Jerome Cardan, William George Waters [reading list TXT] 📗

by the Splugen Pass, as Chur is named in his itinerary, and he also describes his voyage down the Lake of Como on the way to Milan, where he arrived on January 3, 1553. Cardan was a famous physician when he set out on his northward journey; but now on his return he stood firmly placed by the events of the last few months at the head of his profession. Writing of the material results of his mission to Scotland, he declares that he is ashamed to set down the terms upon which he was paid, so lavishly was he rewarded for his services. The offers made to him by so many exalted personages to secure his permanent and exclusive attention would indeed have turned the heads of most men. There was the offer from the King of Denmark; another, in 1552, from the King of France at a salary of thirteen hundred crowns a year; and yet another made by the agents of Charles V., who was then engaged in his disastrous attack upon Metz. All of them he refused: he had no inclination to share the perils of the leaguer of Metz, and his sense of loyalty forbad him to join himself to the power which was at that time warring against his sovereign. He speaks also of another offer made to him by the Queen of Scotland of a generous salary if he would settle in Scotland; but the country was too remote for his taste. There is no authority for this offer except the _De Vita Propria_, and it is there set down in terms which render it somewhat difficult to identify the Queen aforesaid.[163]

As soon as he entered Milan, Ferrante Gonzaga, the Governor, desired to secure his services as physician to the Duke of Mantua, his brother, offering him thirty thousand gold crowns as honorarium; but, in spite of the Governor's persuasions and threats, he would not accept the office. When the news had come to Paris that Cardan was about to quit Britain, forty of the most illustrious scientists of France repaired to Paris in order to hear him expound the art of Medicine; but the disturbed state of the country deterred him from setting foot in France. He refers to a letter from his friend Ranconet as a testimony of the worship that was paid to him, and goes on to say that, in his journeying through France and Germany, he fared much as Plato fared at the Olympic games.

In a passage which Cardan wrote shortly after his return from Britain, he lets it be seen that he was not ill-satisfied with the figure he then made in the world. He writes--"Therefore, since all those with whom I am intimate think well of me for my truth and probity, I can let my envious rivals indulge themselves as they list in the shameful habit of evil-speaking. With regard to folly, if I now utter, or ever have uttered, foolish words, let those who accuse me show their evidence. I, who was born poor, with a weakly body, in an age vexed almost incessantly by wars and tumults, helped on by no family influence, but forced to contend against the bitter opposition of the College at Milan, contrived to overcome all the plots woven against me, and open violence as well. All the honours which a physician can possess I either enjoy, or have refused when they were offered to me. I have raised the fortunes of my family, and have lived a blameless life. I am well known to all men of worship, and to the whole of Europe. What I have written has been lauded; in sooth, I have written of so many things and at such length, that a man could scarcely read my works if he spent his life therewith. I have taken good care of my domestic affairs, and by common consent I have come off victor in every contest I have tried. I have refused always to flatter the great; and over and beyond this I have often set myself in active opposition to them. My name will be found scattered about the pages of many writers. I shall deem my life long enough if I come in perfect health to the age of fifty-six. I have been most fortunate as the discoverer of many and important contributions to knowledge, as well as in the practice of my art and in the results attained; so much so that if my fame in the first instance has raised up envy against me, it has prevailed finally, and extinguished all ill-feeling."[164]

These words were written before the publication of the _Geniturarum Exempla_ in 1554. Cardan's life for the six years which followed was busy and prosperous, but on the whole uneventful. The Archbishop of St. Andrews wrote to him according to promise at the end of two years to give an account of the results of his treatment. His letter is worthy of remark as showing that he, the person most interested, was well satisfied with Cardan's skill as a physician. Michael, the Archbishop's chief chamberlain, was the bearer thereof, and as Hamilton speaks of him as "epistolam vivam," it is probable that he bore likewise certain verbal messages which could be more safely carried thus than in writing. A sentence in the _De Vita Propria_,[165] mixed up with the account of Hamilton's cure, seems to refer to this embassy, and to suggest that Michael was authorized to promise Cardan a liberal salary if he would accept permanent office in the Primate's household. Moreover, Hamilton writes somewhat querulously about Cassanate's absence abroad on a visit to his family, a fact which would make him all the more eager to secure Cardan's services. His letter runs as follows--"Two of your most welcome letters, written some months ago, I received by the hand of an English merchant; others came by the care of the Lord Bishop of Dunkeld, together with the Indian balsam. The last were from Scoto, who sent at the same time your most scholarly comments on that difficult work of Ptolemy.[166] To all that you have written to me I have replied fully in three or four letters of my own, but I know not whether, out of all I have written, any letter of mine has reached you. But now I have directed that a servant of mine, who is known to you, and who is travelling to Rome, shall wait upon you and salute you in my name, and bear to you my gratitude, not only for the various gifts I have received from you, but likewise because my health is well-nigh restored, the ailment which vexed me is driven away, my strength increased, and my life renewed. Wherefore I rate myself debtor for all these benefits, as well as this very body of mine. For, from the time when I began to take these medicines of yours, selected and compounded with so great skill, my complaint has afflicted me less frequently and severely; indeed, now, as a rule, I am not troubled therewith more than once a month; sometimes I escape for two months."[167]

