Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [131]
In the 1670s and ’80s, both Christiaan Huygens and Constantijn Huygens junior became enthusiastic grinders of lenses for telescopes and microscopes, and practising microscopists. Both corresponded with and visited the famous Dutch microscopist Anton van Leeuwenhoek in Leiden. So it is hardly surprising to find the entire Huygens family captivated by the newly published English book with which Robert Hooke’s name and reputation are most lastingly associated, Micrographia.
Although Robert Hooke’s reputation as an experimentalist and instrument-maker was already considerable at home in England in the early 1660s, he became a figure of note in the Europe-wide community of virtuosi beyond the Royal Society, particularly that in the United Provinces, with the publication of Micrographia in January 1665. The sumptuously illustrated book established his reputation in the international scientific community virtually overnight.3 Immediately it appeared, intellectuals across Europe began exchanging views on the book, and above all its magnificent engravings, in their correspondence.4
The interest of Christiaan Huygens, still at this time domiciled in the family house at The Hague, was immediately aroused when his London- based Scottish friend Sir Robert Moray mentioned Micrographia to him – and the fact that it included information on lens-making (a topic Christiaan was particularly interested in) – in January, and promised to send him a copy shortly thereafter. Moray expressed his satisfaction with the book, one of the first publications licensed by the new Royal Society, but confessed that he had not had time to do more than glance at it himself.5
On 26 February Moray dispatched a copy of Micrographia to The Hague with a covering letter, entrusting it to the English diplomat Sir William Davidson to deliver.6 Because Huygens somehow missed Davidson, however, the book and letter did not reach him until 25 March. The following day he wrote an enthusiastic letter to Moray telling him that he had had no idea the book was of such consequence, and particularly praising the quality of the illustrations and engraving.
But before the book reached him and gained his immediate respect, Christiaan Huygens had unfortunately had some less flattering things to say about Hooke’s abilities in general, based on face-to-face encounters with the Curator of Experiments while Huygens was visiting London some years earlier. Between the dispatch and arrival of his copy of Micrographia, Christiaan had formed some superficial views on it based on selected extracts from the text sent to him by his father, Sir Constantijn Huygens, who happened to be in Paris on Stadholder business in February 1665 and had swiftly obtained a copy.7 Christiaan had at this point not yet had sight of the vital accompanying engravings of a whole sequence of natural phenomena much-magnified, nor had he any idea that the illustrations were the glory of the entire publication.
Writing to his son, Sir Constantijn was full of praise for Micrographia. Christiaan, by contrast, basing his judgement on the selected extracts, expressed surprise at the ‘rashness’ of some of Hooke’s conjectures. Hooke was neither amiable, nor a good enough mathematician for his activities in any field to be taken seriously, he confided to his father: ‘Thanks for the extracts from Hooke [Micrographia]. I know him very well. He understands no geometry at all. He makes himself ridiculous by his boasting.’8
In Paris, Sir Constantijn did not keep his scientist son’s doubts about Micrographia to himself. Among the French virtuosi who seized eagerly upon Micrographia was Adrien Auzout, a talented observational astronomer and instrument-maker whose name is associated with the development of the eyepiece micrometer for long telescopes. As soon as he heard about Hooke’s book, he arranged to borrow Sir Contantijn’s copy.9 Shortly after Huygens senior had returned to Holland, Auzout wrote from