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great astonishment, as being the most wonderful person hehad ever seen 1 2 .”
It was not until October that Cardan had audience ofthe king, and he had then, as we'have seen, not cured thearchbishop of a dropsy, but had taught him how to fortifyhimself against the attacks of asthma. The statementthat Jerome had prophesied to Hamilton his death uponthe gallows, is perhaps founded on a popular tradition.It is incorrect. He calculated his nativity 3 ; and inas-much as he was born at ten in the morning, on the 3rd ofFebruary, 1512, found that he would attain his felicitythrough much anxiety and peril (as any man could seethat he was doing when the prophesy was made), andthat if he lived over the year 1554, he would be in greatdanger from passion of the heart 3 , or poison, in the year1560. He was taken in the capture of Dunbarton Castle,condemned in a summary way, and hung four days after-wards at Sterling, in 1571, being the first bishop in Scot-land who died by the hands of an executioner. Of thatcertainly the stars told nothing to Cardan . He was per-fectly in earnest as an astrologer, and perfectly sincere.
1 Burnet, vol. ii.p. 208 (ed. 1681). In his appendix of documents,as many readers will remember, he quotes in illustration a passagefrom Cardan ’s Horoscope of Edward.
2 Geniturarum Exemplar, p. 26.
3 Or shall we translate “ Passio Cordis—suffering by the cord,” tomake good the fame of the astrologer.