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288 Wittenberg. He also hoped that David Fabricius, from Ostfriesland, whom Longomontanus had met at Wandsbeck, would come to act both as domestic chaplain and as observer; and he was getting two students from Wittenberg, who had offered themselves through Jostelius, as he hoped to start again an astronomical school for the benefit of posterity and for the glory of God and the credit of the Emperor. Possibly Christopher Rothmann would also come, as he had recently written to Rollenhagen of Magdeburg (a well-known writer on astrology and many other things), so that he was not dead, as Tycho had for some time believed; but that bear-like and Dithmarsian brute (ursina ista et Dithmarsica bestia) had told a double lie when he had spread the rumours that Tycho had fled from Denmark for some great act of villainy, and that Rothmann had died from debauchery. The same Reymers had secretly absconded lately from Prague, but he would yet meet the punishment he deserved. The sheets which were still wanting in the first volume of the Progymnasmata, and which the Hamburg printer had done so badly, were soon to be printed, and when Longomontanus came, all might be settled, so that the book might be issued together with the second volume (on the comet of 1577), while the third volume on the other comets might follow.

Several of the collaborators whom Tycho in this letter hoped to secure did not put in an appearance. Longomontanus arrived in January 1600 with Tycho's son, but Rothmann never came; Fabricius only came in June 1601 for a couple of weeks, and Müller did not arrive till after March