78 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
The portrait (Fig. 18) which forms a frontispiece to his 
Arcana Nature represents him at the age of sixty-three, 
and shows the pleasing countenance of a firm man in vigor- 
ous health. Richardson savs: “In the face peering through 
the big wig there is the quict force of Cromwell and the 
delicate disdain of Spinoza.’ “It is a mixed racial type, 
Semitic and Teutonic, a Jewish-Saxon; obstinate and yet 
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 The A sclepiad * the results 
of researches made by Mr. A. Wynter Blyth in Leeuwenhoek’s 
native town of Delft. J am indebted to that article for much 
that follows. 
Mis Arcana Nature and other scientific letters contained 
a complete recerd 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- 
pedia articles by Carpenter and others, and these were 
wrong in sustaining the hypothesis that Ieeuwenhoek 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, which 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 of Histology. The Asclepiad, Vol. II, 1885. 
