triflings of the
Augustan singer, were it not a recognized fact that Horace has always been
a greater favourite with serious practical Englishmen than with the
descendants of those for whom he wrote his verses.

It was a habit with Cardan to apologize in the prefaces of his scientific
works for the want of elegance in his Latin, explaining that the baldness
and simplicity of his periods arose from his determination to make his
meaning plain, and to trouble nothing about style for the time being; but
the following passage shows that he had a just and adequate conception of
the necessary laws of literary art. "That book is perfect which goes
straight to its point in one single line of argument, which neither leaves
out aught that is necessary, nor brings in aught that is superfluous:
which observes the rule of correct division; which explains what is
obscure; and shows plainly the groundwork upon which it is based."[291]

The _De Vita Propria_ from which this extract comes is in point of style
one of his weakest books, but even in this volume passages may here and
there be found of considerable merit, and Cardan was evidently studious to
let his ideas be presented in intelligible form, for he records that in
1535 he read through the whole of Cicero, for the sake of improving his
Latin. His style, according to Naude, held a middle place between the
high-flown and the pedestrian, and of all his books the _De Utilitate ex
Adversis Capienda_, which was begun in 1557, shows the nearest approach to
elegance, but even this is not free from diffuseness, the fault which
Naude finds in all his writings. Long dissertations entirely alien from
the subject in hand are constantly interpolated. In the Practice of
Arithmetic he turns aside to treat of the marvellous properties of certain
numbers, of the motion of the planets, and of the Tower of Babel; and in
the treatise on Dialectic he gives an estimate of the historians and
letter-writers of the past. But here Cardan did not sin in ignorance; his
poverty and not his will consented to these literary outrages. He was paid
for his work by the sheet, and the thicker the volume the higher the
pay.[292]

When he made a beginning of the _De Utilitate_ Cardan was at the zenith of
his fortunes. He had lately returned from his journey to Scotland, having
made a triumphant progress through the cities of Western Europe. Thus,
with his mind well stored with experience of divers lands, his wits