JEROME CARDAN 83 



the property of Giovanni Colla. Cardan had found 

 Colla to be a conceited fool, and had dragged the 

 conceit out of him a process which he was now about 

 to repeat for the benefit of Messer Niccolo Tartaglia. 

 The letter goes on to contradict all Tartaglia's assertions 

 by arguments which do not seem entirely convincing, 

 and the case is not made better by the abusive passages 

 interpolated here and there, and by the demonstration 

 of certain errors in Tartaglia's book on Artillery. In 

 short a more injudicious letter could not have been 

 written by any man hoping to get a favour done to him 

 by the person addressed. 



In the special matter of the problems which he sent 

 to Tartaglia by the bookseller Juan Antonio, Cardan 

 made a beginning of that tricky and crooked course 

 which he followed too persistently all through this 

 particular business. In his letter he maintains with a 

 show of indignation that he had long known these 

 questions, had known them in fact before Colla knew 

 how to count ten, implying by these words that he 

 knew how to solve them, while in reality all he knew 

 about them was the fact that they existed. Tartaglia 

 in his answer is not to be moved from his belief, and 

 tells Cardan flatly that he is still convinced Giovanni 

 Colla took the questions to Milan, where he found no 

 one able to solve them, not even Messer Hieronimo 

 Cardano, and that the mathematician last-named sent 

 them on by the bookseller for solution, as has been 

 already related. 



This letter of Tartaglia's bears the date of February 

 13, 1539, and after reading it and digesting its contents, 

 Cardan seems to have come to the conclusion that he 

 was not working in the right way to get possession of 

 this secret which he felt he must needs master, if he 



