The claims of Coster and Haarlem considered, as opposed to those of Gutenberg and Mentz.—Claims based upon tradition.—No contemporary authorities in their favor.—Abundance of such testimony in favor of Gutenberg and Mentz.—Probable origin of tradition.—Block books.—Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis.—Evidence of the Types: wood or metal, cut or cast?—Books “jettez en molle.”—Age of the Paper.—Date of Costume.—Fraternity of Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life.

Clear and convincing as the evidence appears to be, that the Art of Typography originated in Germany, and that the honor claimed for Gutenberg as its inventor is rightly his; both positions are stoutly contested by the Dutch, who assert that the Art originated at Haarlem, and was the invention of one Laurence Janssoen, the Coster or Sacristan of the great church of that city, who according to some of their writers, was not only the first engraver of block-books, and cutter of separable letters, but also the first who cast fusile metal types. It is necessary therefore, before proceeding further, to examine the grounds upon which these assertions are based, and to ascertain what amount of truth they contain.

The claim on behalf of Haarlem was first made by Jan Van Zuyren, (b. 1517; d. 1591), between the years 1549 and 1561,—(upwards of a century, at least, after the appearance of the first printed book in Germany),—in “A Dialogue on the first Invention of the Art of Typography,” of which only a part of the Dedicatory Preface remains. In this fragment, reprinted by Scriverius, the writer says:—

“It is from the love of my country alone, that I undertake this work, and that I institute further inquiries upon the subject of it; as I cannot consent that our claims to a portion of this glory;—claims which are even at this day fresh in the remembrance of our fathers, to whom, so to express myself, they have been transmitted from hand to hand from their ancestors, should be effaced from the memory of men, and be buried in eternal oblivion; claims of which it is our duty to preserve the memorial, for the benefit of our latest posterity.

“The city of Mentz, without doubt, merits great praise, for having been the first to produce and publish to the world in a becoming garb, an invention which she had received from us; for having perfected and embellished an art as yet rude and unformed. Who indeed, (although it be less difficult to add to an invention already made, than to originate a new one) would withhold the praises and honor due to a city, to which all the world considers itself in a particular manner indebted for so great a benefit?

“For the rest, excellent Sir, you may consider it as certain that the foundations of this splendid art were laid in our city of Haarlem, rudely, indeed, but still the first. Here (be it understood without offence to the people of Mentz) the art of Typography was born and saw the light, with all her members formed, so that she might hereafter increase in strength and stature. Here, she for a long time received the treatment and the cares, which it is customary to use towards tender infancy, and for a long series of years was confined within the walls of a private dwelling house, which, though somewhat dilapidated, is still standing; but which has long since been despoiled of its precious contents. The art of printing, indeed, was here brought up, nourished, and maintained at small expense, and with too great parsimony; until at length, despising the poor and confined appearance of her humble abode, she became the companion of a certain stranger, and leaving behind her native meanness, shewed herself publicly at Mentz, where after having become enriched, she in a short time rose to eminence.”[83]

Theodore Volckart Coornhert, an engraver, having in company with Van Zuyren established a printing office in Haarlem, published on the year 1561, a Dutch translation of Cicero’s Offices. In the Dedication of this work to the Burgomasters, Judges, and Senators of the city, he writes:—

“Most honorable and revered Sirs; it has often been related to me, bon fide, that the most useful art of Typography was originally invented in our city of Haarlem, although in a somewhat rude manner; for it is easier to perfect by degrees an art already discovered, than to invent a new one. This art, having been afterwards carried to Mentz by an unfaithful servant, was there perfected, and as it was also first promulgated there, that city has so generally acquired the reputation of having first invented it, that our citizens can obtain but little credence, when they assert themselves to have been the real inventors; a fact generally believed by the greater number of them, and especially considered as undoubted by our most ancient citizens. I am aware, that in consequence of the blameable neglect of our ancestors, the common opinion that this art was invented at Mentz, is now so firmly established, that it is in vain to hope to change it, even by the best evidence, and the most irrefragable proof. But truth does not cease to be truth, because it is known only to a few; and I for my part, believe this to be most certain; convinced as I am, by the faithful testimonies of men, alike respectable from their age and authority; who not only have often told me of the family of the inventor, and of his name and surname; but have even described to me the rude manner of printing first used, and pointed out to me with their fingers the abode of the first printer. And therefore, not because I am jealous of the glory of others, but because I love truth, and desire to pay that tribute to the honor of our city which is justly her due, I have thought it incumbent upon me to mention these things.”

In 1567, Ludovico Guicciardini printed at Antwerp, a description of the Low Countries. The work was in Italian, and writing of Haarlem, he says:—

“According to the common tradition of the inhabitants, and the assertion of the other natives of Holland, as well as the testimony of certain authors and other records, it appears that the art of printing and stamping letters and characters on paper, in the manner now used, was first invented in this place. But the author of the invention happening to die, before the art was brought to perfection and had acquired repute, his servant, they say, went to reside at Mentz; where, giving proof of his knowledge in that science, he was joyfully received; and where, he having applied himself to the business with unremitting diligence, it was brought to entire perfection, and became at length generally known, in consequence of which, the fame afterwards spread abroad and became general, that the art and science of printing originated in that city. What the truth really is, I am not able, nor will I take upon me, to decide; it sufficing me to have said these few words, that I might not be guilty of injustice to this town and country.”

Eytzinger, in his work on the topography of the Low Countries, printed in 1583, and Braunius of Cologne, in his Civitates Orbis Terrarum, printed in 1570–1588, assign to Haarlem the origin of the art. These authors had before them the statement already quoted from Coornhert, as well as that of Ulric Zell, which says that Block-book Donatuses were originally printed in Holland; and they assume that to be a fact which Guicciardini will go no further than to repeat as a tradition, for the truthfulness of which he will not vouch.

We now come to the account given by Hadrian Junius,[84] in his work entitled Batavia, printed in 1588, thirteen years after his death.

This account[85] is supposed, from the context, to have been written in the year 1568, and in it the name of Coster appears for the first time.

“About a hundred and twenty eight years ago,” he says, “Laurentius Janssoen Coster inhabited a decent and fashionable house in the city of Haarlem, situated in the market place opposite the royal palace. The name of Coster was assumed, and inherited from his ancestors, who had long enjoyed the honorable and lucrative office of Coster or Sexton to the church. This man deserves to be restored to the honor of being the first inventor of printing, of which he has been unjustly deprived by others, who have enjoyed the praises due to him alone. As he was walking in the wood contiguous to the city, which was the general custom of the richer citizens and men of leisure, in the afternoon and on holidays he began at first to cut some letters upon the rind of a beech tree; which for fancy’s sake, being impressed on paper, he printed one or two lines as a specimen for his grand-children (the sons of his daughter) to follow. This having happily succeeded, he meditated greater things (as he was a man of ingenuity and judgment); and first of all with his son-in-law Thomas Peter (who by the way left three sons, who all attained the consular dignity), invented a more glutinous writing ink, because he found the common ink sunk and spread; and then formed whole pages of wood, with letters cut upon them;—of which sort I have seen some essays in an anonymous work, printed only on one side, entitled Speculum nostrÆ salutis: in which it is remarkable, that in the infancy of printing (as nothing is complete at its first invention), the back sides of the pages were pasted together, that they might not by their nakedness betray their deformity.—These beechen letters he afterwards changed for leaden ones, and these again for a mixture of tin and lead, as a less flexible and more solid and durable substance. Of the remains of which types, when they were turned to waste metal, those old wine-pots were cast, that are still preserved in the family house which looks into the market-place, inhabited afterwards by his great-grandson Gerard Thomas, a gentleman of reputation, whom I mention for the honor of the family, and who died a few years since. A new invention never fails to engage curiosity. And when a commodity never before seen excited purchasers, to the advantage of the inventor, the admiration of the art increased, dependents were enlarged, and workmen multiplied; the first calamitous incident! Among these was one John. Whether, as we suspect, he had ominously the name of Faustus—unfaithful and unlucky to his master,—or whether he was really a person of that name, I shall not much inquire; being unwilling to molest the silent shades, who suffer from a consciousness of their past actions in this life. This man, bound by oath to keep the secret of printing, when he thought he had learned the art of joining the letters, the method of casting the types, and other things of that nature, taking the most convenient time that was possible, on Christmas eve, when every one was customarily employed in lustral sacrifices, seizes the collection of types, and all the implements his master had got together, and, with one accomplice, marches off to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and at last settled at Mentz, as at an asylum of security, where he might go to work with the tools he had stolen. It is certain that in a year’s time, viz. in 1442, the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus, which was a grammar much used at that time, together with the Tracts of Peter of Spain, came forth there, from the same types as Laurentius had made use of at Haarlem. These were the first products of his press. These are the principal circumstances that I have collected from credible persons, far advanced in years, which they have transmitted like a flaming torch from hand to hand. I have also met with others who have confirmed the same.”[86]

