JEROME CARDAN 237 



did, understanding the subject only imperfectly, and 

 making no mention of my name. But men of real 

 learning also attacked me : Rondeletius, and Julius 

 Scaliger ; and Fuchsius, in the proem of his book, says 

 that my work Medicines Contradictiones should be 

 avoided like deadly poison. Julius Scaliger has been 

 fully answered in the Apologia in the Books on 

 Subtlety." 1 



There is a passage from De Thou's History of his Own 

 Times, affixed to all editions of the De Vita Propria? in 

 which is given a contemporary sketch of Cardan during 

 his residence at Rome. " His whole life," De Thou 

 writes, " has been as strange as his present manners, and 

 he, in sooth, out of singleness of mind or frankness, has 

 written about himself certain statements, the like of 

 which have never before been heard of a man of letters, 

 and these I do not feel bound to unfold to any one, 

 let him be ever so curious. I, myself, happening 

 to be in Rome a few years before his death, often 

 spoke to him and observed him with astonishment 

 as he took his walks about the city clad in strange 

 garb. When I considered the many writings of this 

 famous man, I could perceive in him nothing to justify 

 his great renown. Wherefore I am all the more inclined 

 to turn to that very acute criticism of Julius Caesar 

 Scaliger, who exercised his extraordinary genius in 

 making a special examination of the treatise De Sub- 

 tilitate Rerum. He, having carefully noted everywhere 

 the unequal powers of this writer, decided that he was 

 one who, in certain subjects, knew more than a man 

 could know, while in others he seemed more simple than 

 a child. In the science of Arithmetic he worked hard 



1 Opera, torn. i. p. 122. 



2 De Vita Propria, p. 232. 



