n has
been so ruthlessly and completely undertaken and executed as in Cardan's
memoirs. It has all the vices of an old man's book; it is garrulous,
vain-glorious, and full of needless repetition; but, whatever portion of
his life may be under consideration, the author never shrinks from holding
up to the world's gaze the result of his searches in the deepest abysses
of his conscience. Autobiographers, as a rule, do not feel themselves
subject to a responsibility so deep as this. Memory turns back to the
contemplation of certain springs of action, certain achievements in the
past, making a judicious selection from these, and excerpting only such as
promise to furnish the possible reader with a pleasing impression of the
personality of the subject. With material of this sort at hand, the
autobiographer sets to work to construct a fair and gracious monument,
being easily persuaded that it would be a barbarous act to mar its
symmetry by the introduction of loathly and misshapen blocks like those
which Cardan, had he been the artist, would have chosen first of all.

Naude, after he has recorded the fact that, from his first essay in
letters, he had been a zealous and appreciative student of Cardan's works,
sets down Cardan's picture of himself, taken from his own Horoscope in the
_Geniturarum Exempla_, "nugacem, religionis contemptorem, injuriae illatae
memorem, invidum, tristem, insidiatorem, proditorem, magum, incantatorem,
frequentibus calamitatibus obnoxium, suorum osor[e=], turpi libidini
deditum, solitarium, inamoenum, austerum, sponte etiam divinantem,
zelotypum, lascivum, obscoenum, maledicum, obsequiosum, senum
conversatione se delectantem, varium, ancipitem, impur[u=], et dolis
mulierum obnoxium, calumniatorem, et omnino incognitum propter naturae et
morum repugnantiam, etiam his cum quibus assidue versor." The critic at
once goes on to state that in his opinion this description, drawn by the
person who ought to know best, is, in the main, a correct one. What better
account could you expect, he asks, of a man who put faith in dreams and
portents and auguries; who believed fully in the utterances of crazy
beldames, who saw ghosts, and who believed he was attended by a familiar
demon? Then follows a catalogue of moral offences and defects of
character, all taken from Cardan's own confessions, and a pronunciation by
Naude that the man who says he never lies, must be of all liars the
greatest; the charge of mendacity be