is, ericius, aut quod tigna
subsidant blatta."--p. 624.

[243] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 152.

[244] _De Vita Propria_, chapter xlii., _passim_.

[245] _Ibid.,_ p. 66.

[246] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 339.

[247] Tomasinus, _Gymnasium Patavinum_.

CHAPTER XIV

THE estimates hitherto made concerning Cardan's character appear to have
been influenced too completely, one way or the other, by the judgment
pronounced upon him by Gabriel Naude, and prefixed to all editions of the
_De Vita Propria_. Some writers have been disposed to treat Naude as a
hide-bound pedant, insensible to the charm of genius, and the last man who
ought to be trusted as the valuator of a nature so richly gifted,
original, and erratic as was Cardan's. Such critics are content to regard
as black anything which Naude calls white and _vice versa_. Others accept
him as a witness entirely trustworthy, and adopt as a true description of
Cardan the paragraphs made up of uncomplimentary adjectives--applied by
Cardan to himself--which Naude has transferred from the _De Vita Propria_
and the _Geniturarum Exempla_ to his _Judicium de Cardano_.

It may be conceded at once that the impression received from a perusal of
this criticism is in the main an unfavourable one of Cardan as a man,
although Naude shows himself no niggard of praise when he deals with
Cardan's achievements in Medicine and Mathematics. But in appraising the
qualifications of Naude to act as a judge in this case, it will be
necessary to bear in mind the fact that he was in his day a leading
exponent of liberal opinions, the author of a treatise exposing the
mummeries and sham mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and of an "Apologie pour
les Grands Hommes soupconnez de Magie," and a disbeliever in supernatural
manifestations of every kind. With a mind thus attuned it is no matter of
surprise that Naude should have been led to speak somewhat severely when
called upon to give judgment on a man saturated as Cardan was with the
belief in sorcery, witches, and attendant demons.

If Naude indeed set to work with the intention of drawing a figure of
Cardan which should stand out a sinister apparition in the eyes of
posterity, his task was an easy one. All he had to do was to place Jerome
Cardan himself in the witness-box. Reference to the passages already
quoted will show that, in the whole _corpus_ of autobiographic literature,
there does not exist a volume in which the work of self-dissectio