160 JEROME CARDAN. 



the ideas passing through his head, he resolved then to 

 establish a method for the more ready finishing of books 

 that still remained upon his hands. To hasten the com- 

 pletion of five or six works, he began, therefore, a sixth 

 or seventh, and in that way arose his volume upon 

 Dialectics, which treats of the essences of things. He 

 began, also, then in his most prosperous day, another book 

 on a matter of which he had had much experience, the 

 Uses of Adversity. 



Of his prosperity as a physician we have had many illus- 

 trations, and among the incidents of practice that occurred 

 at Milan, between the date of his return and the year 

 1557, one only is necessary to this narrative. It will be 

 remembered that Cardan left Edinburgh with a promise 

 from Archbishop Hamilton, that at the end of two years 

 he would send word how his treatment had succeeded. 

 Jerome had, in the interval, both written and sent to him, 

 but for two years no tidings of the archbishop were re- 

 ceived at Milan. At the end of two years and one month 

 there arrived a Scotchman, known to Cardan, with a 

 letter from the reverend lord, running as follows 1 : 



"Your two most welcome letters, written in former 

 months, I received through the hands of an English 

 merchant; another was brought by the lord bishop at 



1 The letter is printed in the book De Libris Proprii?, ed. 1557. 



