LEEUWENHOEK’S LANGUAGE 309 
as I should myself have found helpful when I first began to 
try and read his own writings. 
Leeuwenhoek’s speech is (pace Professor Dr Becking) an 
interesting example of the Dutch of the transitional period 
between the language of the Bible and the modern tongue. 
It preserves not a few genuine old words, and sometimes 
reflects the troubled history of his time; for we find, inter- 
spersed among his homely native vocabulary, numerous foreign 
intruders—mostly of French origin—which have not taken 
root in the language, and which will therefore be sought in 
vain in a modern Dutch-English dictionary. (I may instance 
the following, which all occur frequently in Leeuwenhoek’s 
early letters: presentatie, swperfitie, circumferentie, [en |devotr, 
observeeren, imploieren, imagineeren, continuelyk.) The inter- 
pretation of such words is, fortunately, seldom difficult for an 
English reader, because we have incorporated their counter- 
parts into our own tongue. 
There is a vast difference between the early letters and the 
last letters—not only in the handwriting but also in the words 
and wording.' ‘he first letters are comparatively archaic, 
and inscribed in the Dutch character: the last are far more 
“modern ’’, and written in the “Italian”? hand which is now 
universal. Between these extremes, however, all intermediates 
occur. I would also note that the spellings and punctuation 
are more “modern” and uniform in the Dutch printed letters 
than they are in the original manuscripts. But this is also 
true of English writings of the same period—so far as I have 
studied them. “Correct” and uniform spelling seems to be 
generally due to printers and compositors, rather than to 
scholars and authors, in all printed languages. 
Only the archaic and the irregular spellings likely to 
trouble present-day foreign readers of Leeuwenhoek’s early 
letters will be noted here. The genuine archaisms—as distinct 
from the variations in spelling characteristic of the erratic 
orthography of the period—are chiefly the following : 
1 T am not concerned here with L.’s style of writing, which I can judge 
only as a foreigner. His own countrymen not seldom speak of it con- 
temptuously—Becking, for instance, and earlier Pijzel (1875), who describes 
it as “ pretty slovenly” (vrij slordig). 
