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durer’s birth-place and friends.

27

versity Library at Vienna a coffer which once contained three
things—the silver laurel crown, the laureate’s ring, and the
imperial charter (dated 31 Oct. 1501) giving the University the
right to crown distinguished poets. The coffer was presented
to the University by Celtes in 1508. On one side is a painting
of Apollo done from a drawing by Diirer now in the British
Museum (dated 1507); on the other is a figure of Philosophy.
At Vienna Celtes founded the ‘Society of the Danube’ on the
same lines as the ‘Society of the Rhine’, and, thus labouring
in the cause of learning, he died at his post in 1508.
A member of this ‘Danube Society’ was destined to be
brought into close connexion with Diirer and so must briefly
occupy our attention. This was Johannes Stabius, a man of
keen understanding, many-sided genius, and rare learning.
Astronomy was his special subject and he showed ingenuity in
the invention of instruments. He was not a dry student of
numbers and figures. He entered with relish into all the New
Learning and himself wrote both in prose and verse. He had a
dry humour and could utter strange quips and conceits, amusing
to the jocund Max, who kept him by his side for sixteen years
and made him Professor of Astronomy under Celtes at Vienna.
He likewise committed to his oversight that surprising hu-
manistic conception “Maximilian’s Arch of Triumph” which
Stabius was to conceive and describe and Diirer to design.
Rare fun the two must have had together, and the friendship
thus formed was so much to their mutual satisfaction that death
alone interrupted it. When questions of pay, pension, exemp-
tion from taxation and the like turned up between Diirer and
the Emperor (who was always penniless) Stabius acted as go-
between. Diirer also made for him some marvellous woodcuts
of the northern and southern starry hemispheres, with the
figures of their constellations, also a map of the Old World—
important productions all of them in their day, and destined to
be the parents of something better. Stabius died at Gratz in
1522.
Diirer seems to have been specially fond of mathematicians.
As a Humanist, of course, he was in duty bound to pay some
attention to Euclid and other classical geometers, but the
study was naturally congenial to Diirer. He had an idea of
 
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