132 JEHOME CARDAX. 



great miracle being educated to a comprehension of the 

 sum of human things. I do not here adorn the truth 

 with rhetoric, but speak below the truth 1 . And 



there was the mark in his face of death that was to come 

 too soon. Otherwise he was comely, because of his age 

 and of his parents, who had both been handsome 2 ." 



Cardan, most probably, was introduced at court by the 

 king's tutor, Sir John Cheke ; for it is Cheke with whom 

 lie lodged, and whom he seems to have regarded as the 

 most familiar of his English friends. He calculated also 

 Cheke's nativity, and published the result. He was born 

 at seventeen minutes past five in the afternoon on the 16th 

 of June, 1514 3 . That being set down, the reader probably 

 has learnt more of the date of Sir John Cheke's birth than 

 he knows of his own. I need scarcely recal the fact, that 

 Cheke early became a Protestant, and was professor of 

 Greek at Cambridge. There he taught a new pronuncia- 

 tion that was forbidden by the chancellor,' Gardiner, 

 Bishop of Winchester, and so begot a controversy. In 

 1544, John Cheke was entrusted with the education of 

 Prince Edward. By the prince, when he became king, 

 the learned man was knighted, and endowed with lands. 

 He had been made chief gentleman of the king's privy 

 chamber in 1550, and it was in the October of the suc- 



1 Geniturarum Exemplar, p. 5. 



2 Ibid. p. 13. 3 Ibid. p. 37. 



