40 LEEUWENHOEK AND B!s “ LITTLE ANIMALS” 
Plate [X.) During the silent ,eriod preceding the year 1673 
Leeuwenhoek was evidently engaged—in his spare time, when 
he was not selling buttons and ribbon—in making lenses, and 
mounting them to form “ microscopes ”’ of simple pattern: and 
after he had acquired much skill in the manufacture of these 
curious instruments,’ and had taught himself how to grind and 
polish and mount lenses of considerable magnifying power, he 
began to examine all manner of things with their aid. Dr 
de Graaf was personally acquainted with Leeuwenhoek’s work, 
and had had. opportunities of inspecting various objects 
through his glasses. 
In the Philosophical Transactions for 1668 the editor had 
published’ an extract from the Giornale dev Letterati, con- 
taining an account of a new microscope made by Hustachio 
Divini in Italy. With this instrument, it was claimed, he 
had been able to discover “an animal lesser than any of those 
seen hitherto.” It was doubtless as a counterblast to this 
sweeping assertion, and with pardonable patriotism, that 
de Graaf (28 April 1673) addressed himself to Oldenburg in 
the following words :* 
That it may be the more evident to you that the 
humanities and science* are not yet banished from among 
us by the clash of arms,’ I am writing to tell you that a 
* Cf. p. 313 sq., infra. 
* Phil. Trans. (1668), Vol. III, No. 42, p.842—then edited by Oldenburg. 
Divini’s portrait can be seen in the work of Manzini (1660). 
* The original letter, from which I here translate a part, is still preserved 
by the Royal Society (MS. No. 1168; G.Z. 11). It is written in Latin, and 
an extract—in English—was published in Phil. Trans. (1673), Vol. VIII, 
No. 94, p. 6037. The letter was read at the meeting of the Society held on 
7 May 1673 [0.S.], when L.’s first observations were also communicated. 
Cf. Birch, Vol. III, p. 88. 
* studia humaniora et philosophica MS. 
° I may remind the reader that a European war was being waged at this 
time, and that England was actually at war with Holland. Peace was not 
concluded between us until February, 1674; but communications apparently 
remained unbroken throughout—probably because “the Nations had been 
at War without being angry; and the Quarrel had been thought on both 
Sides rather of the Ministries than the People’”’ (Sir William Temple (1709), 
Memoirs [1672-1679] p.3). Contemporary writers, both in England and 
in Holland, afford numerous other gratifying instances of the lack of personal 
enmity between our two peoples. For example, the Earl of Castlemain 
