The Sleepwalkers (133 page)

True
to
the
family
tradition,
young
Tyge
was
intended
to
take
up
the
career
of
a
statesman,
and
was
accordingly
sent
at
thirteen
to
study
rhetorics
and
philosophy
at
the
University
of
Copenhagen.
But
at
the
end
of
his
first
year,
he
witnessed
an
event
which
made
an
overwhelming
impression
on
him
and
decided
the
whole
future
course
of
his
life.
It
was
a
partial
eclipse
of
the
sun
which,
of
course,
had
been
announced
beforehand,
and
it
struck
the
boy
as
"something
divine
that
men
could
know
the
motions
of
the
stars
so
accurately
that
they
were
able
a
long
time
beforehand
to
predict
their
places
and
relative
positions."
³
He
immediately
began
to
buy
books
on
astronomy,
including
the
collected
works
of
Ptolemy
for
the
considerable
sum
of
two
Joachims-Thaler.
From
now
onward
his
course
was
set
and
he
never
swerved
from
it.

Why
did
that
partial
eclipse,
which
was
not
at
all
spectacular
as
a
sight,
have
such
a
decisive
impact
on
the
boy?
The
great
revelation
for
him,
Gassendi
tells
us,
was
the
predictability
of
astronomical
events
–
in
total
contrast,
one
might
speculate,
to
the
unpredictability
of
a
child's
life
among
the
temperamental
Brahes.
It
is
not
much
of
a
psychological
explanation,
but
it
is
worth
noting
that
Brahe's
interest
in
the
stars
took
from
the
beginning
a
quite
different,
in
fact
almost
opposite
direction
from
both
Copernicus'
and
Kepler's.
It
was
not
a
speculative
interest,
but
a
passion
for
exact
observation.
Starting
on
Ptolemy
at
fourteen,
and
making
his
first
observation
at
seventeen,
Tycho
took
to
astronomy
at
a
much
earlier
age
than
those
two.
The
timid
Canon
had
found
a
refuge
from
a
life
of
frustrations
in
the
secret
elaboration
of
his
system;
Kepler
resolved
the
unbearable
miseries
of
his
youth
in
his
mystic
harmony
of
the
spheres.
Tycho
was
neither
frustrated
nor
unhappy,
only
bored
and
irritated
by
the
futility
of
a
Danish
nobleman's
existence
among,
in
his
own
words,
"horses,
dogs
and
luxury";
and
he
was
filled
with
naive
wonder
at
the
contrasting
soundness
and
reliability
of
the
stargazers'
predictions.
He
took
to
astronomy
not
as
an
escape
or
metaphysical
lifebelt,
but
rather
as
a
full-time
hobby
of
an
aristocrat
in
revolt
against
his
milieu
.
His
later
life
seems
to
confirm
this
interpretation,
for
he
entertained
kings
on
his
wonder
island,
but
the
mistress
of
the
house,
with
whom
he
begot
a
large
family
of
children,
was
a
woman
of
low
caste
to
whom
he
was
not
even
married
in
church.

After
three
years
at
Copenhagen,
the
Vice-Admiral
thought
that
it
was
time
for
Tyge
to
go
to
a
foreign
university,
and
sent
him,
accompanied
by
a
tutor,
to
Leipzig.
The
tutor
was
Anders
Soerensen
Vedel,
who
later
became
famous
as
the
first
great
Danish
historian,
translator
of
Saxo
Grammaticus
and
collector
of
Nordic
sagas.
Vedel
was
then
twenty,
only
four
years
older
than
his
charge;
he
had
received
instructions
to
cure
young
Tyge
of
his
unseemly
preoccupation
with
astronomy
and
lead
him
back
to
studies
more
fitting
for
a
nobleman.
Tyge
had
bought
a
small
celestial
globe
to
learn
the
names
of
the
constellations,
but
he
had
to
hide
it
under
his
blanket;
and
when
he
added
to
this
a
cross-staff,
he
could
use
it
only
when
his
tutor
was
asleep.
After
a
year
of
this,
however,
Vedel
realized
that
Tyge
was
star-struck
beyond
remedy,
gave
in,
and
the
two
remained
lifelong
friends.

After
Leipzig,
Tycho
continued
his
studies
at
the
Universities
of
Wittenberg,
Rostock,
Basle
and
Augsburg
until
his
twentysixth
year,
all
the
time
collecting,
and
later
designing,
bigger
and
better
instruments
for
observing
the
planets.
Among
these
was
a
huge
quadrant
of
brass
and
oak,
thirty-eight
feet
in
diameter
and
turned
by
four
handles
–
the
first
of
a
series
of
fabulous
instruments
which
were
to
become
the
wonder
of
the
world.
Tycho
never
made
any
epoch-making
discovery
except
one,
which
made
him
the
father
of
modern
observational
astronomy;
but
that
one
discovery
has
become
such
a
truism
to
the
modern
mind
that
it
is
difficult
to
see
its
importance.
The
discovery
was
that
astronomy
needed
precise
and
continuous
observational
data.