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TYCHO BRAHE.

(or Grand Pensionary, as he was afterwards called), Olden Barneveld, to whom Tycho, as a prudent politician, had also written and sent his books. Joseph Scaliger, who five years before had been called to Leyden as a professor, also wrote that he would do his best, but he feared that the slow procedure of the States General would deprive the country of so great an honour and himself of the pleasure of being associated with a great man. In the meantime the Emperor had desired Corraduc to answer Tycho that he would willingly receive him and see that he should want nothing for the furtherance of his studies. In the course of the summer Tycho not only learned this from Corraduc, but also received a letter from Hagecius urging him to come to Bohemia as soon as possible, while the Elector of Cologne replied to Rantzov that he had every hope of Tycho's being well received by the Emperor, and added that if Tycho, against all expectation, should not find his work liberally enough supported by the Emperor, then he would himself promote it to the best of his ability. Tycho therefore, on the 23rd August, wrote to Scaliger, sending him his books (even the unfinished one), and thanked him for his kindness, and assured him that he would not have been disinclined to go to Holland, but that he had now been invited by the Emperor and would soon set out for Prague. But if this journey should not lead to the expected result, and the States would make him a liberal offer, then he would willingly come to them with his astronomical apparatus.[1]

Tycho was still at Wandsbeck on the 14th September 1598, on which day he wrote to Duke Ulrich of Mecklenburg to thank him for a letter of recommendation to the Emperor, and to ask him to accept a copy of the star-catalogue,

  1. Gassendi, pp. 156–157. In return for these books, Scaliger some months later sent Tycho a copy of his Conjecturæ et notæ in Varronem, which Tycho gave or lent to Taubmann, Professor of Poetry at Wittenberg. Kästner, Gesch. d. Math., ii. p. 409.