JEROME CARDAN 155 



It is a matter of regret that this cry of peccavi was 

 not published till all the chief literary contemporaries of 

 Scaliger were in their graves. As it did not appear till 

 1621, the men of his own time were not able to enjoy the 

 shout of laughter over his discomfiture which would 

 surely have gone up from Paris and Strasburg and Basel 

 and Zurich. Estienne and Gessner would hardly have 

 felt acute sorrow at a flout put upon Julius Caesar 

 Scaliger. Crooked-tempered as he was, Cardan, com- 

 pared with Scaliger, was as a rose to a thistle, but there 

 were reasons altogether unconnected with the personal- 

 ities of the disputants which swayed the balance to Car- 

 dan's advantage. The greater part of Scaliger's criticism 

 was worthless, and the opinion of learned Europe weighed 

 overwhelmingly on Cardan's side. Thuanus, 1 who as- 

 suredly did not love him, and Naude", who positively 

 disliked him, subsequently gave testimony in his favour. 

 He did not follow the example of Erasmus, and let 

 Scaliger's abuse go by in silence, but he took the next 

 wisest course. He published a short and dignified reply, 

 Actio prima in Calumniator em ^ in which, from title-page 



parrot is a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits on work to 

 prove it a deformed animal.") 



Mauds' (Apologie, ch. xiii.) says that of the great men of modern 

 times Scaliger and Cardan each claimed the possession of a guardian 

 spirit, and hints that Scaliger may have been moved to make this 

 claim in order not to be outdone by his great antagonist. It should, 

 however, be remembered that Cardan did not seriously assert this 

 belief till long after his controversy with Scaliger. Naude sums up 

 thus : " D'ou Ton peut juger asseurement, que lui et Scaliger n'ont 

 point eu d'autre Genie que la grande doctrine qu'ils s'e'toient ac- 

 quis par leurs veilles, par leurs travaux, et par I'expe'rience qu'ils 

 avoient des choses sur lesquelles venant a dlever leur jugement ils 

 jugeoint pertinemment de toutes matieres, et ne laissoient rien 

 e"chapper qui ne leur fust conneu et manifeste." 



1 Thuanus, ad Annum MDLXXVI, part of the Appendix to the 

 De Vita Propria. 