Junius’s principal informant was, he says, his tutor, Nicholas Galius, an old gentlemen of very tenacious memory, who related that when a boy, he “had often heard one Cornelius, a bookbinder (then upwards of eighty years of age, who had when a youth, assisted at the printing office of Coster), describe with great earnestness the numerous trials and experiments made by his master in the infancy of the invention. When he came to that part of his narrative touching the robbery, he would burst into tears, and curse with the greatest vehemence those nights in which he had slept with so vile a miscreant, declaring that were he still alive, he could with pleasure execute the thief with his own hands.” Junius states, that he received a similar account from Quirinus Talesius, the Burgomaster, who asserted that it was recited to him by the said Cornelius: the latter died in 1515.[87]

Of Laurent Janssoen Coster, it seems to be satisfactorily proved, that he belonged to the most distinguished and wealthy class of the inhabitants of the city. He was born, it is supposed, about 1370, or 1371; and notices of him appear in official records as an officer of the city guard, a member of the great council, sheriff, sheriff-president, and treasurer, from 1417 to 1434. From the treasurer’s accounts he seems to have enjoyed a rent-charge upon the city from 1422 to 1435. In 1440 an entry is made of the payment of a similar charge to one “Ymme, widow of Laurent Janssoen”; and as Haarlem was visited by a contagious malady in 1439, the probability is that Laurent was one of its victims. Of his family the following particulars have been handed down. His daughter Lucetta married Thomas the son of Pieter; and bore him two daughters and three sons, Pieter, AndrÉ and Thomas, all of whom filled important public office. Pieter the son of Thomas, had a son called Thomas the son of Pieter, whose son Gerard, died before Junius wrote his work. The last descendant of the family was William the son of Cornelius Kroon, who died the 24th March, 1724.[88]

As the account inserted in Junius’s Batavia is the groundwork upon which all subsequent writers base their arguments in behalf of the claims they advance for Coster, it behoves us to note how far it agrees with the statements previously made by others.

It is alleged that Coster (1,) first cut letters on the bark of a beech tree for his amusement; (2,) then, with letters so cut, he made words and sentences for the instruction of his grand-children; after which he (3,) invented, with the assistance of his son-in-law, a more glutinous ink, whereupon he (4,) cut whole pages of letters on wood, and printed them. He next (5,) made letters of lead, and pewter, to supersede those of wood; (6,) becoming known as a printer, and a public demand arising for his productions, he (7,) engaged numerous workmen, one of whom (8,) stole all his materials, and carried them off to Mentz.

Neither Van Zuyren, nor Coornhert, give particulars on the first five points, and in regard to the 6th and 7th, their statements are opposed to those of Junius. They say the art, as invented at Haarlem, was rude and imperfect, and was not made public there; and although Coornhert says he had often been told of the family of the inventor, his name and surname, of the rude manner of printing first used, and had even had shewn to him the abode of the first printer; he neither gives his name nor describes the method adopted. Guicciardini gives his statement, as a matter of hearsay, for the truth of which he will not vouch; but in it there is this difference from those of Van Zuyren and Coornhert, that the author of the invention happening to die before the art was brought to perfection and had acquired repute, his servant, they say, went to reside at Mentz.

Here then are three writers, living at the same time with Junius, all making inquiries upon the same subject, and deriving their information from a common source, who differ from him on almost every point, and in some of the most material plainly contradict him.

With reference to the 5th point, the invention of metal types,—whether cut or cast Junius does not say,—Henry Spiegel, senator of Amsterdam (b. 1549, d. 1612), states in his Dutch poem Hertspiegel.

“Thou first, Laurentius, to supply the defect of wooden tablets, adoptedst wooden types, and afterwards didst connect them with a thread, to imitate writing. A treacherous servant surreptitiously obtained the honor of the discovery: but truth itself, though destitute of common and wide spread fame, truth I say, still remains.”

This Spiegel was a personal friend of Coornhert, and it may be presumed consulted him respecting Junius’s account of the origin of printing at Haarlem. Of metal types he makes no mention; but if the traditions of Haarlem at that time gave Laurentius the credit of their invention, it is altogether unaccountable why Spiegel omitted so noteworthy a circumstance. He probably rejected, on Coornhert’s authority, what Junius had written on that part of the subject.

Junius’s story of the theft of Coster’s types and implements is confused and contradictory. For supposing for a moment that Coster was the printer of the Mirror of Salvation, and that the types were made of pewter; if all that had been cast for printing, (at the most not more than two pages at a time), had been carried away, together with the punches, matrices, &c., how came the wine-pots, alleged to be still in existence when Junius wrote, to be made of them when they became waste metal? These wine-pots afford grounds for the assertion, by later writers, that the art continued to be practised by the Coster family after the alleged theft; but that assertion is contradicted by the statements elsewhere made. Of the theft itself there is no proof. The records of the city have been searched in vain for evidence of any such robbery. And the search has been equally fruitless for evidence of any such invention. As to the latter, the wine-pots are the chief witnesses. They were said to be kept in the house inhabited by Laurent Coster’s great-grandson Gerard Thomas; they could be appealed to; but what then? their evidence is not even as valuable as that adduced by the school boy who claimed to be the carver of a certain piece of wood-work, “and here,” said he, “is the very knife with which I did it.” In the boy’s case it could at least be shewn, that the knife was one with which the carving might have been executed; but it would be utterly impossible to prove, without other and more reliable evidence than the appearance of the pots themselves, that they had been the original prototypes of the art of Typography. Meerman, however, insists upon it that the Costers carried on the printing business at Haarlem until about the year 1472, when a better method having been introduced by disciples of the Mentz school, they sold off their stock and retired. But all these allegations are based upon suppositions; there is no proof whatever that such was the case: only, it is evident that some such story must be contrived, in order to account for the pewter wine-pots being manufactured out of the waste and worn-out types. But then the part of the narrative of Junius where the wine-pots are alluded to, does not tally with that other part, wherein it is stated that the thief and his accomplice decamped with “the collection of types, and all the implements his master had got together.” For Junius does not say, that Laurentius Janssoen Coster got together fresh implements, and made new types; nor does he intimate that his family did so after his decease. On the contrary, he speaks of the theft as an irreparable loss, the thought of which made the old book-binder Cornelius, curse with the greatest vehemence. This irascible garrulous old man is the same who, when a boy, is said to have been employed in Coster’s printing office, and who, when upwards of eighty years old, told the story to Nicholas Galius the old gentlemen of tenacious memory, who in his turn told it to his pupil Junius. It is plain that the sole object of the original tellers of the story of the stranger, servant, or thief, was to account for the otherwise inexplicable fact, that the world was persuaded that printing originated at Mentz, instead of, as the tradition-mongers would have it, at Haarlem. It is singular that Van Zuyren and Coornhert make no mention of Coster and the wine-pots. They had had the house pointed out to them, where printing was said to have been invented and first practised in private and in a very rude and imperfect form; and if that house really belonged to the family of Laurent Janssoen, copies of the books printed,—the old types themselves,—the original prototypes of the art of Typography—ought surely to have been the pride and glory of the house, rather than pewter wine-pots, a common enough article of household furniture.

