p Hamilton,
and Cardan himself have been already noticed; that of Sir John Cheke comes
next in interest to these, and, it must be admitted, is no more
trustworthy. It declares that Cheke would attain the age of sixty-one
years, that he would be most fortunate in gathering wealth and friends
around him, that he would die finally of lingering disease, and involve
many in misfortune by his death--a faulty guess, indeed, as to the future
of a man who died at forty-three, borne down by the weight of his
misfortunes, neglected and forgotten by his former adherents, stripped of
his wealth and covered with shame, in that he had abjured his faith to
save a life which was so little worth preserving.

Naude does not neglect to censure Cardan for his maladroit attempts to
read the future. He writes:--"This matter, forsooth, gave a ready handle
to Cardan's rivals, and especially to those who were sworn foes of
astrology; so that they were able to jibe at him freely because, neither
in his own horoscope, nor in that of his son Giovanni Battista, nor in
that of Aymer Ranconet, nor in that of Edward VI., king of England, nor
in any other of the schemes that he drew, did he rightly foresee any of
the events which followed. He did not divine that he himself was doomed to
imprisonment, his son to the halter, Ranconet to a violent death, and
Edward to a brief term of life, but predicted for each one of these some
future directly contrary."[253]

The treatise _De Consolatione_, probably the best known of Cardan's
ethical works, was first published at Venice in 1542 by Girolamo Scoto,
but it failed at first to please the public taste. It was not until 1544,
when it was re-issued bound up with the _De Sapientia_ and the first
version of the _De Libris Propriis_ from the press of Petreius at
Nuremberg, that it met with any success. Perhaps the sober tone and
didactic method of this treatise appealed more readily to the mood of the
German than of the Italian reader. From internal evidence it is obvious
that Cardan was urged to write it by the desire of making known to the
world the bitter experience of his early literary and professional
struggles. In the opening paragraph he lets it be seen that he intends to
follow a Ciceronian model, and records his regret that the lament of
Cicero over his daughter's death should have perished in the barbarian
wars. The original title of the book was _The Accuser_, to wit, something
which might censure the