by whom life is evi- 

 dently spent on honourable and great matters, and in doing 

 service to the State, whose virtue and whose studies are 

 fruitful to others, but to themselves laborious, or dangerous, 

 or by them freely given. In which respect you have as much 

 surpassed the multitude by your very great fame, and not 

 less great genius and erudition, as you have bound to your- 

 self students of many arts by your unwearied zeal in writing. 

 So much even he well knows who has admired but the least 

 of your many monuments and labours, for I estimate the 

 lion by his claw. 



" I, out of the so numerous and important writings, the 

 result of immense labour, of which you have edited a cata- 

 logue in your book ' De Libris Propriis,' have seen only the 

 Books on "Wisdom and upon Subtilty, with those upon Con- 

 solation, which were published with the books on "Wisdom. 

 The last were given to me in the year 1549, when I practised 

 medicine at Toulouse, by a legal friend, very studious of the 

 humaner letters ; but the books on Subtilty were given to me 

 by the same friend in this year 1551, in Scotland, where I 

 am now practising. These alone out of so many are in my 

 possession ; from the reading of which there has proceeded 

 so great a desire for the reading of the rest, that if I did not 



