actually purchased land in Bohemia after receiving back his money from Mecklenburg, but it is not likely that he did so, as his life terminated very suddenly soon after. On the 13th October 1601 (new style) he was invited to supper at the house of the Baron of Rosenberg,[1] and went there in company with the Imperial Councillor, Ernfried Minkawitz. During supper he was seized with illness, which was aggravated by his remaining at table. On returning home, he suffered greatly for five days, when he became somewhat relieved, although sleeplessness and fever continued to harass him. He was frequently delirious, and at other times refused to keep the prescribed diet, but demanded to be given to eat anything he fancied. Five more days elapsed in this manner. During the night before the 24th October he was frequently heard to exclaim that he hoped he should not appear to have lived in vain ("ne frustra vixisse videar"). When the morning came, the delirium had left him, but his strength was exhausted and he felt the approach of death. His eldest son was absent, and his second daughter and her husband also;[2] but he now charged his younger son and the pupils to continue their studies, and he begged Kepler to finish the Rudolphine tables as soon as possible, adding the hope that he would demonstrate their theory according to the Tychonic system and not by that of Copernicus.[3] Among those pre-
- ↑ Kepler dedicated his little book De Fundamentis Astrologiæ to "Petro Wok Ursino, Domus Rosembergicae Gubernatori."
- ↑ The younger Tycho Brahe had in January 1601 started for Italy in company with Robert Sherley, ambassador from the Shah of Persia to various European courts. Carteggio di Magini, p. 237.
- ↑ "Ego in sequentibus demonstrationibus omnes tres auctorum formas conjungam. Nam et Tycho, me hoc quandoque suadente id se ultro vel me tacente facturum fuisse respondit (fecissetque si supervixisset) et moriens a me, quem in Copernici sententia esse sciebat, petiit, uti in sua hypothesi omnia demonstrarem." Kepler, De Stella Martis, cap. vi.; Opera, iii. p. 193. Gassendi (p. 179) gives it in these words:—"Quæso te, mi Joannes, ut quando quod tu Soli pellicienti, ego ipsis Planetis ultro affectantibus et quasi adulantibus tribuo, velis eadem omnia in mea demonstrare hypothesi, quæ in Copernicana declarare tibi est cordi."
