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It is almost certain that Cardan purposed to let the De Varietate come forth from the press immediately after the De Subtilitate, but before the MS. was ready, it came to pass that he was called to make that memorable journey to Scotland in order to find a remedy for the ailment which was troubling the Archbishop of St.
The De Subtilitate and the De Varietate Rerum; the Liber Artis Magnæ, the Practica Arithmeticæ, have been noticed as the most enduring portions of his legacy to posterity; wherefore, before saying the final word as to his literary achievement, it may not be superfluous to give a brief glance at those of his books which, although of minor importance to those already cited, engaged considerable attention in the lifetime of the writer.
A treatise De Humanae Conditionis Miseria; 6. Controversial Writings; 7. Funeral Orations; 8. Epistles; 9. Fables; 10. Facetiae; 11. A Dialogue De Infelicitate Principum; 12. Another entitled "An Seni sit Uxor ducenda"? first published in Liverpool in 1807, and edited by the Rev. William Shepherd; 13. Four books De Varietate Fortunae first published in 1723 by the Abbe Oliva; 14.
It is certain that he expended a vast amount of labour in attempting to reduce his collected mass of facts even to the imperfect form it wears in the De Varietate Rerum. Considering that this book covers to a great extent the same ground as its predecessor, Cardan must be credited with considerable ingenuity of treatment in presenting his supplementary work without an undue amount of repetition.
The religious authorities were however fully justified in assuming that the presence of such a passage in the pages of a book so widely popular as the De Varietate would necessarily prove a cause of scandal, and give cause to the enemy to blaspheme.
A comparison of the treatment accorded to any particular branch of Natural Philosophy in the De Subtilitate with that given in the De Varietate, will show that in the last-named work Cardan used his most discursive and anecdotic method.
The De Subtilitate represents Cardan's original conception of a treatise dealing with the Cosmos, but during the course of its preparation a vast mass of subsidiary and contingent knowledge accumulated in his note-books, and rendered necessary the publication of a supplementary work, the De Varietate, which, by the time it was finished, had grown to a bulk exceeding that of the original treatise.
The first notice of us in the De Varietate is in praise of our forestry, forasmuch as he remarked that the plane tree, which is almost unknown in Italy through neglect, thrives well in Scotland, he himself having seen specimens over thirty feet high growing in the garden of the Augustinian convent near Edinburgh.
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