years, and had made several of them. He therefore inquired if Bürgi knew of an able man who might succeed him. It so happened that Bürgi shortly afterwards had to go to Prague to present to the Emperor a mechanical representation of the motions of the planets, and the Landgrave promised that he should inquire about some goldsmith who was accustomed to instruments and clocks. Whether Tycho got such a man is not known.[1]
The Landgrave died at Cassel on the 25th August 1592, at the age of sixty. His son and successor, Maurice, did not share his father's taste for astronomy (though he continued to keep Bürgi in his service till 1603, when Bürgi removed to Prague), but he was a man of literary tastes, and at Tycho's request sent him a Latin poem for insertion in one of his publications, though he modestly disclaimed the poetical talent which had been attributed to him.[2]
Before Tycho lost his diligent correspondents at Cassel he had opened a literary intercourse with Giovanni Antonio Magini, from 1588 Professor of Mathematics at Bologna, a man who by his extensive correspondence and his literary activity gained a position of some importance in the history of science.[3] We have already mentioned that Tycho's pupil, Gellius Sascerides, during his stay at Padua, sent Magini a copy of the volume on the comet of 1577, and in 1590 Magini wrote to Tycho thanking him for the welcome present, and expressing his approval of the new system of the world. In this he could only have wished that the orbits of Mars and the sun had not intersected each other, though
- ↑ Epist., pp. 266 and 270.
- ↑ The verse is printed in Epist., p. 281. Tycho wrote to Landgrave Maurice in December 1596, when he at last sent him the two elks which the late Landgrave had wished for so much (ibid., p. 305).
- ↑ Carteggio inedito di Tichone Brahe, Giovanni Keplero e di altri celebri astronomi e matematici dei secoli xvi. e xvii. con G. A. Magini, tratto dall' Archivio Malvezzi de' Medici in Bologna, pubblicato ed illustrato da A. Favaro. Bologna, 1886, 8vo.
