128 Transactions of the Society. 



irreconcileable with all truth." Wise youth ! " You see," adds 

 Molyneux, " how freely I give you my thoughts of him, because 

 you desired it." Evidently he was not to be browbeaten by the 

 young and scholarly zoologist, who was doubtless disenchanted at 

 finding a man, to his idea, so illiterate, capable of having made 

 such great discoveries, and not apprehending that Leeuwenhoek's 

 gifts could not be acquired by any amount of scholarship. I 

 can imagine Leeuwenhoek being amused at the supercilious 

 scholar's disgust because Nature had not spoken to him in Latin, 

 and can fancy him thinking, with a twinkle in his eye, of Bacchus's 

 answer to Ariadne at Naxos, when she said, " Oh ! divine Bacchus, 

 why dost thou pull mine ears ? " and he replied, " I find a sort of 

 humour in thine ears, Ariadne, why are they not longer ? " He 

 was also visited by several royal personages, probably by our 

 Charles II., who founded the Koyal Society, and by Frederick I. 

 of Prussia, and certainly by Queen Mary — of William and Mary — 

 to whom he gave two of his Microscopes, and by Peter the Great 

 of Eussia. Peter, when passing through Delft, in 1698, caused 

 Leeuwenhoek to be sent for in order that he might show him some 

 of his work. It is recorded that Leeuwenhoek showed him the 

 circulation of the blood in an eel's tail, and that Sacred Majesty 

 stayed with him for two hours, and gave him his hand on departing 

 as a sign of signal favour. It would be interesting to know Peter's 

 thoughts at such a sight ! To his fellow citizens he must have been 

 a mystery : and who of those worthy Councillors dreamt that the 

 man who was deputed to " open and shut the door of the council 

 chamber, and to show honour and respect to the councillors of Delft " 

 — so ran the terms of his appointment — would be immortal, and 

 their names, even, known to none. He is the one Immortal Beadle ! 

 How did he look to those who saw him, this Immortal 

 Beadle ? There are several portraits of him, and the one I have 

 chosen is that by Verkolje, painted in 1695. It shows that he was 

 probably of mixed blood, tor his face is of the mixed Semitic- 

 Teutonic racial type. Thoughtful and strong, with perhaps a taste 

 for good things ; you will note the thick bull-neck, with the loose 

 necktie, just as Isaac Newton wore it. 



A later portrait is that on the medal given, in 1875, on the 

 200th anniversary of his discovery of the Infusoria to Ehrenberg : 

 this is taken from a later portrait and shows him older, as if some 

 teeth had fallen out, but still with tlie same general characteristics. 

 Underneath his name is the briefest possible statement of what he 

 was : The discoverer of Microscopic beings : that is of a whole new 

 world of beings which had hitherto been invisible to the eye of 

 man. We can hardly at this time appreciate the effect of this 

 revelation of the existence of a whole world of life, hitherto 

 absolutely unknown, or of the opening up of so many biological 

 vistas. 



