ome Cardan by my trifling censures, the grief
which now afflicts me on account of his death is ten times sharper. For,
even if Cardan living should have been a terror to me, I, who am but a
single unit in the republic of letters, ought to have postponed my own and
singular convenience to the common good, seeing how excellent were the
merits of this man, in every sort of learning. For now the republic is
bereft of a great and incomparable scholar, and must needs suffer a loss
which, peradventure, none of the centuries to come will repair. What
though I am a person of small account, I could count upon him as a
supporter, a judge, and (immortal gods) even a laudator of my
lucubrations; for he was so greatly impressed by their weighty merits,
that he deemed he would best defend himself by avoiding all comment on the
same, despairing of his own strength, and knowing not how great his powers
really were. In this respect he was so skilful a master, that he could
assuredly have fathomed the depths of every method and every device used
against him, and would thereby have made his castigation of myself to
serve as an augmentation of his own fame. He, in sooth, was a man of such
quality that, if he had deemed it a thing demanded of him by equity, he
would never have hesitated to point out to other students the truth of
those words which I had written against him as an accusation, while, on
the other hand, this same constancy of mind would have made him adhere to
the opinions he might have put forth in the first instance, so far as
these opinions were capable of proof. I, when I addressed my
_Exercitations_ to him during his life--to him whom I knew by common
report to be the most ingenious and learned of mortal men--was in good
hope that I might issue from this conflict a conqueror; and is there
living a man blind enough not to perceive that what I looked for was
hard-earned credit, which I should certainly have won by finding my views
confirmed by Cardan living, and not for inglorious peace brought about by
his death? And indeed I might have been suffered to have share in the
bounty and kindliness of this illustrious man, whom I have always heard
described as a shrewd antagonist and one full of confidence in his own
high position, for it was an easy task to win from him the ordinary rights
of friendship by any trifling letter, seeing that he was the most
courteous of mankind. It is scarcely likely that I, weary as I was, one
who in