168 JEROME CARDAN. 



he consoled himself with the reflection that the youth 

 seemed to have no taste for study. But he was faithful, 

 obedient, honest, and clever; he was gifted with remark- 

 ably acute vision, was patient in enduring labour, and 

 was never querulous. " Wherefore," the physician adds, 

 " he was so loved by me, that he could not have been 

 loved better ; and that made me feel more heavily that 

 I appeared to be deficient in my duty to him. But in 

 the mean time, so many impediments were raised in my 

 way by my sons, that I could attend to little else. Now 

 one troubled my waters for me, now the other, sometimes 

 both at once 1 ." 



Very incidentally and without giving any date, Cardan 

 says, that "in those days a person wrote against my 

 books on Subtilty, in reply to whom I wrote an Apology, 

 which is added to the third edition of the work. It is 

 very useful to assist the comprehension of the books 

 on Subtilty ; expositions of some difficult passages are 

 therein given, and demonstrations not commonplace, 

 though few 2 ." So lightly the philosopher thought it 

 proper for the dignity of scholarship, that he should pass 

 over the violent and unprovoked assault upon his credit 

 next to be chronicled. 



The assailant was the elder Scaliger, who had begun 



1 Preface to Dialogue de Morte for the preceding. 



2 De Lib. Prop. Lib. ult. Op. Tom. i. p. 117. 



