364 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “LITTLE ANIMALS”’ 
the year 1300 in Italy—their popularization “for the help of 
poor blind old men” being chiefly due to the pious and 
private labours of the monk Alessandro de Spina of Pisa. 
The actual inventor of spectacles, however, is said to be a 
Florentine—Salvino d’Armato degl’Armati.’ Friar Bacon 
and his brethren in Italy were probably the originators of 
simple lenses; and the unknown people who first wore 
spectacles and used ordinary magnifying-glasses—for assis- 
tance in reading or for personal amusement—are the real 
“precursors ” of Leeuwenhoek as a “ microscopist ”’.” 
According to Govi (1888), the word “ microscope” 
(microscopio) was invented by Giovanni Fabri*—one of the 
earliest members of the Accademia dei Lincei—who first used 
it in a letter to Federigo Cesi dated 13 April 1625. The first 
pictures made with the aid of this instrument are usually 
supposed to be those of the bee and weevil interpolated by 
Francesco Stelluti (1630) in his Italian translation of the 
poems of Persius. The first “micrography ” is the Century 
of Microscopic Observations by Pierre Borel,* published in 
Latin at The Hague in 1656: but it was soon followed by the 
similar work of Henry Power’ (1663-4) and the more 
celebrated Micrographia of Robert Hooke (1665)—both 
written in English and printed in London. 
The writings of Stelluti and Borel and Power and Hooke 
all antedate anything that Leeuwenhoek ever published. 
But when he wrote his first letters he had probably never 
heard of any of these authors: and as he could read neither 
English nor Latin nor Italian, they could have afforded him 
1 Cf. Redi (1678), Mensert (1831), Harting (1850), Pansier (1901), etc. 
2 I cannot refrain from mentioning here a remarkable fantasy recently 
published by our greatest living English poet and novelist—an unhistorical 
story revealing more than superficial historical knowledge. I refer to 
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Eye of Allah”, printed in his volume entitled 
Debits and Credits (8° London, 1926). 
3 Fabri or Fabro, in Italian. His real patronymic was Faber, and he 
was descended from a family of this name who came from Bamberg in 
Bavaria. Cf. Carutti (1883, pp. 25, 39), ete. 
4 Pierre Borel, alias Petrus Borellus (1620-1689), a French physician, 
antiquary, and philologist. Cf. Nowv. Biogr. Gén., VI, 697. 
* Henry Power (1623-1668), M.D. Educated at Christ’s College, 
Cambridge, and practised as a doctor at Halifax. He was one of the first 
Fellows of the Royal Society—having been elected in 1663. 
