VISITS IN OLD AGE ea 
they had received no letters from him for nearly a twelvemonth. 
(He had evidently ceased to write merely because the Society 
had not acknowledged his three previous communications.) 
To their inquiries he returned the following reply, addressed 
to John Chamberlayne’: 
I received your acceptable Letter of the 20th of March, 
deliver’d by your Nephew the 29th of April last, wherein 
you are pleased to say, that the Honble. Royal Society 
are very much concerned that they have had no account 
of my health for a great while, and that you had com- 
manded your Nephew to wait upon me and desired me to 
let you know how I did. 
Your Nephew delivered your Letter to my Daughter, 
but I was not at home, and since that time I never saw 
him again. I am thankfull for your Civilities. 
As to my health, thanks be to God, as long as I sit still 
I am without any pain, but if I do but walk a little I have 
pains in my leggs,” but that is, I think, caused by former 
colds and because they have carried my body so long. 
In other letters of this period we hear of various other 
visits paid to Leeuwenhoek in his old age by Fellows of the 
Royal Society and other people. Most of these visitors— 
notwithstanding Uffenbach’s statement *—seem to have been 
kindly received, and entertained with divers microscopical 
sights (especially the capillary circulation in the tail of a little 
eel). His reasons for refusing to see people occasionally were 
given by himself; and in this connexion the following un- 
published passages from two otherwise published letters are 
* From Letter dated 17 May 1707. To J. Chamberlayne, F.R.S. MS. 
Roy. Soc. Unpublished. This interesting letter is peculiar in that the 
original is in English. As no Dutch or Latin version accompanies it, and 
as it is apparently written on L.’s own gilt-edged letter-paper (such as he 
used at that time), I infer that the translation was made in Delft, by a 
friend, and that the letter was sent in the form in which it now survives. 
I transcribe the words of the MS. exactly, merely expanding a few 
contractions in the original.—F'or Chamberlayne, see p. 270, note 2, infra. 
" Cf. Uffenbach’s statement, p. 64 supra. 
* Cf. p. 69 supra. 
