PREDICTIONS. 131 



What he saw on earth he found in the heavens, deceiving 

 himself with a surprising ingenuity ; but astrology could 

 tell him no truth that was hidden from his neighbours. 

 One of his luckiest predictions, of which he makes special 

 boast/ was his discovery by the stars in the year 1548, 

 that in 1549 and the three following years he should 

 acquire great wealth. " Whence it will come, or can 

 come," he said then, " I do not know 1 ." Of that pro- 

 phesy, the events of the year 1552 were a fulfilment; and 

 he adds, after the fact, that if in 1548 he had read 

 Ptolemy's Judgments, he should then have discovered 

 that the wealth was to come through a journey. The 

 impression made upon Cardan by the young king was, 

 indeed, very great. " It would have been better, I think, 

 for this boy not to have been born," he says, " or that 

 being born and educated, that he had survived. For he 

 had graces. Quite as a boy, he was skilled in many lan- 

 guages; Latin, his native English, French; and he was 

 not unversed, I hear, in Greek, Italian, Spanish, and 

 perhaps, yet others. He was not ignorant of dialectics, 

 or of natural philosophy, or music. In his humanity he 

 was a picture of our mortal state ; his gravity was that of 

 kingly majesty, his disposition worthy of so great a prince. 

 The boy of so much wit and so much promise was by a 



1 Geniturarum Exemplar, p. 91. 

 K2 



