JEROME CARDAN 147 



permanent office in the Primate's household. Moreover, 

 Hamilton writes somewhat querulously about Cassanate's 

 absence abroad on a visit to his family, a fact which 

 would make him all the more eager to secure Cardan's 

 services. His letter runs as follows "Two of your 

 most welcome letters, written some months ago, I re- 

 ceived by the hand of an English merchant ; others 

 came by the care of the Lord Bishop of Dunkeld, together 

 with the Indian balsam. The last were from Scoto, who 

 sent at the same time your most scholarly comments on 

 that difficult work of Ptolemy. 1 To all that you have 

 written to me I have replied fully in three or four letters 

 of my own, but I know not whether, out of all I have 

 written, any letter of mine has reached you. But now 

 I have directed that a servant of mine, who is known to 

 you, and who is travelling to Rome, shall wait upon 



1 Commentaria in Ptolemcei de Astrorum Judiciis (Basil, 1554). 

 He wrote these notes while going down the Loire in company with 

 Cassanate on his way from Lyons to Paris in 1552. De Vita 

 Propria, ch. xlv. p. 175. 



He gives an interesting account (Opera, torn. i. p. no) as to 

 how the book first came under his notice. The day before he 

 quitted Lyons with Cassanate, a school-master came to ask for 

 advice, which Cardan gave gratis. Then the patient, knowing 

 perhaps the physician's taste for the marvellous, related how there 

 was a certain boy in the place who could see spirits by looking into 

 an earthen vessel, but Cardan was little impressed by what he saw, 

 and began to talk with the school-master about Archimedes. The 

 school-master brought out a work of the Greek philosopher with 

 which was bound up the Ptolemcei Libri de Judiciis. Cardan fastened 

 upon it at once, and wanted to buy it, but the school-master in- 

 sisted that he should take it as a gift. He declares that his 

 Commentaries thereupon are the most perfect of all his writings. 

 The book contains his famous Nativity of Christ. A remark in 

 De Libris Propriis (cf. Opera, torn. i. p. 67) indicates that there was 

 an earlier edition of Ptolemy, printed at Milan at Cardan's own 

 cost, because when he saw the numerous mistakes made by 

 Ottaviano Scoto in printing the De Malo Medendi and the De 

 Consolatione, he determined to go to another printer. 



