Note 186 — Chapter III · THE PROGRESS OF CARD-PLAYING. (continued 2)
Reading edition
About the same period Moxon, "glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," published a pack of Astronomical Cards. In the life of Beau Hewitt, in Lucas's Memoirs of the Lives, Intrigues, and Comical Adventures of the most Famous Gamesters and Celebrated Sharpers in the reigns of Charles II, James II, William III, and Queen Anne, 1714, the Beau is represented as having "most assiduously studied the use of the geometrical playing-cards, set forth by Monsieur Des Cartes, the famous French philosopher and mathematician; but that finding the demonstrations of that great man to be founded on no certainty, he resolved to try his luck at dice." It is said that Pascal's attention was first directed to the calculation of chances in consequence of some questions proposed to him by the Chevalier de Meré, a great gamester.