with the same favour with which he had received his book on instruments.[1] Not long afterwards Tycho left Wandsbeck with his sons, his students, and a few small instruments, leaving for a while longer his wife and daughters and the greater part of his luggage in the kind charge of his host, who, however, died on the 1st January following. He travelled himself as far as Dresden, where he learned that there was pestilence and dysentery at Prague, and that the Emperor had retired with his court to Pilsen; and when he wrote to Corraduc to announce his arrival, the Vice-Chancellor, at the Emperor's command, requested him to remain at Dresden until the epidemic was over. From Dresden Tycho wrote on the 28th November to Magini, with whom he had held no communication for about seven years, and told him that he had not finished his book yet, as the theories of the planets were not yet complete. He also gave a short account of the cause of his leaving Denmark, and added in a postscript that Tengnagel, who was the bearer of the letter, would verbally communicate something secret. This turned out to be that Tycho would like some Italian to write a eulogy of him, for which Magini two years later recommended Bernardino Baldi, who was going to write the lives of great mathematicians.[2]
Tycho did not remain long at Dresden, but preferred to spend the winter at Wittenberg, where he had still friends from his two former visits. In the first week of December 1598[3] he went to Wittenberg with his sons and assistants, entered his own name and those of his two sons on the roll of students in the University,[4] and was lodged in the house
- ↑ Letter (in the archives at Schwerin) printed in Friis, Tyge Brahe, p. 319.
- ↑ Carteggio inedito di Magini, pp. 217 and 230. Baldi's Delle Vite de' Matematici was never published (Kästner, ii. 140).
- ↑ He observed the meridian altitude of the sun on the 9th December at Wittenberg.
- ↑ Mulleri Cimbria literata, vol. ii. p. 105.