“But,” says Van Zuyren, “the house has long since been despoiled of its precious contents.” In his days then, and he is the earliest writer on the subject, the wine-pots did not exist; or if they did, and if they were known to be the re-shaped relics of the original metal types, how is his ignorance of their existence to be accounted for? He and Coornhert were both living and writing in the city at the same time with Junius, with whom, as one of the learned literati of the day, they could not but have been well acquainted, if not on intimate and friendly terms. After a long absence, Junius returned to the city where the others were born and bred, and where one of them, Van Zuyren, filled the office of Scabinus from 1549 to 1561, when he was advanced to the dignity of Burgomaster, (in which year his partner dedicated his work to him and the other officials of the city). How then came Junius alone to learn the history of Laurent Janssoen’s invention? and how is Van Zuyren and Coornhert’s silence to be accounted for, in regard to such important matters affecting Laurent the son of Jans, who filled the lucrative office of Coster of the great church; who was member of the great council, sheriff, sheriff-president, and finally treasurer of the city;—whose portrait was engraved, (or supposed to have been), along with those of Ouwater, Hemsen, Mandin, and Volkert, all eminent Haarlemese painters of the fifteenth century;—and whose history must have been well known to both, when they wrote, the one declaring “for the love of his country alone,”—and the other, “not because I am jealous of the glory of others, but because I love truth”? Where then was the love of country and the love of truth, if they omitted, or suppressed, the name of the man who invented the art, the glory of which they “could not consent should be effaced from the memory of men, and be buried in eternal oblivion; claims of which it is our duty to preserve the memorial, for the benefit of our latest posterity”?

There can be no doubt but that considerations of this nature have led older writers to express suspicions in regard to the authenticity of Junius’s narrative, and to believe that his manuscript was tampered with between the time of his death, and the publication of the work in which it appears; as well as to induce “misgivings” in the minds of learned Dutchmen of the present day “as to the ultimate result of full inquiry into the subject.”[89]

Admitting with the writers on the Haarlem side, that the Coster family was one of wealth and influence, how comes it, on the one hand, that the thief who stole the types and implements was not pursued, exposed and punished? or at any rate stripped of his stolen plumes, when so early as 1457 works were published in Mentz by printers who ascribed the whole merit of the invention to themselves?—and on the other, that having replaced the stolen types and other implements by new ones, and continuing to print until 1472, the descendants of Laurent never claimed the honor of the invention for themselves or their sire, although they must have known all along of what was taking place at Mentz,—where Faust and Schoeffer were yearly publishing books with their names attached? How comes it that the family possessed no documents that in any way referred to the invention?—that they never kept by them copies of the works they are said to have printed?—that none of such works were known or found in Haarlem until 1654 or 1660, when a chestfull of old books without date or printer’s name was bought by the city authorities at a sale at the Hague—two centuries later, and at once attributed to them? How is it that no Dutch writer or printer, from 1441 to 1588, claimed the honor of the invention for his countryman Coster?—that neither Nicholas the son of Peter of Haarlem, who printed at Padua in 1476, and at Vicenza in 1477; Henri of Haarlem, who printed from 1482 to 1499 in different cities; and Gerard of Haarlem, who exercised the art at Florence in 1499, never claimed it for their brother citizen and birthplace? How comes it that the earliest known printers in Haarlem itself, John Andriesson and Jacob Bellaert, whose books are dated 1483 and 1485, are silent upon the subject?—that the first printers in Utrecht in 1473—and between that date and 1498, those of Alost, Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Culembourg, Delft, Deventer, Ghent, Gouda, Hertogenbosch, Leyden, Louvain, St. Maartensdyk, Niemegen, Oudenarde, Schiedam, Schoonhoven, Zwolle, and elsewhere in Holland and the Low countries, make no mention of it?—and that nothing whatever is known of any of the “multiplied workmen,” and “dependents,” whom Laurent Janssoen Coster, it is alleged, was obliged to employ to meet the demands made upon him by purchasers for copies of the products of the newly invented art? How, finally, is it to be accounted for, that while Coster’s descendants were living in Haarlem, when Van Zuyren, Coornhert, and Junius, were writing their works, those writers omitted to make inquiry of any member of the family on a subject respecting which the family were the parties most interested, and could have given the most authentic information? Perhaps they did; and when they asked for the story of the invention, discovered that the family had, like Canning’s knife-grinder, “no story to tell.”

To the objections, that no printed book bears the name of Coster or his descendants, and that neither he nor they ever entered their protest against the pretensions of Mentz, Koning replies:[90]—“We agree that no such book has been found; but neither is any book to be found bearing the name of Gutenberg. Must we, on this account, strike his name out of the list of the first printers? The aim of the first printers was to imitate manuscripts, and to make their printed books pass for such; and therefore, lest their art should be found out, it behoved them to keep their names a profound secret.... The first inventor could have no idea of the astonishing influence which his art would have in the world in future ages; and no person can feel surprise that he did not affix his name to his first essays.

“Besides, the printers of the fifteenth century very commonly omitted to put their names to the editions printed by them. The number of books existing of this century, without either the name of the printer or the place of their publication is prodigious. Ulric Zell, for example, according to Santander, printed eighty books, and, out of this number, has only put his name to two or three. With what appearance of reason is it insisted, that the works, which are attributed to Laurent Janssoen Coster, are not his, because they are not signed with his name? “But it is said, that neither Coster nor his descendants ever vindicated their claims, against the pretensions put forth by the Mentz printers.... Neither did Gutenberg vindicate his, against Faust and Schoeffer; who, in the colophon of the Psalter of 1457, and in the subscriptions of numerous other books, took all the honor to themselves, making no mention of him whatever; although it is not doubted that Gutenberg set up a printing office of his own in 1455, and he is regarded by the writers on the side of Mentz as the inventor and perfector of the art of printing.”

