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98 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “ LITTLE ANIMALS” 
Maria’s letter was very different from the foregoing. It 
made no pretensions to scientific knowledge or classical 
scholarship, and was written not in Latin but in homely, 
illiterate, and even ungrammatical Dutch. It was apparently 
dictated—not written by herself—for it is inscribed in a 
handwriting different from the somewhat shaky signature.’ 
(Maria was then 67 years of age.) But for all that it is one 
of the most beautiful and pitiful letters I have ever read— 
breathing sincerity and filial devotion in every word, and 
eloquently testifying to Leeuwenhoek’s own qualities as a 
man and father. Maria wrote’: 
Most excellent Sirs 
Instantly upon the sad death of my beloved father 
Anthonij van Lewenhoek,* I took care to have this my * 
loss made known to you by our reverenced and most 
learned pastor, Peterus Griebius’; adding thereto, that 
after the space of six weeks would be sent to the noble 
and far famed Royal Society, at London, a little cabinet 
with magnifying-glasses, made of silver wrought out of 
the mineral by my dear departed father his very self; 
which same is now sent to Your Excellencies, even as 
my late father made it up, with six-and-twenty magnifying- 
glasses in their little cases: truly in itself a poor present 
to so celebrated a Royal Society, but meant to betoken 
my father’s deep respect for such a learned Society, 
whereof my most beloved and dear Father, of blessed 
* Cf. Plate XIII. 
* MS.Roy.Soc., No. 2137; Z.6.38. Maria van Leeuwenhoek to the 
Royal Society, 4 Oct. 1723. Original in Dutch, from which the above is 
a, translation—and a poor one: for I confess myself incompetent to turn the 
pathetic but unscholarly expressions of Maria into intelligible modern 
English faithfully. 
* So spelled in MS. 
‘In the MS. the words “this my” are reiterated: “dit mijn mijn dit 
mijn’’—the second dit being scored out. Maria apparently hesitated, in 
dictating the letter, between saying “mijn” or © dit mijn”: and in her 
agitation she failed to notice that the word mijn was finally left written 
thrice. 
* So spelled in MS. 
