Micrographia nova: sive nova & curiosa variorum minutorum corporum singularis cujusdam & noviter

My soul has clung to you: your right hand has upheld me. And God is invoked by the heart without ceasing, and where God is, there is light, there is everything, there is the microscope, there is everything that exists, and where God is, there is everything.

—especially the English one of the distinguished Mr. Hooke, which compelled even those most versed in optical study to consume much time until they could achieve their accurate position and distance (as happened to me personally). The objective lens, fashioned from the most minute segments, is convex on both sides; hence, he had promised himself a greater enlargement and extension of the subjects. However, he had not yet observed that the glass, the aperture of which barely exceeds the point of a needle, adheres too closely to the subject, so that scarcely a tenth part of the thickness of a knife blade of space remains between them. This is certainly a great impediment to the rays of light. If, however, anyone should wish to recognize a subject accurately and distinctly through these microscopes, it is necessary that he enter a dark or obscured room and receive the luminous rays either through a small chink in the window from the sun, or from a candle lit with a convex or concave mirror. But my microscope of new invention does not require these individual things. Rather, even with the sun shining among clouds—indeed, on any clear day—it represents subjects as clear, distinct, and large to the point of a miracle, as will be evident from what follows.

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FIG. I.