As to the inventor having no idea of the astonishing influence which his art would have in the world in future ages, it is plain from the evidence given in the Strasburg law-suit, that Gutenberg and his partners were fully persuaded, that the work they had undertaken was one by which they would make their fortunes. And, although it is asserted that Gutenberg never vindicated his claim against Faust and Schoeffer, yet it is certain that his merit as the inventor of printing was known to the Elector of Mentz, and the King of France, and it is also expressly admitted, not only by his contemporaries, in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, but by Peter Schoeffer himself, who besides the detailed account of the origin of the invention which he gave to the Abbot Trithemius in the year 1484, allowed the insertion of the following among other Latin verses at the end of the “Institutes of Justinian,” printed by him in 1468:—

These lines are thus translated by Humphreys,—“He who is pleased to create high talents has given us two great masters of the art of engraving, both bearing the name of John, both being natives of the city of Mayence, and both having become illustrious as the first printers of books. Peter advanced with them towards the desired goal, and, starting the last, arrived first, having been rendered the most skilful in the art of engraving by him who alone bestows light and genius.” There can be no doubt but the two Johns and the Peter here referred to were John Gutenberg, John Faust, and Peter Schoeffer.[91]

Up to the date of Junius’s publication, 1588, no writer had claimed the honor of the invention for Coster; and but three, who wrote between 1549 and 1567, had asserted Haarlem to have been its birthplace;—and one of these, as we have seen, expressly declines to vouch for the accuracy of the tradition. On the other hand, we learn from the researches of Dean Mallinckrot,[92] that up to the date of Junius’s publication no less than sixty-two writers had awarded the honor of the invention to Gutenberg, and fixed its birthplace, and the place of its promulgation to the world at the cities of Strasburg and Mentz. Although abundant proof has already been given upon these points, the following selection from contemporary and historic evidence is added, in order to shew the strength and solidity of the basis upon which those claims rest, and how thoroughly it outweighs all that has been brought forward by writers on the opposite side.

In 1457, on the publication of their Psalter, Faust and Schoeffer ascribed to themselves the merit of the new invention.

After Faust’s death, Schoeffer inserted in the imprint or colophon on the last page of his works, the words “in nobili urbe MagentiÆ ejusdem (i. e. artis imprimendi) inventriÆ elimatriceque prima.”

In 1480, William Caxton, in his continuation of Higden’s Polychronicon, printed at Westminster, says “About this time [1455] the craft of imprynting was first found in Mogunce in Almayne.”[93] In the Fasciculi Temporum printed by Quentel at Cologne in 1478 and 1481, it is stated that the art of printing originated at Mentz.

In the Black book or Register of the Garter, it is said with reference to the 35th year of the reign of Henry VI, anno 1457, “In this year of our most pious king, the art of printing books first began at Mentz, a famous city of Germany.” And in Fabian’s Chronicle, the writer, a contemporary of Caxton, says, “This yere (35th of Henry VI,) after the opynyon of dyverse wryters, began in a citie of Almaine, namyd Mogunce, the crafte of empryntynge bokys, which sen that tyme hath had wonderful encrease.” It was in this year 1457, that the first book appeared which has the printer’s name, date, and place of printing, affixed. This is the celebrated Psalter printed by Faust and Schoeffer.

In 1486, Berthold, Archbishop of Mentz, in a mandate which will be quoted at length in a subsequent chapter, states, “this art, [printing] was first discovered in this city of Mentz.”

A single testimony similar to either of the above in favor of Haarlem, would have been hailed with delight by any of the writers in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and their tribe of followers who advocate the claims of that city; but what follows is much more forcible and decisive.

“Of all the authors to whom the world is indebted for a particular account of the discovery of printing,” says, Mr. Palmer,[94] “Abbot Trithemius justly claims pre-eminence; both upon account of his living nearest to the time when the art originated, which he tells us was in his younger years; as well as his care to derive his intelligence on the subject from the purest sources. We have two noble testimonies out of his chronicle; one from the first part entitled Chronicon Spanheimense, wherein, speaking of the year 1450, he says: ‘That about this time, the art of printing and casting single types was found out anew in the city of Mentz, by one John Gutenberg, who having spent his whole estate in this difficult discovery, by the assistance and advice of some honest men, John Faust and others, brought his undertaking at length to perfection; that the first improver of this art, after the inventor, was Peter Schoeffer de Gernsheim, who afterwards printed a great many volumes; that the said Gutenberg lived at Mentz, in a house called Zum-junghen, but afterwards known by the name of the printing house.’

“The next passage, which is fuller, and for its singularity and decisiveness deserves to be set down at length, is taken out of the second part of Trithemius’s chronicle, entitled Chronicon Hirsaugiense:—‘About this time (anno 1450) in the city of Mentz in Germany upon the Rhine, and not in Italy, as some writers falsely affirmed, the wonderful and till then unknown art of printing books by metal types (characterizandi) was invented and devised by John Gutenberg, citizen of Mentz, who, having almost exhausted his whole estate in contriving of this new method, and labouring under such insuperable difficulties, in one respect or other, that he began to despair of and to throw up the whole design; was at length assisted with the advice and purse of John Faust, another citizen of Mentz, and happily brought it to perfection. Having therefore, begun with cutting characters of the letters upon wooden planks, in their right order, and completed their forms, they printed the vocabulary called the Catholicon; but could make no further use of those forms, because there was no possibility of separating the letters, which were engraven on the planks, as we hinted before. To this succeeded a more ingenious invention, for they found out a way of stamping the shapes of every letter of the Latin alphabet, in what they called matrices, from which they afterwards cast their letters, either in copper or tin, hard enough to be printed upon, which they first cut with their own hands. It is certain that this art met with no small difficulties from the beginning of its invention, as I heard thirty years ago from the mouth of Peter Schoeffer de Gernsheim, citizen of Mentz, and son-in-law to the first inventor of the Art. For when they went about printing the Bible, before they had worked off the third quire it had cost them already above 4000 florins. But the afore-mentioned Peter Schoeffer, then servant, (famulus,) and afterwards son-in-law, to the first inventor John Faust, as we hinted before, being a person of great ingenuity, discovered an easier method of casting letters, and perfected the art as we now have it. These three kept their manner of printing very secret for some time, until it was divulged by their servants, without whose help it was impossible to manage the business, who carried it first to Strasburg, and by degrees all over Europe. Thus much will suffice concerning the discovery of this wonderful art, the first inventors of which were citizens of Mentz. These three first discoverers of printing, viz. John Gutenberg, John Faust, and Peter Schoeffer his son-in-law, lived at Mentz, in a house called Zum-junghen, but ever since known by the name of the printing house.’”[95]

Equally clear and to the point, if not more so, as well as the first published in point of time, is the statement given by Johan. Koelhoff, who in 1499 printed the following particulars in the Cologne Chronicle, on the authority of Ulric Zell of Hainault, by whom the art of printing was first introduced to Cologne. Zell learned the art directly from the first Mentz printers; and in the colophons of two small works printed in the years 1466 and 1467, he styles himself a clerk of the diocese of Mentz. The statement is as follows:—

“Of the printing of Books, and when and by whom, this Art was discovered, of which the utility cannot be too highly appreciated, &c.

“Item: This most important art was first found out in Germany, at Mentz on the Rhyne. And it is a great honour to the German nation that such ingenious men were found in it. This took place about the year of our Lord M.CCCC.XL., and from that time to the year L., this art and whatever appertains to it were rendered more perfect. And in the year M.CCCC.L. which was a jubilee year, they began to print; and the first book that was printed was the Bible in Latin, and it was printed with larger characters than those which are now used for printing Missals. Item: Although this art, as we have said, was found out in Mentz in the way in which it is commonly used; nevertheless the prototype of it (‘vurbildung,’ prÆfiguratio) was found in Holland, in the Donatuses (den Donaten) which had been before printed there; and it is from and out of these, that the beginning of this art was taken. And this manner has been found much more masterly and subtle than that which before existed, and it has become more and more ingenious. Item: A person named Omnibonus writes in the preface to Quinctilian, and in other books, that a certain Frenchman, called Nicholas Genson, first discovered this important art; which is clearly not true. For there are persons now living, who can attest, that books were printed at Venice before Nicholas Genson went there, and began to sculpture and set up type. But the first inventor of printing was a citizen of Mentz, born at Strasburg, called Johan. Gudenburch, Gentleman. Item: From Mentz the said art was first carried to Cologne, then to Strasburg, and then to Venice. The commencement and progress of this art has been told me expressly by word of mouth, by the revered master Ulrich Tzell of Hainault,[96] the printer, still living at Cologne in the present year M.CCCC.XCIX., by whom the art was first brought to Cologne. Item: There are ill-informed persons who say that books were printed in more ancient times; but that is contrary to the truth, as in no country are books to be found printed in those times.”

