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40 ANNUAL REGISTER
This portrait ought to be exact; for no person had greater opportunities of observing and judging concerning the Marchioness, than the writer who drew it. The intimate connection, which subsisted between her and M. de Voltaire, is well known. Their reciprocal taste for philosophy and the Belles Lettres served as a foundation of an intimacy so flattering to the latter. Her advice and corrections added to the merit of many of his pieces. He published nothing without consulting her. 
A woman, who has only the advantage of being learned or of being witty, is of little use in society. To these merits the Marchioness joined others. Her passion for letters did not hinder her from performing all the duties which she owed to her family. She undertook herself the care of the of the education of her son, and did not account herself superior to domestic cares and arrangements. Her candour was extreme; she never indulged in an ill-natured ridicule; and she discovered frequently a solcitude to defend those whose characters or persons were made objects of defamation and satyr. The only reproach, to which the Marchioness is exposed, is her extreme neglect of her health. She sacrificed it to glory. Being afraid that she might not live to put the last hand to her Commentary, she laboured upon it night and day; and her efforts hastened the moment of her death. 'She felt, says Voltaire, that her end was approaching; and, what may appear contradictory, she regretted the shortness of life, and yet regarded death with intrepidity.' Those, who were the witnesses of her last moments, felt doubly her loss; they were agitated by their private affliction, and by her regrets; and they had occasion to admire the force of that mind which could mingle, with an affecting sorrow, the most determined constancy.' She died in her forty-third year of her age. 
Memoirs of Cardanus. 
Hieronymus Cardanus, a native of Milan, was born on the 1ft day of Oct. 1508. He had been a prosessor of the medical art in most of the Italian universities; in 1570 was put into prison; and on his being enlarged repaired to Rome, where the pope gave him a pension. Never was a moral man more remarkable for a strange inequality of behaviour than this very singular man. His life was a series of odd adventures, which he has committed to writing with a simplicity, or rather a freedom, that is but seldom to be met with among the learned; for in truth, it seems as if he had written the history of his life for no other purpose, but to give the public an amazing instance, that a person may be endowed with a great genius, yet be a fool at the fame time. He makes an ingenuous confession of his good and bad qualities. He seems to have sacrificed every other consideration to a desire of being sincere; and this sincerity being often misplaced tarnisheth his reputation.
 Although an author feldom errs when he spontaneously undertakes to give an account of his morals and 
and fentiments, [[sentiments with old style S]] yet we are rather inclined to diffent from, than to believe, what Cardanus relates of himself; becaufe it feems improbable that nature could have formed a character fo capricious and fo unequal as his was. He paid himfelf congratulatory compliments for not having a friend in this world, but that in requital he was attended by an aerial fpirit, partly emaned from Saturn, and partly from Mercury, that was the conflant guide of his actions, and teacher of every duty to which he was bound. 
He declared too that he was so irregular in his manner of walking the streets, as to induce all beholders to point at him as a fool. Sometimes we walked very slowly, like a man absorbed in a profound meditation; then all on a sudden quickened his steps, accompanying them with very absurd attitudes. 
In Bologna, his delight was to be drawn about in a mean vehicle with three wheels. The liveliest picture that can be given of this very singular philosopher is couched in the following verses of Horace, which indeed Cardanus confessed to agree perfectly well which his character. 
Nil equale homini fuit illi; faepe velut qui Currebat fugiens boftem, persaepe velut qui Funonis sacra ferret: babebat saepe ducentos, Saepe decom fervos, &c.
IMITATED.
Where find a semblance for inconstancy? Now quick of speed, as if from foes he fled; Now slow her moves, and with a solemn air, As if great Juno's alter he'd approach; Now with attendants crowded, now alone. 
When nature did not visit him with any bodily pain, he would procure to himself that disagreeable sensation, by biting his lips so wantonly, or pulling his fingers to such a vehemeny degree, as sometimes to force the tears from his eyes; and the reason he assigned for so doing was in order to moderate certain impetuous sallies of the mind, whose violence was by far more insupportable to him than pain itself; and that the sure consequence of such a severe practice was his better enjoying the pleasure of health. 
Cardanys makes no scruple of owning that he was revengeful, envious, treacherous, a dealer in the black art, a backbiter, a calumniator, and unreservedly addicted to all the foul and detectable excesses that can be imagined: yet notwithstanding (as one should think) so humbling a declaration, there was never perhaps a vainer mortal, or a man that with less ceremony expressed the high opinion he had of himself than Cardanus was known to do, as will appear by the following proofs.
"I have been admired by many nations; an almost infinite number of panegyrics in prose and verse have been composed to celebrate my fame. I was born to rlease the world from the manifold errors under which it groaned. What I have found out could be discovered either by my predecessors, or my cotemporaries; and that is the reason why those authors, who write any thing worthy of being remembered, blush not too own that they are indebted to me for it. I have composed a book on the dialectic art, in which there is neither a superfluous letter, nor one deficient. I finished it in seven days, which seems a prodigy, Yet, where is there a person to be found, that

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