tions from these volumes. It is very strange that he should not have made any serious effort to obtain the originals, as he was engaged on the work already before 1647, in which year Gassendi heard of the undertaking; while Hevelius in the following year inquired how the rumour could be true that a Jesuit had got Tycho's observations from the Emperor and was about to publish them, since Hevelius with his own eyes had seen the original observations from 1564 to 1601 in Ludwig Kepler's house at Königsberg. Curtz himself seems, however, to have believed that the nineteen annual volumes for the years 1582–92 and 1594–1601, which he had before him, were originals and not copies, and though he suggests that they were the set of twenty-one volumes referred to by Tycho in the Appendix to the Mechanica (fol. H. 4), it does not seem to have occurred to him that in that case not only the volume for 1593, but five earlier volumes must have been lost, since Tycho wrote the Mechanica in 1597. The volumes which he used, and which he describes as being ornamented on the cover with Tycho's portrait and arms,[1] were therefore copied, and the observations of 1582 printed in 1656 as a specimen,[2] after which the complete Historia Cœlestis was published at Augsburg in 1666 in a handsome thick folio volume, on which the editor, instead of his own name, Albertus Curtius, has called himself anagram-matically Lucius Barrettus.[3]
The various astronomical observations, chiefly of eclipses anterior to Tycho's time, as well as the observations of the
- ↑ Like the presentation copies of the Mechanica (above, p. 261). The nineteen volumes are still in the Hofbibliothek at Vienna, where there is also a miscellaneous collection of loose leaves or small stitched books with computations, notes, or letters. Some of the letters have been published of late years (Tychonis Brahei et ad eum doct. vir. Epist.). A list of the MSS. was made by Friis in 1868, but owing to his complete ignorance of the subjects referred to in them, it is of little use (Danske Samlinger, iv., 1869, p. 250).
- ↑ "Sylloge Ferdinandea sive collectanea historiæ coelestis ex commentariis MS. obss. Tychonis Brahei ab anno 1582 ad annum 1601. Accessit epimetron ex obs. Hassiacis, Wirtenbergicis et aliis . . . vulgavit Lucius Barrettus, anno ciɔ ɔic lvi Viennæ Austriæ." Contains the preface and Liber prolegomenus and the observations of 1582, headed on every page: "Sylloge Ferdinandea." Different print from the Hist. Cœl. At the end of the volume is the colophon: "Operis Davidis Havtii, Bibl. Viennensis, anno 1657."
- ↑ "Historia Coelestis complectens Observationes astronomicas varias ad Historiam Coelestem spectantes Ill. viri Tychonis Brahe, Babylonicas, Græcas, Alexandrinas, Moestlini observationes Tubingenses, Hassiacas, &c. Aug. Vind. 1666" (also with title-page on which "Ratisbonæ, 1672"). Large plate with four emperors, more or less imaginary views of Uraniborg, Wandesburg, Benatky, Horti Cæsaris and Domus Curtii, most of Tycho Brahe's instruments, &c. cxxiv. + 977 pp. fol.
