ine who followed the law, rejecting at the same time wealth
and power and honour. My father, when he heard that I had abandoned the
study of law to follow philosophy, wept in my presence, and grieved amain
that I would not settle down to the study of his own subject. He deemed
it the more salutary discipline--proofs of which opinion he would often
bring forward out of Aristotle--that it was better adapted for the
acquisition of power and riches; and that it would help me more
efficiently in restoring the fortunes of our house. He perceived moreover
that the office of teaching in the schools of the city, together with its
accompanying salary of a hundred crowns which he had enjoyed for so many
years, would not be handed on to me, as he had hoped, and he saw that a
stranger would succeed to the same. Nor was that commentary of his
destined ever to see the light or to be illustrated by my notes. Earlier
in life he had nourished a hope that his name might become illustrious as
the emendator of the 'Commentaries of John, Archbishop of Canterbury on
Optics and Perspective.'[26] Indeed the following verses were printed
thereanent:

'Hoc Cardana viro gaudet domus: omnia novit
Unus: habent nullum saecula nostra parem.'

"These words may be taken as a sort of augury referring rather to certain
other men about to set forth to do their work in the world, than to my
father, who, except in the department of jurisprudence (of which indeed
rumour says that he was a master), never let his mind take in aught that
was new. The rudiments of mathematics were all that he possessed, and he
gathered no fresh knowledge from the store-houses of Greek learning. This
disposition in him was probably produced by the vast multitude of subjects
to be mastered, and by his infirmity of purpose, rather than by any lack
of natural parts, or by idleness or by defect of judgment; vices to which
he was in no way addicted. But I, being firmly set upon the object of my
wishes, for the reasons given above, and because I perceived that my
father had achieved only moderate success--though he had encountered but
few hindrances--remained unconvinced by any of his exhortations."[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bayle is unwilling to admit Cardan's illegitimate birth. In _De
Consolatione_, Opera, tom. i. p. 619 (Lyons, 1663), Cardan writes in
reference to the action of the Milanese College of Physicians: "Medicorum
collegium, suspitione oborta, quod (tam male a patre