his voyage down the Loire on his journey to Paris
in 1552, is a book upon which he spent great care, and is certainly worthy
of notice. Cardan's gratitude to Archbishop Hamilton for the liberal
treatment and gracious reception he had recently encountered in Scotland,
prompted him to dedicate this volume to his late patient. He writes in the
preface how he had expected to find the Scots a pack of barbarians, but
their country, he affirms, is cultivated and humanized beyond
belief,--"and you yourself reflect such splendour upon your nation that
now, by the very lustre of your name, it must needs appear to the world
more noble and illustrious than at any time heretofore. What need is there
for me to speak of the school founded by you at St. Andrews, of sedition
quelled, of your country delivered, of the authority of your brother the
Regent vindicated? These are merely the indications of your power, and not
the source thereof." In the preface he also writes at length, concerning
the horoscope of Christ,[251] in a strain of apology, as if he scented
already the scandal which the publication of this injudicious performance
was destined to raise. In estimating the influence of comets he sets down
several instances which had evidently been brought to his notice during
his sojourn in Scotland: how in 1165, within fourteen days of the
appearance of a great comet, Malcolm IV., known on account of his
continence as the virgin king, fell sick and died. Again, in 1214 two
comets, one preceding and the other following the sun, appeared as
fore-runners of the death of King William after a reign of forty-nine
years. Perhaps the most interesting of his comments on Ptolemy's text are
those which estimate the power of the stellar influences on the human
frame, an aspect of the question which, by reason of his knowledge of
medicine and surgery, would naturally engage his more serious attention.
He tells of the birth of a monstrous child--a most loathsome
malformation--at Middleton Stoney, near Oxford, during his stay in
England,[252] and gives many other instances of the disastrous effects of
untoward conjunction of the planets upon infants born under the influence
of the same. He accuses monks and nuns of detestable vices in the plainest
words, words which were probably read by the emissaries of the spiritual
authority when the charge of impiety was being got up against him. In the
_Geniturarum Exempla_ the horoscopes of Edward VI., Archbisho