JEROME CARDAN 185 



of careful construction, and one which, as a literary per- 

 formance, takes the first rank. 1 This book had been put 

 aside, either through pressure of other work or family 

 troubles, but now the circumstances in which he found 

 himself seemed perfectly congenial for the elaboration 

 of a subject of this nature, so he set to work to finish it, 

 concluding with the chapter De Luctu, which has been 

 used largely as the authority for the foregoing narrative 

 of Gian Battista's crime and death. At this period, when 

 his mind was fully stored and his faculties adequately 

 disciplined for the production of the best work, he seems 

 to have realized with sharp regret that the time before 

 him was so short, and that whatever fresh fruit of know- 

 ledge he might put forth would prove of very slight 

 profit to him, as author. Writing of his replies given to 

 certain mathematical professors, who had sent him 

 problems for solution, he remarks that, although he may 

 have a happy knack of dispatching with rapidity any 

 work begun, he always begins too late. In his fifty- 

 eighth year he answered one of these queries, involving 

 three very difficult problems, within seven days ; a feat 

 which he judges to be a marvel : but what profit will it 

 bring him now ? If he had written this treatise when he 

 was thirty he would straightway have risen to fame and 

 fortune, in spite of his poverty, his rivals, and his 

 enemies. Then, in ten years' space, he would have 

 finished and brought out all those books which were now 

 lying unfinished around him in his old age ; and more- 

 over would have won so great gain and glory, that no 



1 Cardan rates it as his best work on an ethical subject. Opera^ 

 torn i. p. 146. And on p. 115 he writes : " Utinam contigisset absol- 

 vere ante errorem filii ; neque enim ille errasset, nee errandi causam 

 aliquam habuisset : nee, etiamsi errasset, periisset." He also 

 quotes a letter full of sound and loving counsels which he had sent 

 to Gian Battista six months before he fell into the snare. 



