2 6o JEROME CARDAN 



a special reason for its early failure. 1 The plan of the 

 treatise is the same as that of a dozen others of the same 

 nature : an effort to persuade men in evil case that they 

 may find relief by regarding the misfortunes they suffer 

 as transitory accidents in no way affecting the chief end 

 of life, and by seeking happiness alone in trafficking 

 with the riches of the mind. 



It is doubtful whether any of the books written with 

 this object have ever served their purpose, save in the 

 case of their originators. Cardan may have found the 

 burden of his failure and poverty grow lighter as he set 

 down his woes on paper, but the rest of the world must 

 have read the book for some other reason than the hope 

 of consolation. Read to-day in Bedingfield's quaint 

 English, the book is full of charm and interest. It is 

 filled with apt illustration from Greek philosophy and 

 from Holy Writ as well, and lighted up by spaces of 

 lively wit. It was accepted by the public taste for 

 reasons akin to those which would secure popularity for 

 a clever volume of essays at the present time, and was 

 translated into more than one foreign language, Beding- 

 field's translation being published some thirty years 

 after its first appearance. 



The De Sapientia, with which it is generally classed, 

 is of far less interest. It is a series of ethical discourses, 

 lengthy and discursive, which must have seemed dull 

 enough to contemporary students : to read it through 

 now would be 'a task almost impossible. It is only 

 remembered because Cardan has inserted therein, some- 

 what incongruously, that account of his asserted cures 

 of phthisis which Cassanate quoted when he wrote to 

 Cardan about Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, and 



1 Page 57. 



