vain passions and erring tendencies of mankind,
"at post mutato nomine, et in tres libellos diviso, de Consolatione eum
inscripsimus, quod longe magis infelices consolatione, quam fortunati
reprehensione, indigere viderentur." The subsequent success of the book
was probably due to this change of name, though the author himself
preferred to have discovered a special reason for its early failure.[254]
The plan of the treatise is the same as that of a dozen others of the same
nature: an effort to persuade men in evil case that they may find relief
by regarding the misfortunes they suffer as transitory accidents in no way
affecting the chief end of life, and by seeking happiness alone in
trafficking with the riches of the mind.

It is doubtful whether any of the books written with this object have ever
served their purpose, save in the case of their originators. Cardan may
have found the burden of his failure and poverty grow lighter as he set
down his woes on paper, but the rest of the world must have read the book
for some other reason than the hope of consolation. Read to-day in
Bedingfield's quaint English, the book is full of charm and interest. It
is filled with apt illustration from Greek philosophy and from Holy Writ
as well, and lighted up by spaces of lively wit. It was accepted by the
public taste for reasons akin to those which would secure popularity for a
clever volume of essays at the present time, and was translated into more
than one foreign language, Bedingfield's translation being published some
thirty years after its first appearance.

The _De Sapientia_, with which it is generally classed, is of far less
interest. It is a series of ethical discourses, lengthy and discursive,
which must have seemed dull enough to contemporary students: to read it
through now would be a task almost impossible. It is only remembered
because Cardan has inserted therein, somewhat incongruously, that account
of his asserted cures of phthisis which Cassanate quoted when he wrote to
Cardan about Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, and which were afterwards
seized upon by hostile critics as evidence of his disregard of truth.

Another of his minor works highly characteristic of the author is the
_Somniorum Synesiorum_, a collection of all the remarkable dreams he ever
dreamt, many of which have been already noticed. To judge from what
specimens of his epistles are extant, Cardan seems to have been a good
letter-writer. One of the mo