JEROME CARDAN 149 



was written with all the heavy-handed brutality he was 

 accustomed to use, but it did no hurt to Cardan's repu- 

 tation, and, irritable as he was by nature, it failed to 

 provoke him to make an immediate rejoinder, a delay 

 which was the cause of one of the most diverting incidents 

 in the whole range of literary warfare. 



Scaliger sat in his study, eagerly expecting a reply, 

 but Cardan took no notice of the attack. Then one 

 day some tale-bearer, moved either by the spirit of 

 tittle-tattle or the love of mischief, brought to Julius 

 Caesar the news that Jerome Cardan had sunk under 

 his tremendous battery of abuse, and was dead. It is 

 but bare charity to assume that Scaliger was touched 

 by some stings of regret when he heard what had been 

 the fatal result of his onslaught ; still there can be little 

 doubt that his mind was filled with a certain satisfaction 

 when he reflected that he was in sooth a terrible as- 

 sailant, and that his fist was heavier than any other 

 man's. In any case, he felt that it behoved him to 

 make some sign, wherefore he sat down and penned 

 a funeral oration over his supposed victim, which is 

 worth giving at length. 1 



" At this season, when fate has dealt with me in a 

 fashion so wretched and untoward that it has connected 

 my name with a cruel public calamity, when a literary 

 essay of mine, well known to the world, and undertaken 

 at the call of duty, has ensued in dire misfortune, it 

 seems to me that I am bound to bequeath to posterity 



Scaliger absurdly calls his work the fifteenth book of Exer citations > 

 and wished the world to believe that he had written, though not 

 printed, the fourteen others. 



1 It was not printed until many years after the deaths of both 

 disputants, and appeared for the first time in a volume of Scaliger's 

 letters and speeches published at Toulouse in 1621, and it was after- 

 wards affixed to the De Vita Propria. 



