CHAPTER XIV 



THE estimates hitherto made concerning Cardan's 

 character appear to have been influenced too completely, 

 one way or the other, by the judgment pronounced upon 

 him by Gabriel Naude, and prefixed to all editions of 

 the De Vita Propria. Some writers have been disposed 

 to treat Naude as a hide-bound pedant, insensible to 

 the charm of genius, and the last man who ought to be 

 trusted as the valuator of a nature so richly gifted, 

 original, and erratic as was Cardan's. Such critics are 

 content to regard as black anything which Naude calls 

 white and vice versa. Others accept him as a witness 

 entirely trustworthy, and adopt as a true description of 

 Cardan the paragraphs made up of uncomplimentary ad- 

 jectives applied by Cardan to himself which Naude 

 has transferred from the De Vita Propria and the 

 Geniturarum Exempla to his Judicium de Cardano. 

 P It may be conceded at once that the impression re- 

 ! ceived from a perusal of this criticism is in the main an 

 unfavourable one of Cardan as a man, although Naude 

 shows himself no niggard of praise when he deals with 

 Cardan's achievements in Medicine and Mathematics. 

 But in appraising the qualifications of Naude* to act as 

 a judge in this case, it will be necessary to bear in mind 

 the fact that he was in his day a leading exponent of 

 liberal opinions, the author of a treatise exposing the 



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