290 JEROME CARDAN 



of Cicero, for the sake of improving his Latin. His 

 style, according to Naude*, held a middle place be- 

 tween the high-flown and the pedestrian, and of all his 

 books the De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, which was 

 begun in 1557, shows the nearest approach to elegance, 

 but even this is not free from diffuseness, the fault which 

 Naude" finds in all his writings. Long dissertations 

 entirely alien from the subject in hand are constantly 

 interpolated. In the Practice of Arithmetic he turns 

 aside to treat of the marvellous properties of certain 

 numbers, of the motion of the planets, and of the Tower 

 of Babel ; and in the treatise on Dialectic he gives an 

 estimate of the historians and letter-writers of the past. 

 But here Cardan did not sin in ignorance ; his poverty 

 and not his will consented to these literary outrages. He 

 was paid for his work by the sheet, and the thicker the 

 volume the higher the pay. 1 



When he made a beginning of the De Utilitate Cardan 

 was at the zenith of his fortunes. He had lately 

 returned from his journey to Scotland, having made 

 a triumphant progress through the cities of Western 

 Europe. Thus, with his mind well stored with experi- 

 ence of divers lands, his wits sharpened by intercourse 

 with the tlite of the learned world, and his hand nerved 

 by the magnetic stimulant of success, he sat down to 

 write as the philosopher and man of the world, rather 

 than as the man of science. He was, in spite of his 

 prosperity, inclined to deal with the more sombre side of 

 life. He seems to have been specially drawn to write of 



1 " Eo tantum fine, quemadmodum alicubi fatetur, ut plura folia 

 Typographis mitteret, quibuscum antea de illorum pretio pepigerat ; 

 atque hoc modo fami, non secus ac famas scriberet." Naudaeus, 

 Judicium. 



