THE AUTHOR’S EPISTLE TO THE READER 7 
At first I thought merely to print or reprint all the relevant 
passages 1n Leeuwenhoek’s writings in the languages (Dutch, 
Latin, or English) in which they now survive: but on second 
thoughts I realized that this would be futile. I realized that it 
would be useless, for example, to reprint the Dutch and Latin 
words already accessible to everybody, and by everybody still 
unread or misunderstood. So I resolved to put everything into 
Finglish, in order that every man who can read my mother- 
tongue shall henceforth be able to read and understand what 
Leeuwenhoek himself recorded in his own language. My 
translations of his words are, I know, imperfect : but they are 
to be excused as a first attempt to reduce all his protozoological 
and bacteriological knowledge to a uniform and intelligible 
modern system, and vn every case they are accompanied by exact 
references to original sources, so that you can—if you have the 
time and patience—verify my own words for yourself. A certain 
amount of editing and rearrangement has been unavoidable, 
and indeed essential to my plan; but I have, I hope, reduced 
my apparatus criticus to a minimum. 
The difficulties which I have encountered in translating 
Leeuwenhoek into modern English—or, at least, into English 
sufficiently modern to be nowadays intelligible—have been very 
great. I could have rendered his words much more easily in 
the English of his own period—interlarded as it was with 
Capitals and wtalics and irregular and curious spellings and 
the queerest punctuation. But this, while superficially pre- 
senting an old-world appearance, would have been nowise 
satesfactory to You, dear modern Reader. Rather would it 
have recalled the false ancientry of William Morris, whose 
“Old English” was often no better than anachronism: for I 
emagine that many of Morris’s “ translations” —such as his 
version of Beowulf—are written in a language which no other 
Englishman ever employed. They remind me unpleasantly of 
“Ye Olde Englishe Petrole Pumpe,” from which (I am told) 
motorists can now fill their tanks within 20 miles of London 
Town. 
All my translations of Leeuwenhoek (as you will soon ob- 
serve) are compromises between ancient and modern. I adopt 
old words and old phrases (used by his own English contempor- 
aries) whenever they are understandable at the present day, but 
I eschew—on principle—all unfamiliar expressions. I want 
you, dear English Reader, to read Leeuwenhoek in his own 