Zell’s account is confirmed by the writer of the Nurimberg Chronicle, printed by Koburger in 1493, who states that in the year 1450, the noble art of typography was first invented by John Gutenberg at Mentz.

To the like effect is the testimony of Marc Ant. Coccius Sabellicus (b. 1436; d. 1506,) in the sixth chapter of his Universal History, printed at Venice in 1504.

In 1502, Wimpheling, the earliest writer in favour of the pretensions of Strasburg, states, in his Epitome Rerum Germanicarum, that Gutenberg was “the inventor of a new art of writing (ars impressoria), which might also be called a divine benefit, and which he happily completed at Mentz.”

In 1505, John Schoeffer, eldest son and successor to Peter, Faust’s son-in-law, declares in a Dedication to the Emperor Maximilian of an edition of Livy, printed that year, that the admirable art of Typography was invented at Mentz in the year 1450, by John Gutenberg, and afterwards improved and perfected by the study, perseverance and labour of John Faust and Peter Schoeffer.[97] This work was edited by the learned Dr. Ivo Wittig, the same who in 1508 erected the memorial tablet in front of the house Zum Gutenberg, the inscription on which is given at page 198.

About 1510, Mariangelus Accursius, a Neapolitan scholar of distinction, wrote on the first page of a Donatus, printed on vellum, “Johan Faust, a citizen of Mentz, the maternal grandfather of Johan Schoeffer, first found out the art of printing with types of brass, for which he afterwards substituted those of lead; his son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer, greatly assisting him in perfecting the art. But this Donatus and Confessionalia was first of all printed in the year 1450. It is certain that he took the idea from a Donatus which had been before printed from engraved wooden blocks in Holland.” The Donatus in which this was written was in the possession of the younger Aldus, who shewed it to Angelo Rocca, by whom the memorandum was copied, and printed in the year 1591.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was intimate with the most learned men and principal printers of Germany, Holland, Italy, and France, and whose inquisitive mind led him to obtain information on every possible topic; who had beside him for many years in the capacity of Secretary, the same Quirinus Talesius from whom Junius obtained the confirmation of the story of Nicholas Galius; who greatly eulogised the productions of the Fleming, Jodocus Badius, a printer in France, and moreover wrote the epitaph over his friend Theodore Martens, the first printer in Belgium, and who was as jealous of the honor of his fatherland as any Hollander could be; nevertheless repeatedly declared Faust to be the earliest printer, and Mentz the city where printing was first practised. This he did in 1518, in his dedicatory Epistle to an edition of Livy, published by John Schoeffer, and again in his own edition of the Epistles of St. Hieronymous, published at Leyden in 1530.

Arnold de Bergel, in his Encomion ChalcographiÆ, previously referred to, describes the first printing of books by John Gutenberg at Mentz in the year 1450. The idea originated, he says, by Gutenberg observing while at Strasburg the impression made by his signet ring in soft wax.[98]

Sebastian Munster, in his Universal Cosmography, printed in 1571, states that in the years 1440 to 1450 the art of printing was invented and first practised in Mentz by John Gutenberg, afterwards assisted by John Faust and John Medinbach.

Peter Van Opmer,[99] a fellow-countryman and contemporary of Junius, and a writer of repute, says with reference to the sudden outburst of learning at the commencement of the fifteenth century:—“This was effected by the assistance of that art, which from metal characters of letters ingeniously cast, disposed in the order in which we write, spread over with a convenient quantity of ink, and put under the press, has ushered into the world books in all languages, and multiplied their copies like a numerous offspring, and has obtained the name of Typography. This Art of Printing was most certainly invented and brought to light by John Faust in the year 1440. It is amazing that the author of so important a discovery, and so generous a promoter of divine and human learning, should be unworthily forgotten, or only casually remembered as a mere artist. Surely such a person deserves a place amongst the greatest benefactors of mankind.”[100]

A goodly number of similar testimonies might easily be collected, in not one of which is any reference made to either Coster or Haarlem. Not a single Dutch or Flemish annalist or chronicler or historian, previous to 1560, ever makes the slightest allusion to the man or the place in connection with the art of printing. Even Jan Gerbrant, Prior of the Carmelite Order at Haarlem, who died there in 1504, knew nothing of the matter. Yet he is the compiler of the Chronicle of the Counts of Holland and Bishops of Utrecht; and if printing had been the invention of his contemporary Coster, and practised in the city of Haarlem, he could not have been ignorant of the facts, nor would he have failed to record them in his Chronicle.

Meerman and his followers vainly try to evade the force of this fatal silence; all their learning and ingenuity are brought to bear, but without effect; for if, as they maintain, the historians of that time considered the attempts made at Haarlem so crude and imperfect, as not to be worthy their notice, what is to be made of the statement of Junius, that the invention attracted notice; that the works printed were publicly sold, and the business increased so much, that numerous workmen and assistants had to be engaged? The number of works said by Koning and others to have issued from the Coster press, indicates anything but a crude and imperfect state of the art; and if those works had been printed by the sacristan of the great Church of Haarlem, the Prior of the Carmelites, living in the city at the same time, must have known of their existence. How then is his silence to be accounted for?

The only rational conclusion to which one can arrive, is, that the tradition, which, after the growth of a hundred years was moulded into historic narrative by Junius, had neither existence nor foundation in the days of Prior Gerbrant. As an aid to history, in the elucidation of facts otherwise obscure, tradition is a valuable auxiliary; but as opposed to history and well known facts, there is no more unreliable source of information. Every one is aware how witnesses of the same occurrence will differ in their statements of the particulars of what they saw; and all who have taken the pains to unravel old traditions well know how wholly unlike their origin they ultimately and all but invariably prove to be. There is no reason for supposing that the traditional account of the origin of printing in Haarlem is an exception to the rule. The age was one prone to the invention of legends; and in the early days of printing in that city, and after Ulric Zell had published his account at Cologne, and attributed to Gutenberg the taking of the idea from the Donatuses first printed in Holland, it is by no means unlikely that an old printer, or an old book-binder, in Haarlem, who had when a boy seen a specimen of a Biblia Pauperum or a Donatus, in the hands of the Sacristan of the Church, would say, first, that he had seen the proof that printing originated in Holland, there, in that city; then, stretching a point, that printing originated there; others, repeating this, would assert that the proof that such was the fact existed; that it had been seen in the hands of the Coster; that the Coster printed it; that there was the house he lived in; that it was a shame the Germans, who stole the idea of the separable types from the Dutch, should get all the credit; that they had robbed Coster of his fame; nay robbed him of his types; that it must have been one of the Johns of Mentz who was the thief; and so on, varying and amplifying the tale, until the time of Junius, who finding the poem of Arnold de Bergel imparting a fresh halo of glory to Mentz and her three first printers, adopted and embellished the tradition, and borrowing certain ideas from Virgil as well as from Bergel, gave in his Batavia an account of the first conception and ultimate realization of the idea, which should stand as a rival to the account given in the Encomion ChalcographiÆ.

