pedestal were adorned with pictures of King Alphonso, with Ptolemy and Al Battani sitting below him; Charles the Fifth with Copernicus and Apianus; Rudolph the Second, and below him Tycho, seated at a table looking towards the Emperor; and lastly, Frederick the Second with Uraniborg. Under the last picture was an epigram by the Imperial poet-laureate.[1]
In his as yet unsettled state Tycho was not able to commence observations with the vigour of former days, the only observation of any interest made at this time being one of the end of a small solar eclipse at sunrise on the 22nd July (new style, which Tycho used from henceforth). One of his pupils, Johannes from Hamburg, observed this eclipse with the little gilt quadrant, from the tower of a neighbouring college.[2]
But Tycho did not wish to settle within the city of Prague. In his letters he states that he did not like that the widow of Curtius should leave her house for his sake, and he feared to be too much disturbed by visitors. Tradition speaks of his being annoyed by the constant ringing of bells at night in the neighbouring Capuchin monastery,[3] but this may more probably refer to his stay in the city during the last year of his life, or it may never have happened; at any rate, it is not mentioned by Tycho himself. But he was accustomed to a country residence, with plenty of fresh air, and he probably longed to get away from the city, which was not very clean, if we may believe Fynes Moryson, who had visited it only seven years before Tycho's arrival, and who gives the
- ↑ Gassendi, p. 161, where another poem composed on the same occasion is also given.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 162; Barrettus, p. 844. The quadrant is described above, p. 102.
- ↑ Mädler, Pop. Astronomie, 1st edit., 1841, p. 561 (not in the latest editions), and Heiberg, Urania, Aarbog for 1846, p. 131. According to another tradition, the monks did not like the neighbourhood of the heretic, and got up an apparition of a ghost to persuade the Emperor to turn him out.
