78 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



The portrait (Fig. 18) which forms a frontispiece to his 

 Arcana Natum represents him at the age of sixty -three, 

 and shows the pleasing countenance of a. firm man in vigor- 

 ous health. Richardson says: "In the face peering through 

 the big wig there is the quiet force of Cromwell and the 

 delicate disdain of Spinoza." "It is a mixed racial type, 

 Semitic and Teutonic, a Jewish-Saxon ; obstinate and y 

 imaginative; its very obstinacy a virtue, saving it from flying 

 too far wild by its imagination." 



Recent Additions to His Biography. — There was asingular 

 scarcity of facts in reference to Leeuwenhoek's life until 1885, 

 when Dr. Richardson published in TkeAsclepiad* the results 

 of researches made by Mr. A. Wynter Blyth in Leeuwenhoek 

 native town of Delft. I am indebted to that article for much 

 that follows. 



His Arcana Nature and other scientific letters contain 

 a complete record of his scientific activity, but "about his 

 parentage, his education, and his manner of making a living 

 there was nothing but conjecture to go upon." The few 

 scraps of personal history were contained in the Encyclo- 

 paedia articles by Carpenter' and others, and these were 

 wrong in sustaining the hypothesis that Leeuwenhoek was 

 an optician or manufacturer of lenses for the market. Al- 

 though he ground lenses for his own use, there was no need 

 on his part of increasing his financial resources by their sale. 

 He held under the court a minor office designated 'Chamber- 

 lain of the Sheriff.' The duties of the office were those of a 

 beadle, and were set forth in his commission, a document 

 still extant. The requirements were light, as was also the 

 salary, w r hich amounted to about £26 a year. He held this 

 post for thirty-nine years, and the stipend was thereafter 

 continued to him to the end of his life. 



Van Leeuwenhoek was derived from a good Delft family. 



* Leeuwenhoek and the Rise 0} Histology. The Asclepiad, Vol. II, 1885. 





 



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