The documents upon which the Haarlemese mainly rely, prove of themselves that the tradition grew within the space of a few years almost as rapidly as the pillar-like flower-stalk of the gigantic American aloe, and effloresced as abundantly in the narrative of Junius—the prolific progenitor of a host of subsequent writers:—for first, (in say 1555,) the art only “became the companion of a certain stranger;”[101]—then (1561) it “was carried to Mentz by an unfaithful servant;”[102]—next, (1567) “the author of the invention happening to die before the art was brought to perfection and had acquired repute, his servant they say went to reside at Mentz:”[103]—finally, (1568) the foresworn workman, the thief John, while his master was still alive ... seizes the collection of types, and all the implements his master had got together ... marches off to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and at last settled at Mentz;—and Coster, lamenting his losses, tells his woes to the little boy Cornelis, who used to help the book-binder; and Cornelis is so powerfully affected by the tale, that seventy-two years after, whenever he was asked to repeat it, he would fall into passionate weepings, and curse and execrate the miscreant John, and vow nothing would please him more, were he but alive, than with his own hands to hang him outright.[104] These are the bases upon which are built “the accumulated and still accumulating evidence in favour of Coster,”—the “vast mass of unanswerable evidence in his favour,”—in presence of which “the advocates of Gutenberg’s claim to priority are slow to give way;” and for which slowness they are accused of “closing both eyes and ears to testimony of every kind, refusing to acknowledge that there is the slightest ground for the claims of Holland as against the, asserted, overwhelming evidence in favour of Germany.”[105] With such writers, the array of facts on the Gutenberg side of the question goes for naught. Pinning their faith to Junius they

Labouring thus, they from Meerman to Van Meurs[106]

And patriotic Dutchmen in the nineteenth century, with a full reliance on the stability of the structure thus raised, have struck medals, put up tablets, and erected monuments, commemorative of the memory of the “immortal and incomparable Laurent Janssoen,” and the art he is alleged to have invented, with an enthusiasm strangely at variance with their utter ignorance of the man and his invention for upwards of a century after his death.[107]

Of a very different opinion however was Erasmus, who, it may fairly be presumed, was not left unacquainted by his secretary, Talesius, with the tradition which assigned to Haarlem and Coster the origin of printing; but who shewed, by his public declarations assigning that honor to Mentz, that he deemed the tradition unworthy of belief, and destitute of even a basis of truth. Of a different opinion too, was Van Opmer, who must have been aware of the statements put forth in Coornhert’s edition of Cicero’s Offices, and had opportunity of judging of their truth; although Spiegel, living at the same time and in the same city with Opmer, adopted them, and asserted Laurentius to be the inventor of separable wooden types. Carl Van Mander, however, a later writer, pursuing his investigations in the city of Haarlem, while preparing the materials for his History of the Lives of Painters and Engravers, which was printed there about 1605, is as silent on the subject of Coster, as Prior Gerbrant.

Notwithstanding all this, Meerman and the multitude who follow in his wake, cling to their faith in Junius. His assertions, contradictory as they have been shewn to be, to those of writers immediately preceding him, outweigh with them all other evidence. Enough for them the support he receives in the testimony of Ulric Zell and Mariangelus Accursius. The reader has that testimony before him, and can form his own estimate of its weight on the Costerian side of the balance. Zell is the only authority for the statement that Block-book Donatuses were first printed in Holland. Accursius but recapitulates Zell’s words, upon a Donatus which he states was printed by Faust at Mentz in 1450. Zell was a Fleming, and although he learned the art of printing at Mentz and carried it thence to Cologne, he had without doubt his national partialities; his account is not however borne out by that of Schoeffer, given to Abbot Trithemius in 1484, although the two statements are not contradictory. Neither do they contradict the account of the origin of the art as stated by Bergel. Each may supplement the other. The first idea of printing may have occurred to Gutenberg from the impressions made in wax by his signet ring, and his cogitations upon the subject have been further confirmed by Block-books bought at Aix-la-Chapelle. It may therefore be admitted, that Block-book Donatuses were printed and sold in Holland, prior to 1436. But what then? Haarlem is not Holland, any more than Liverpool is England. And to argue that if such books were printed in Holland, they must therefore have been produced at Haarlem;[108] and if the work of a Hollander, why not of Coster?[109] is simply to attempt to cut through a difficulty which has defied every other effort to penetrate or solve; and moreover it leaves untouched the question, whether separable types were first made in Germany or Holland, which is the hinge whereon the whole controversy in regard to the origin of Typography turns.

But Junius specifies the “Mirror of Human Salvation,” as a work, the like of which, or of which sort, was the work which had been printed by Coster:—a work with wood-cut figures and descriptive text below, and printed on one side only. There were several works of this kind known; and although some have been alluded to in the previous chapters, a more extended notice of them may here be given.

Temptationes Demonis; a large block covering one side of an entire sheet of paper, and containing texts of Scripture, with figures of angels and devils.

Donatus, de Octo Partibus Orationis.

Biblia Pauperum, consisting of forty leaves of small folio; each leaf contains a central design of three scriptural subjects, with two half-length figures of prophets or holy men both above and below; on either side of these are explanatory descriptions, while beneath are their names, with additional inscriptions on scrolls.

Historia Sancti Johannis EvangelistÆ, Ejusque Visiones ApocalypticÆ; folio designs of scenes from the Apocalypse, two subjects on each page, with labels and scrolls containing descriptive matter.

Historia seu Providentia Virginis MariÆ, ex Cantico Canticorum, or the Book of Canticles; consisting of eight blocks, each containing four designs, with Latin inscriptions on scrolls interspersed among the figures.

Historia BeatÆ MariÆ Virginis ex Evangelistis et Patribus excerpta et per Figuras Demonstrata.

Defensorium inviolatÆ Virginitatis MariÆ Virginis.

Der Entkrist, or the Book of Antichrist; consisting of thirty-nine cuts with text.

Ars Memorandi; a quarto work of fourteen pages, consisting of whole page engravings of symbols of the four Evangelists, with accompanying pages of explanations.

Ars Moriendi; a series of quarto cuts, exhibiting the deaths of good and bad men, with descriptive pages of text opposite the cuts.

A quarto work of thirty-two cuts, containing subjects of Sacred writ; under each cut are fifteen verses in the German language.

Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis; fifty-eight leaves, each containing two designs, mostly from the Old or New Testament; each design has a Latin inscription of one line engraved on it. Beneath is placed the descriptive text. In the Latin edition there are five leaves of preface, and in the Dutch four.

Die Kunst Cheiromantia; a work treating of palmistry.

Planetenbuch; treating of the influence of planets on human life.

Mirabilia RomÆ; a guide to the principal shrines in Rome.

Opera nova contemplativa.

Of the above, Koning ascribes all those printed in italics to Coster,[110] together with the Catonis Disticha, and Horarium, the latter a book of eight small pages discovered by M. EnschedÉ of Haarlem, containing the letters of the Alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles’ Creed, &c., printed with moveable characters.[111] Including separate editions, Koning gives Coster the credit of printing seventeen works. Now the time, as well as labour, involved in designing and engraving these works must have been very great. In the Biblia Pauperum there are 200 designs, besides the text; in the Book of Canticles, 32; in the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, 116; besides those in the Ars Moriendi, and the Apocalypse. These are among the very earliest specimens of design and engraving on wood that are known to exist. If then these were executed, as alleged, by Coster in Haarlem,[112] how came it, that his contemporaries knew nothing of them; that Van Mander,—himself an artist and an engraver, who describes in his History, written and printed at Haarlem, the works of Flemish and Dutch artists living both before and after Coster’s time,—is silent in regard to both the man and his works?—although he says that the city of Haarlem “dares to pretend to the glory of having invented printing.”

