SCALIGER AGAINST CARDAN. 177 



plained that the fame of Cardan's work having induced 

 him to get it, he, when he had read it, sent it on to 

 Scaliger, and Scaliger, for his own private amusement, 

 battled with its errors. Being urged then to reply to 

 the book more amply, he displayed his willingness to do 

 so, but was unwilling that his comments should be 

 printed. But he was urged at last to suffer that; for he 

 was grieved at Cardan's errors, thought that he should 

 have put an Italian curb upon his runaway wit, and 

 felt it proper to admonish him as a father now and then, 

 when the occasion required, with severity. Occasion 

 seems to have required that on every page, if severity be 

 implied by railing, jeering, and rude personal abuse. It 

 was a thick military book, full of hard fighting, with no 

 quarter and no courtesy. At the end, Scaliger himself 

 abjured all imputation of a desire to raise himself upon 

 the ruins of a brilliant reputation. His book, certainly, 

 if it had that object, failed. The contest was unequal, 

 and the opinion of the learned, as reported by Naudaeus, 

 was, that though there were faults in Cardan's book, 

 Scaliger committed more errors than he attempted to 

 correct. By Jerome's dignified reply the attack was 

 made to look extremely pitiful. A standard historian of 

 Italian literature, Tiraboschi, compares the spirit shown 

 by Cardan in the dispute to that of a giant fighting with 

 a girl. "Upon matters of philosophy and mathematics," 

 VOL. II. N 



