's book, _The Life of Girolamo Cardano, of Milan,
physician_, has been for some time out of print. This industrious writer
gathered together a large quantity of material, dealing almost as fully
with the more famous of the contemporary men of mark, with whom Cardan
was brought into contact, as with Cardan himself. The translations and
analyses of some of Cardan's more popular works which Professor Morley
gives are admirable in their way, but the space they occupy in the
biography is somewhat excessive. Had sufficient leisure for revision and
condensation been allowed, Professor Morley's book would have taken a high
place in biographical literature. As it stands it is a noteworthy
performance; and, by reason of its wide and varied stores of information
and its excellent index, it must always prove a valuable magazine of
_memoires pour servir_ for any future students who may be moved to write
afresh, concerning the life and work of the great Milanese physician.

An apology may be needed for the occurrence here and there of passages
translated from the _De Vita Propria_ and the _De Utilitate ex Adversis
capienda_, passages which some readers may find too frequent and too
lengthy, but contemporary opinion is strongly in favour of letting the
subject speak for himself as far as may be possible. The date and place of
Cardan's quoted works are given in the first citation therefrom; those of
his writings which have not been available in separate form have been
consulted in the collected edition of his works in ten volumes, edited by
Spon, and published at Lyons in 1663.

The author desires to acknowledge with gratitude the valuable assistance
in the way of suggestion and emendation which he received from Mr. R.C.
Christie during the final revision of the proofs.

_London, October 1898._

JEROME CARDAN

CHAPTER I

LIKE certain others of the illustrious personages who flourished in his
time, Girolamo Cardano, or, as he has become to us by the unwritten law of
nomenclature, Jerome Cardan, was fated to suffer the burden and obloquy of
bastardy.[1] He was born at Pavia from the illicit union of Fazio Cardano,
a Milanese jurisconsult and mathematician of considerable repute, and a
young widow, whose maiden name had been Chiara Micheria, his father being
fifty-six, and his mother thirty-seven years of age at his birth. The
family of Fazio was settled at Gallarate, a town in Milanese territory,
and was one which, ac