name and date of the death of the deceased.[1] Above is a smaller tablet with his motto, Esse potius quam haberi,[2] and a lengthy Latin inscription recording his life and merits, and mentioning that his wife is also buried here; while at the foot stands an inscription from Stjerneborg, "Non fasces nec opes, sola artis sceptra perennant."[3]
It is scarcely worth mentioning that a silly rumour very soon began to spread that Tycho Brahe had died from poison, administered by some envious courtier at Prague, or, as others thought, by his old enemy Reymers Bär. As the latter died fourteen months before his supposed victim, it would indeed have been a remarkably slow poison.[4]
The most important inheritance which Tycho left to Kepler and to posterity was the vast mass of observations, of which Kepler justly said that they deserved to be kept among the royal treasures, as the reform of astronomy could not be accomplished without them. He even added that there was no hope of any one ever making more accurate observations, for it was a most tedious and lengthy business! This would have been perfectly true if the telescope had not afterwards been invented. It is not here the place to set forth how Kepler, when Tengnagel had given up pretending that he was going to work out the theory of the planets, took up the work, and how his mighty genius mastered it and gave to the world the great laws of Kepler, at one breath blowing away the epicycles and other musty appendages which disfigured
- ↑ Anno Domini MDCI die 24 Octobris obiit illustris et generosus Dñus Tycho Brahe, Dñus in Knudstrup et Præses Uraniburgi, & Sacræ Cæsareæ Maiestatis Consiliarius, cujus ossa hic requiescunt.
- ↑ Sometimes he wrote it "Non haberi sed esse."
- ↑ The inscription is printed in Danske Magazin, ii. p. 357; Weistritz, ii. p. 362, where the tombstone is also figured.
- ↑ Andreas Foss, Bishop of Bergen, who had visited Tycho in 1596, wrote to Longomontanus in February 1602 to inquire if the rumour had any foundation (Bang's Samlinger, ii. p. 529; Weistritz, i. p. 195). The astrologer Rollenhagen wrote at the same time to Kepler that Tycho evidently died "per Ursianum quoddam venenum" (Epist. Kepleri, ed. Hanschius, p. 193).
