ed to Bartolomeo Sacco,
a young Milanese gentleman of good family, a match which proved to be
fortunate. Cardan had now reached that summit of fame against which the
shafts of jealousy will always be directed. The literary manners of the
age certainly lacked urbanity, and of all living controversialists there
was none more truculent than Julius Caesar Scaliger, who had begun his
career as a man of letters by a fierce assault upon Erasmus with regard to
his _Ciceronianus_, a leading case amongst the quarrels of authors.
Erasmus he had attacked for venturing to throw doubts upon the suitability
of Cicero's Latin as a vehicle of modern thought; this quarrel was over a
question of form; and now Scaliger went a step farther, and, albeit he
knew little of the subject in hand, published a book of _Esoteric
Exercitations_ to show that the _De Subtilitate_ of Cardan was nothing but
a tissue of nonsense.[168] The book was written with all the heavy-handed
brutality he was accustomed to use, but it did no hurt to Cardan's
reputation, and, irritable as he was by nature, it failed to provoke him
to make an immediate rejoinder, a delay which was the cause of one of the
most diverting incidents in the whole range of literary warfare.

Scaliger sat in his study, eagerly expecting a reply, but Cardan took no
notice of the attack. Then one day some tale-bearer, moved either by the
spirit of tittle-tattle or the love of mischief, brought to Julius Caesar
the news that Jerome Cardan had sunk under his tremendous battery of
abuse, and was dead. It is but bare charity to assume that Scaliger was
touched by some stings of regret when he heard what had been the fatal
result of his onslaught; still there can be little doubt that his mind was
filled with a certain satisfaction when he reflected that he was in sooth
a terrible assailant, and that his fist was heavier than any other man's.
In any case, he felt that it behoved him to make some sign, wherefore he
sat down and penned a funeral oration over his supposed victim, which is
worth giving at length.[169]

"At this season, when fate has dealt with me in a fashion so wretched and
untoward that it has connected my name with a cruel public calamity, when
a literary essay of mine, well known to the world, and undertaken at the
call of duty, has ensued in dire misfortune, it seems to me that I am
bound to bequeath to posterity a testimony that, sharp as may have been
the vexation brought upon Jer