CHAPTER VII 



CARDAN, as he has himself related, arrived at Edin- 

 burgh on June 29, 1552. The coming of such a man 

 at such a time must have been an event of extraordinary 

 interest. In England the Italy of the Renaissance had 

 been in a measure realized by men of learning and 

 intellect through the reports of the numerous scholars 

 John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, Henry Parker, 

 Lord Morley, Howard Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas 

 Wyat, may be taken as examples who had wandered 

 thither and come back with a stock of histories setting 

 forth the beauty and charm, and also the terror and 

 wickedness, of that wonderful land. Some echoes of 

 this legend had doubtless drifted down to Scotland, and 

 possibly still more may have been wafted over from 

 France. Ascham had taken up his parable in the 

 Schoolmaster \ describing the devilish sins and corruptions 

 of Italy, and now the good people of Edinburgh were to 

 be given the sight of a man coming thence, one who 

 was fabled to have gathered together more knowledge, 

 both of this world and of that other hidden one which 

 was to them just as real, than any mortal man alive. 

 Under these circumstances it is not surprising that 

 Cardan should have been regarded rather as a magician 

 than as a doctor, and in the Scotichronicon * it is recorded 



1 Scotichronicon^ vol. i. p. 286 [ed. G. F. S. Gordon, Glasgow, 

 1867]. Naudd, in his Apologie pour les grands hommes soup^onnez 



125 



