the short remainder of Tycho's life. Though he was by no means an old man, there were some indications that his health was failing, and towards the end of 1601 he was suddenly seized with an illness which terminated fatally after a few days (November 24th). It is characteristic of his devotion to the great work of his life that in the delirium which preceded his death he cried out again and again his hope that his life might not prove to have been fruitless (Ne frustra vixisse videar).
109. Partly owing to difficulties between Kepler and one of Tycho's family, partly owing to growing political disturbances, scarcely any use was made of Tycho's instruments after his death, and most of them perished during the Civil Wars in Bohemia. Kepler obtained possession of his observations; but they have never been published except in an imperfect form.
110. Anything like a satisfactory account of Tycho's services to astronomy would necessarily deal largely with technical details of methods of observing, which would be out of place here. It may, however, be worth while to attempt to give some general account of his characteristics as an observer before referring to special discoveries.
Tycho realised more fully than any of his predecessors the importance of obtaining observations which should not only be as accurate as possible, but should be taken so often as to preserve an almost continuous record of the positions and motions of the celestial bodies dealt with; whereas the prevailing custom (as illustrated for example by Coppernicus) was only to take observations now and then, either when an astronomical event of special interest such as an eclipse or a conjunction was occurring, or to supply some particular datum required for a point of theory. While Coppernicus, as has been already noticed (chapter iv., § 73), only used altogether a few dozen observations in his book, Tycho—to take one instance—observed the sun daily for many years, and must therefore have taken some thousands of observations of this one body, in addition to the many thousands which he took of other celestial bodies. It is true that the Arabs had some idea of observing continuously (cf. chapter iii., § 57), but they had too little