By this expression it is contended by Coster’s advocates, Van Mander “intended to say, that the claims of Haarlem were well founded.” And furthermore, that his silence is to be accounted for from the fact, that “none of these wood engravings bear the initials of the artists who designed or engraved them, and that he may have been uncertain as to their names.” But what a lame and impotent conclusion is this to arrive at. Van Mander, it is plain, knew of the tradition about the origin of printing in Haarlem. His own work was carried down to the year 1604, and Junius’s Batavia was printed in 1588—sixteen years previously. He could not therefore have been ignorant of what was said in that work about Coster, and his printing works with woodcuts similar to those of the Mirror of Salvation. Knowing that, he must have made inquiry concerning both, and have arrived at the same conclusion as Erasmus and Van Opmer. Otherwise, how is his silence to be accounted for? The very fact of the woodcuts being without initials should have stimulated inquiry. They are the work of an artist of no mean skill; and to suppose that he passed them by without notice, or without an attempt to discover their designer, engraver, or printer, who was alleged to have been a wealthy and influential burgher of the city in which he was writing, is to cast a slur on Van Mander’s reputation as an historian which he does not appear to deserve. Even as the works of an unknown artist they demanded, and would have received, notice, had they been printed and sold in the manner described by Junius, and those who have subsequently amplified his narrative.

With regard to the engravings in the “Poor Man’s Bible,” Ottley says (p. 87,) “the style of these cuts has considerable resemblance to that of the two Van Eycks,” and he considers that the designs in this work, together with those in the Book of Canticles, and the Mirror of Salvation, were, with the exception of the last ten cuts of the latter, the production of the same artist, or at any rate of artists of the same school; all the others being of a different style, and of inferior merit. He regrets his inability to speak with certainty upon their age, but relies upon the following note in Dr. Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana, (vol. i. p. 4.)

“Mr. Horn, a gentleman long and well known for his familiar acquaintance with ancient books printed abroad was in possession of a copy of the Biblia Pauperum, of the Ars Moriendi, and of the Apocalypse, all bound in one volume, which volume had upon the exterior of the cover, the following words stamped at the extremity of the binding, towards the edge of the squares:—‘Hic liber Relegatus fuit per Plebanum Ecclesie—Anno Domini 142[8].’ Mr. Horn having broken up the volume and parted with its contents, was enabled to supply me with the foregoing information upon the strength of his memory alone; but he is quite confident of the three following particulars:—1, That the works, contained in this volume, were as have been just mentioned:—2, That the binding was the ancient legitimate one, and that the treatise had not been subsequently introduced into it:—and 3, That the date was 142...odd—but positively anterior to the year 1430.”

This testimony Mr. Ottley considers it ungracious to question; but “with all this,” he says, “I wish that the volume still existed entire, or that, at least, the cover had been preserved.... But, whatever the antiquity of the first block-books, which almost all writers are of opinion preceded the first attempts to print with moveable characters, it is certain, that for many years after the invention of typography, the engravers in wood continued to publish works of this kind.”[113]

The most interesting of these works is the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, which in one of its four folio editions has the text partly in block, and thus forms a connecting link between Xylographic and Typographic printing. The whole of these four editions are thought by many to have been printed previous to Gutenberg’s first production at Mentz. They are attributed to Coster and his descendants solely on account of the obscure passage in reference to them which occurs in the narrative of Junius; and because of that reference, and their manifest superiority over others of the same class, all those which resemble them in general appearance and style of types, and that have neither initial, date, name or place, to indicate by whom and when and where they were printed, are in like manner claimed as the product of Coster’s Press, by every writer who from the days of Meerman to the present, has advocated the pretensions of Haarlem in opposition to those of Mentz to be the seat of the origin of the Typographic Art.[114] Of these four editions, the first and third, says Ottley, are those in the Latin language; the second and fourth those in Dutch. The engravings are the same in each; but differences exist in the texts; and it is on the assumption that the text was printed previous to taking the impressions of the cuts, that he deduces the order of the editions from the condition and appearance of the cuts. According to this arrangement, the text of the second edition is printed with the same type that was used in the first, with the exception of two pages containing cuts 45 and 56, the type of which is inferior to that of the rest of the book. In the third edition (the second Latin) twenty pages of the text are engraved on solid blocks. The types of the text of the fourth edition, although similar in appearance to those of the three preceding, are somewhat smaller and coarser.[115]

To account for these differences, Mr. Ottley has framed a theory which exactly fits the narrative given by Junius, viz:—that while the second edition (the first Dutch) was in progress and nearly finished, the original printer died and his types were stolen, which compelled his successor, who was unable to replace the original types, either to use some older discarded ones, or to avail himself of a supply of an inferior description in order to finish it; that while the first Dutch edition was in progress a second Latin one was demanded, to meet which, and to bring both the Dutch and the Latin out as quick as possible, the wood engraver was employed to make fac-similes of the texts of 20 pages; and that for the fourth edition, an old inferior fount was used. And upon this theory he says, (p. 298,) “I am of opinion that the concluding passage of his (Junius’s) narrative, wherein, upon the authority of Nicholas Galius and Quirinus Talesius, he relates the story of the robbery which they had formerly more than once heard from the mouth of Old Cornelius the book-binder, who in his youth had lived in the service of the printer who was robbed, merits to be considered as one of the best attested accounts that we possess respecting the early history of typography.”!

But Messrs. Berjeau, Bernard,[116] Paiele,[117] and Humphreys, who have also made the Speculum a special subject of study, do not admit the assumption that the text was printed before the cuts; they adduce good arguments to shew that the impressions of the cuts might have been, and probably were, rubbed off before the text was printed; and the character of the Gothic framework of the cuts that surmount the pages with solid text, being much plainer than that in those where moveable type is used, affords strong ground for the belief that the edition in which they occur was the first instead of the third; the first, that is, that was issued in a completed form; for there can be no doubt but that the splendid copy owned by the late J. B. Inglis, Esq., was the first as regards the impression of the cuts,—the body of some of the scrolls in that copy having been left untouched by the wood engraver, while in all others it is cut away. This peculiarity it was that led Mr. Ottley to the belief that it was the first completed edition, both as regards cuts and texts; while Mr. Humphreys, with more reason on his side, considers that the edition with the twenty pages of xylographic text was the first. “The execution of the subjects,” he says, (p. 60,) “is not equal to those of some of the pages with the typographic text, and there is no foliage in the architectural spandrils. This may serve to prove that the entirely xylographic pages were older than the typographic ones; and that only a few of the best of them were used in the edition which has typographic texts to most of the illustrations.”[118] The conclusion to which these writers have come, upsets Mr. Ottley’s theory, and renders nugatory his opinion, that Junius’s story of the thief “is one of the best attested accounts that we possess respecting the early history of typography.”

