The Early Correspondence of Christian Huygens

Abstract

NEVER before, we venture to assert, even in this age of “complete editions,” has so colossal a literary monument been raised to the memory of a great man as the edition of the works of Christian Huygens, of which the first instalment now lies before us. In a huge and splendid volume of 621 quarto pages, is contained the correspondence, from his ninth to his twenty-eighth year, of the “young Archimedes,” as his friends delighted to call him. Yet out of 2600 documents in the hands of the Commission charged by the Amsterdam Academy of Sciences with the superintendence of the publication, no more than 365 have as yet been printed. Seven additional tomes, at least as massive as that just now issued from the press at the Hague, will be needed to bring to completion the initial section of the comprehensive record. The works of Huygens, edited and inedited, will follow, with an elaborate biography, so that we may safely assume that the present century will not see the end of an enterprise the pecuniary responsibility of which has been generously undertaken by the Scientific Society of Holland.

Œuvres Complètes de Christian Huygens publiées par la Société Hollandaise des Sciences.

Tome Premier: Correspondance 1638–1656. (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1888.)