In the following year (1555) Cardan's daughter Chiara, who seems to have been a virtuous and well-conducted girl, was married to Bartolomeo Sacco, a young Milanese gentleman of good family, a match which proved to be fortunate. Cardan had now reached that summit of fame against which the shafts of jealousy will always be directed. The literary manners of the age certainly lacked urbanity, and of all living controversialists there was none more truculent than Julius Caesar Scaliger, who had begun his career as a man of letters by a fierce assault upon Erasmus with regard to his _Ciceronianus_, a leading case amongst the quarrels of authors. Erasmus he had attacked for venturing to throw doubts upon the suitability of Cicero's Latin as a vehicle of modern thought; this quarrel was over a question of form; and now Scaliger went a step farther, and, albeit he knew little of the subject in hand, published a book of _Esoteric Exercitations_ to show that the _De Subtilitate_ of Cardan was nothing but a tissue of nonsense.[168] The book was written with all the heavy-handed brutality he was accustomed to use, but it did no hurt to Cardan's reputation, and, irritable as he was by nature, it failed to provoke him to make an immediate rejoinder, a delay which was the cause of one of the most diverting incidents in the whole range of literary warfare.

Scaliger sat in his study, eagerly expecting a reply, but Cardan took no notice of the attack. Then one day some tale-bearer, moved either by the spirit of tittle-tattle or the love of mischief, brought to Julius Caesar the news that Jerome Cardan had sunk under his tremendous battery of abuse, and was dead. It is but bare charity to assume that Scaliger was touched by some stings of regret when he heard what had been the fatal result of his onslaught; still there can be little doubt that his mind was filled with a certain satisfaction when he reflected that he was in sooth a terrible assailant, and that his fist was heavier than any other man's. In any case, he felt that it behoved him to make some sign, wherefore he sat down and penned a funeral oration over his supposed victim, which is worth giving at length.[169]

"At this season, when fate has dealt with me in a fashion so wretched and untoward that it has connected my name with a cruel public calamity, when a literary essay of mine, well known to the world, and undertaken at the call of duty, has ensued in dire misfortune, it seems to me that I am bound to bequeath to posterity a testimony that, sharp as may have been the vexation brought upon Jerome Cardan by my trifling censures, the grief which now afflicts me on account of his death is ten times sharper. For, even if Cardan living should have been a terror to me, I, who am but a single unit in the republic of letters, ought to have postponed my own and singular convenience to the common good, seeing how excellent were the merits of this man, in every sort of learning. For now the republic is bereft of a great and incomparable scholar, and must needs suffer a loss which, peradventure, none of the centuries to come will repair. What though I am a person of small account, I could count upon him as a supporter, a judge, and (immortal gods) even a laudator of my lucubrations; for he was so greatly impressed by their weighty merits, that he deemed he would best defend himself by avoiding all comment on the same, despairing of his own strength, and knowing not how great his powers really were. In this respect he was so skilful a master, that he could assuredly have fathomed the depths of every method and every device used against him, and would thereby have made his castigation of myself to serve as an augmentation of his own fame. He, in sooth, was a man of such quality that, if he had deemed it a thing demanded of him by equity, he would never have hesitated to point out to other students the truth of those words which I had written against him as an accusation, while, on the other hand, this same constancy of mind would have made him adhere to the opinions he might have put forth in the first instance, so far as these opinions were capable of proof. I, when I addressed my _Exercitations_ to him during his life--to him whom I knew by common report to be the most ingenious and learned of mortal men--was in good hope that I might issue from this conflict a conqueror; and is there