PORTRAITS OF LEEUWENHOEK 349 
town, which I dispatched a fortnight ago to London by 
Skipper Richart Houlatson, with the address: For the 
Secretary of the Royall Society at Gresham Colledge, 
without any further inscription. 
The Royal Society failed to acknowledge the receipt of 
these letters and pictures (and also of other letters from 
Leeuwenhoek received at that time), and two years later we 
find him writing again *: 
When I learnt that several Fellows were wishful to 
have two or three copies of my portrait, printed in 
mezzotinto, . . . I couldn't remain idle, but made 
every effort to satisfy them; and finally I obtained six 
prints (as the plate had been printed off). These mezzo- 
tintos, as also my Latin book, I sent to London, and 
addressed them, as I’ve been wont to do, to Gresham 
Colledge: to all which letters I got no answer 
What happened to these six prints is not now known. 
They have all disappeared from the Royal Society’s collection, 
and the Society now possesses only a single mutilated copy of 
the mezzotint acquired at a much later date. 
All the well-known engraved portraits of Leeuwenhoek are 
derived from Verkolje’s oil-painting. The best-known, and 
most often reproduced, is the excellent copperplate engraving 
by A. de Blois prefixed to the Dutch and Latin collective 
works (Brieven and Opera Omnia). It first appeared as a 
frontispiece to the Vervolg der Brieven (1687), with a Dutch 
inscription: afterwards, with Latin lettering, in Arcana 
Naturae Detecta (1695). Various copies of this copy have 
also been made—in line, stipple, mezzotint, and by modern 
photographic processes. At least one early engraving was 
1 The words “For . . . Colledge” are thus in English in the MS. 
(The rest, of course, is in Dutch.) 
2 From Letter 102. 10 July 1696. To the Royal Society. MS.Roy.Soc. 
Published—with omission of the passage here translated—in the Dutch 
and Latin printed works: English extract in Phil. Trans. (1696), Vol. XIX, 
No. 221, p. 269 (from which the passage isalso absent). This letter actually 
contains a protest against the Society's failure to acknowledge 8 of L.’s 
communications (Letters 77 to 84)—a discourtesy which caused him to 
start sending his observations to other people instead. 
