62 



lib. Ixii. p. 155. The same historian also relates, that Car- 

 dan brought astrology into repute by the success he had in 

 calculating nativities. ' Judiciaria quam vocant fidem apud 

 multos adstruxit, dum certiora per earn quam ex arte pos- 

 sint plerumque promere/ Id. ib. Cardan was not the only 

 astrologer who foretold the time of his own death; for Mar- 

 tin Hortensius, Professor of Mathematics in Amsterdam, 

 not only predicted the time of his own death, but that of 

 two young men who were with him, and the result proved 

 the truth of his prophecy. The fact is admitted by Descartes, 

 while he ridicules the science and underrates the abilities of 

 Hortensius. See the 35th of his Letters to Father Mersenne, 

 in the second volume of that collection. 



11 When Ann of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII., was de- 

 livered of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIV., a famous 

 German astrologer was in attendance to draw his nativity? 

 but refused to say more than these three words, which give 

 a true character of Louis the Fourteenth's reign ; Diu, dure, 

 feliciter. See Limier's Hist, du Regne de Louis XIV. 



" I omitted to mention above, a curious circumstance re- 

 lated of Cardan in Lavrey's Hist, of England, vol. i. p. 711, viz. 

 that having cured the Archbishop of St. Andrew's of a dis- 

 order which had baffled the most skilful physicians, he took 

 his leave of the Primate in these words : ' I have been able 

 to cure you of your sickness, but cannot change your de- 

 stiny, nor prevent you from being hanged.' Eighteen years 

 after, this Prelate was hung by order of the Commissioners 

 appointed by Mary Queen Regent of Scotland. 



" By the way, I am much surprised that Cardan's auto- 

 biography has never been translated ; for it is, without a sin- 

 gle exception, the most extraordinary book of the kind ever 

 published." 



We are infprmed by Fabricius, that Marsham, in Canon e 



