eans, in sooth, but by cruel open murder; to let me
fall in the very blood of my son." It is somewhat remarkable that in this
matter Cardan was destined to suffer a disappointment similar to that
which he himself brought upon his own father by refusing to qualify
himself to become the commentator on Archbishop Peckham's _Perspectiva_.
He next gives the names of all those who had commended him in their works,
and finds a special cause for gratification in the fact that, out of the
long list set down, only four or five were known to him personally, and
these not intimately. There is, however, another short list of censors;
and of these he affirms that a certain Brodeus alone is worthy of respect.
Of Buteon, who criticized the treatise on _Arithmetic_, he says: "_Est
plane stultus et elleboro indiget._" Tartaglia's name is there, and he,
according to Cardan, was forced to eat his words; "but he was ashamed to
do what he promised, and unwilling to blot out what he had written. He
went on in his wrong-headed course, living upon the labour of other men
like a greedy crow, a manifest robber of other men's wealth of study; so
impudent that he published as his own, in the Italian tongue, that
invention for the raising of sunken ships which I had made known four
years before. This he did, understanding the subject only imperfectly,
and making no mention of my name. But men of real learning also attacked
me: Rondeletius, and Julius Scaliger; and Fuchsius, in the proem of his
book, says that my work _Medicinae Contradictiones_ should be avoided like
deadly poison. Julius Scaliger has been fully answered in the _Apologia_
in the Books on Subtlety."[240]

There is a passage from De Thou's _History of his Own Times_, affixed to
all editions of the _De Vita Propria_,[241] in which is given a
contemporary sketch of Cardan during his residence at Rome. "His whole
life," De Thou writes, "has been as strange as his present manners, and
he, in sooth, out of singleness of mind or frankness, has written about
himself certain statements, the like of which have never before been heard
of a man of letters, and these I do not feel bound to unfold to any one,
let him be ever so curious. I, myself, happening to be in Rome a few years
before his death, often spoke to him and observed him with astonishment as
he took his walks about the city clad in strange garb. When I considered
the many writings of this famous man, I could perceive in him nothing to