He. LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ”’ 
expressed a desire to meet me: and on being introduced he 
said “I am glad to make your acquaintance, as I also am 
interested in Leeuwenhoek; I understand that you knew hum 
personally ?”’. 
To appreciate Leeuwenhoek properly, it is (I submit) need- 
ful to know not only the particular history of many sciences but 
also the general history of his own times: and to see him in 
his true perspective it is even necessary to understand the 
relations of Holland and England in his day, and the peculiar 
circumstances which led to the founding of the Royal Society 
and to his connexion with that learned assembly. I confess 
I do not fully comprehend any of these things myself, so I can 
here do no more than indicate a few sources of my own imperfect 
information. 
Most men of my acquaintance seem to know little more of 
the history of Holland than is contained in those ever-popular 
English classics written by John Motley (an American), whose 
great stories end where Leeuwenhoek’s life begins. Yet 
Leeuwenhoek’s period is well documented on the English side : 
for it is covered by such deservedly famous and widely read 
records as the Diaries of gay Samuel Pepys and gentle John 
Evelyn ; John Ray’s unadventurous but instructive Travels ; 
dear Dorothy Osborne’s entrancing Letters to her future 
husband William Temple; the entertaining Epistles of the 
Welsh scholar James Howell; Gilbert Burnet’s solid History 
of his own Times ; and the indiscreet Scottish-French Memoirs 
of Count Grammont written by Anthony Hamilton. (I may 
perhaps remind you that Pepys, Evelyn, Ray, and Howell all 
travelled in Holland: that Sir William Temple was once our 
Ambassador at The Hague: and that Bishop Burnet not only 
lived in Holland but even married a Dutchwoman—of noble 
Scottish descent. Pepys, Evelyn, Ray, and Burnet were, as of 
course you know, once distinguished Fellows of the Royal 
Society.) What little I have been able to learn of life in 
England and Holland in Leeuwenhoek’s day has been derived 
from these and other contemporary writers, rather than from 
professional modern historians. Nevertheless, I have not 
neglected to study (I hope with profit) the excellent works of 
Motley and Edmundson and Bense and others, and the well- 
known Histories and Record of the Royal Society compiled 
by Sprat, Birch, Thomson, Weld, and the rest. I have even 
learned something from the scribblings of men like Ned Ward, 
