PROXENATA. 305 



Have you not lost them by your negligence and your 

 licentiousness 1 ?" And who shall judge this old man 

 drooping painfully under his heavy and enduring sorrow ! 

 He was lavish of advice. Few men could teach better 

 how to manage the affairs of life discreetly, and no man 

 ever fell into more trouble through his own want of dis- 

 cretion. One of his last works, dictated at Rome, and 

 found long afterwards in the handwriting of a wretched 

 scribe, full of abbreviations (things which Cardan himself 

 detested 2 ), was a long treatise under the title of Prox- 

 enata, which was a guide to men. who would manage 

 themselves wisely and safely in every relation of society- 

 When it was first issued, half a century after Cardan's 

 death, from the Elzevir press, a second title was given to 

 the book, and it was fairly enough said to be on Civil 

 Prudence. In this work-it is to be seen that, as a philo- 

 sopher, Jerome's faculties remained to the last clear and 

 lively. There is the old terseness in it, and more than the 

 old wisdom. When Cardan, in his old age, wrote upon 

 any abstract subject and forgot himself, there was no trace 

 of the warping of his mind ; he maintained perfectly the 

 tone and spirit of a man of genius and a scholar. But in 

 the daily business of life and in writing, whenever the 



1 Dial c. Facio. Op. Tom. i. p. 639. 



5 See the preface of the editor to the Elzevir edition of Proxenata 

 seu de Prudentia Civili. 12mo. Lugd. Bat. 1627. 



VOL. II. X 



