The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-01 00:00:00

804

himself as " those in which he used to write
" for legs of mutton and beefsteaks," the young
adventurer thought it would be an excellent
thing if he also were to try what he could do
in the Junius style. Accordingly ha wrote,
like several others, letters to the public jour-
nals, Ain of glittering invective and sowy
epigrams. But they fell flat; for what could
the penniless young Hibernian know of the
aroana of politics or the undercurrents of
official life ? Given eloquence and art, there
must still be truth and novelty of facts before
writers can have claims for the interest of a

reader.
We make these remarks because we are sur-
prised at one of Mr. Morley's literary know-
ledge and experience selecting Jerome Car
dan as the subject of a biography. Cardan
was a character without intrinsic claims to
posthumous interest. He might deserve the
honour of a few pays in a volume of " Curio-
allies of Literature, but two volumes on so
unsatisfactory a theme are more than we can
digest. Reference to any encyclopaedia, or to
" Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary," will
show that Jerome Cardan has had ample atten-
tion given olready to his name. It may be very
true that Gabriel Naude was flippant, and that
the Scaligers were mistaken in their remarks
upon Cardan ; but, if we are to have lives com-
posed ou the ground that contemporary cen-
sors or rivals were unjust, where is republica-
tion to end, and originality to commence?
We are afraid, and we say it with regret, that
Mr. Morley's present work will be looked on
as a case of bookmaking ; and, without sub-
scribing entirely to that opinion, we may ob-
serve, that he has shown no judgment in the
choice of his subject, and that he has ex-
pended, we fear, his research and trouble in
vain. We are sorry to record this opinion,
because we were much pleased with his for-
mer publication of " Palissy the Potter,"
which read with freshness, and which was
seasonable at a period of increased attention
to the application of the arts of design. We
will, however, allow Mr. Morley to register his
plea for having composed this work. In his
preface he says of Cardan
But the man of profound genius sometimes wrote, we
are told, as if he were a fool. His folly may instruct us.
It belonged—bating some eccentricities--not to himself
alone. His age claimed part in it, and bought his books.
He was the most successful scientific author of his time ;
the books of his that were most frequently reprinted
being precisely those in which the folly most abounded.
He was not only the popular philosopher but also the
fashionable physician of the sixteenth century. Pope
and emperor sought him; kings, princes, cardinals, arch-
bishops were among his patients. There were other
physicians in those days wise enough to be less credulous
on many points, but greater wisdom did not win for them
an equal fame. Carden obtained a splendid reputation
wholly by his own exertions, not only because he was a
man of power and genius, but because he spent much of
his energy upon ideas that, foolish as they now seem,
were conceived in the true spirit of his age. He belonged
completely to his time. Hence it is that, as a philosopher,
he almost perished with it ; and for the last hundred years
his reputation has existed only as a legend.
I was first attracted to the study of Cardan, from which
this work has arisen, by the individuality with which his
writings are all marked, and the strange story of his life
reflected in them. The book is twice as large as it was
meant to be, and still there was matter that might have
occupied another volume ; for, as I worked on, T found that
out of the neglected writings of this old physician it was
possible to reconstruct the history of his career, with much
minuteness in the kind of detail that would make it not
only pleasant reading, but also, if rightly done, of some use
to the student of the sixteenth century.
Mr. Morley analyses with considerable skill
the various works of Cardan, and gives us epi-
tomes of their contents. Here we have a
sketch of his treatise on palmistry :
Of the works already named as having been written by
Jerome during the six or seven years of his life in Sacco,
there remain two, both of which underwent at a later
period of their author's life a great deal of revision. One
of them is the little treatise upon cheiromancy, which
afterwards was published as a chapter in a philosophic
work of great extent the labour of maturer years. In his
maturest scars, however, Carden never escaped from the
hold of superstition. Stara and dreams were always por-
tents to him, and he never ceased to believe that there
was a portentous science to be studied on the palm of a
man's hand. The hand, he said, is the instrument of the
body, as the tongue is of the mind. He therefore studied
all that he found written upon cheiromancy, and his
treatise on the subject is no more than a dull abstract of
his studies. He gives, for example, a woodcut-picture of
an outspread hand, with the name of each part inscribed
on it, according to the cheiromantic nomenclature. Above
the joint of the hand at the wrist there is the carpus.
The side of the hand against which the thumb rests is
the thenar. The other side, between the little finger and