CHAPTER X.
TYCHO'S LIFE FROM HIS LEAVING HVEEN UNTIL HIS ARRIVAL AT PRAGUE (1597–1599).
When Tycho arrived at Copenhagen in April 1597, he probably did not intend to make a long stay there, but merely to watch events for a short time. He can hardly have intended to settle in his house at Copenhagen and continue his work there, as he had the Isle of Hveen for life, and might as well have stayed there if he had any wish to remain in Denmark, unless, indeed, the troubles at Hveen had risen to such a height that the island had become odious to him. He had brought his instruments, chemical apparatus, and printing-press with him, but he does not appear to have commenced astronomical observations at the tower on the rampart close to his house. Probably he had not time to get any of the larger instruments mounted, as he tells us in the account of his leaving Denmark, as well as in several of his letters, that the Treasurer, acting in the name of the king, who was absent in Germany, forbade him to take observations in the tower on the rampart. He does not say on what pretext this was done, but possibly the Government did not wish him to settle permanently on any part of the fortification.[1] He is also said to have been for-
- ↑ In the account "De interruptione," &c. (Barrettus, p. 801), as well as in a letter to Vedel in 1599 (Weistritz, i. p. 171), Tycho says that the order not to observe on the rampart was given by Aulæ Magister (i.e., Valkendorf), though he had been one of the four protectors who had granted him the use of the tower in 1589. See also a letter to Vincenzio Pinelli of Padua (Aus T. Brahe's Briefwechsel, p. 12).
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