The weight which is attached to Mr. Ottley’s deliverances on the subjects upon which he has written, (and particularly in regard to the Speculum, to which four chapters of his work are devoted,) makes it necessary to consider with care whatever he advances upon matters wherein he is largely quoted as an authority by those who have not had similar opportunities for examining the documents upon which he bases his conclusions; and as he does not scruple to denounce those as sophists whose arguments run counter to his own, and to triumphantly expose any slips or inconsistencies which he can detect in the writings of those to whom he opposes himself, it will be well to see whether he is himself free from the failings he so ruthlessly exposes in others. On the question of the separable types which were used in the various editions of the Speculum, I shall therefore give his argument entire. He first says—“this type appears to have been formed upon the exact model of the genuine black letter, commonly used from an early period in Holland, and which is of almost constant occurrence in old Dutch manuscript Missals, and other books of prayer. It is similar, in the forms and joinings of the letters, and in the contractions used in it, to what we often find in the most highly embellished books of devotion of the fourteenth century ... this broad-faced type, this genuine black-letter, is a characteristic of early Dutch typography. This, indeed, is now so generally acknowledged by Bibliographers, that it is unnecessary to insist upon it further; as every judge of old printing will at once declare, upon looking at the Speculum, that the type it is printed with, is Dutch type.” To all which a ready assent may be given. He proceeds as follows:—

“Any person at all conversant with printing, upon first viewing the Speculum, naturally determines that, except the twenty pages of block-printing, so often noticed, in one of the Latin editions, it was printed with cast metal types. Upon an attentive examination of a page, however, he discovers small, but yet, sometimes, very evident variations of form in different specimens of the same letter, which it appears difficult to account for: he finds, perhaps, by measurement, that the same word, although spelt exactly in the same manner, does not always occupy the same space; he is induced perhaps, to hesitate as to the correctness of his first judgment, and to suspect that the type was prepared by the painful and tedious operation of cutting each individual character on a separate piece of metal by the hand.

“If he embrace the latter opinion, he finds, in the work before him, ample cause to admire the invincible patience, the skill, and the exactness of the artist, who could succeed, not only in giving to the sculptured characters that general uniformity of appearance, which at first occasioned him to consider them as cast type; but even so strict a resemblance between perhaps a dozen specimens of the same letter in the first six lines of a page, as to baffle the exertions of the most correct eye to detect any sensible difference between them, except such as must necessarily occur even in the ordinary method of printing with cast type; either in consequence of one letter happening to have been more used and worse than another, more charged with printing ink, or from an irregularity not unfrequent in ordinary presswork, forced deeper into the paper than the rest.”

Having been “conversant with printing” for more than forty years, during thirty-two of which I have been constantly engaged in superintending the passing of works through the press, and in the general management of extensive private and public printing establishments, and having besides a practical knowledge of the arts of wood-engraving, stereotyping, and type-founding, I must own, that the impression made on my mind upon examining the fac-similes of the Speculum given in Wetter’s, Ottley’s, and Humphreys’ books, was, that the separable types used in printing that work were cut in wood, and were not made of cast metal; and the longer I have studied the subject, the more satisfied I am, that Meerman was right in rejecting the opinion of EnschedÉ,[119] who was strenuously opposed to the idea of wooden types having been used. The eye that has been trained to trace out and instantly detect the most minute differences in the shapes of letters of different founts of the same sized types, from the largest of those ordinarily used in book-work to the smallest employed in newspapers,—to mark out for correction n’s and p’s and q’s that have been turned upside down in order to serve for u’s and d’s and b’s, and vice versÂ, as well as to reverse turned s’s and o’s—all common enough occurrences with careless compositors, and which only practised eyes can detect;—the eye of a “reader” who has had only a few years’ experience of such work cannot but note the multitudinous differences, the variations in shape externally and internally, of specimens of the same letters which occur in every line of the fac-simile pages of the Speculum given in the books quoted; and which cannot be accounted for by one being more worn than another, or more or less charged with ink, or more deeply pressed into the paper than the rest. Such imperfections are of a totally different character, and produce appearances altogether dissimilar to those which distinguish the different specimens of the same letters in the same lines of the Speculum one from the other. Looked at through a magnifying glass, these differences are of course much more easily discernible, and as they are of precisely the same kind that are found in the letters in the solid xylographic blocks, the conviction finally forces itself upon the mind, that such types could not have been cast, but must have been cut, and cut in wood. In an examination of this nature, the letters of a single page, or at the most those of the two pages of a single sheet, are all that can be attended to; for in their early efforts, the oldest printers usually printed but one small folio page, and seldom if ever more than two such pages at a time; and when as many copies as were wanted were struck off, the types were broken up for the next page, or two, and so on until the work in hand was completed. The types therefore that were used in the two pages first printed would constantly recur in all the following pages; and it is principally owing to this recurrence of particular letters bearing on their faces some special peculiarity, that the fact is detected that such ancient books as the Speculum are printed with moveable letters. Mr. Ottley goes on:—

“But let him (the person at all conversant with printing) turn from the page which he has been examining, to one of those printed from a wooden block; AND HE WILL SOON BE CONVINCED, by the comparison, that the uniformity of appearance which he witnessed in the characters of the former, could not have been produced by means similar to those used in the execution of the latter; for in the page printed from the engraved block he will discover, throughout, a sensible difference of form, as well as dimensions, between the various repetitions of the same letter: and in the capital letters especially, he will find this difference so material, as to render it easy for him to trace with a point the precise variations of form by which, for example, each of a dozen letters, S, is to be distinguished from all the others. It will then occur to him, that it must have been a task of less difficulty to preserve uniformity in the shapes and dimensions of the letters, in a page of text engraved upon a plain block of wood, which would have afforded the artist not only the means of a constant comparison, but also a convenient and steady rest for his hand during the operation of engraving, than it could have been to cut the numerous characters required, with so strict a resemblance to each other, on small separate pieces of wood or metal; and he will perceive his second opinion to be untenable.”—(pp. 257–259.)

The means of such a comparison are afforded in the absolute fac-similes in Mr. Humphreys’ book, and the differences of form and dimensions in the various repetitions of the same letter are not by any means so material as Mr. Ottley intimates. He moreover assumes, that if the separate letters were cut by hand, they must have been cut on “separate pieces of wood or metal,” and therefore, he argues, there could not have been preserved the same uniformity “in the shapes and dimensions of the letters,” as in a page of text engraved upon a plain block of wood, because there would be lacking “the means of a constant comparison,” as well as “the convenient and steady rest for the hand during the operation of engraving.” But this assumption is utterly uncalled for. What was to hinder the engraver, after calculating the probable number of each kind of letter he required, to trace the whole in alphabetical order on his blocks of wood, and to engrave them all, before he cut them into separate pieces? He would thus have the best possible means for constantly comparing every specimen of the same letter, as he proceeded with his task, and be able to preserve a steady and convenient rest for his hand until all were sculptured out, leaving the minor operation of separating the letters for use in combination to the very last moment. But Mr. Ottley forgets himself; for in the next chapter, after pointing out sundry differences in the orthography of the pages printed with moveable types in the two Latin editions, he writes (p. 294):—

“If the pages printed from engraved blocks, in the Second Latin Edition, be compared with same pages in the First Edition, we shall not find these changes.

“Although, when I wrote upon this subject twenty years ago, I was fully satisfied, as I then said, that the twenty pages of block printing in the Second Latin Edition, were of later date than the rest of the work, and that they had been engraved for the express purpose of completing the copies of this edition; still I was not then aware that such undeniable evidence existed of the fact, as I afterwards discovered. Suffice it to say, that, upon an opportunity being afforded me of comparing this edition with the First Latin, I immediately perceived (and I was rather gratified than surprised at the discovery) that those twenty pages in the Second Latin are no other than fac-simile imitations of the same pages, as printed with type in the first edition.

“The printer, or his successor, as has been said, having been deprived of the type hitherto used in the work, printed the two pages wanting to complete his Dutch edition with the remains of some old type, a little different, which had previously been thrown aside, as no longer fit for use. But in doing it, he experienced, perhaps, more trouble than he anticipated; and as twenty pages, instead of two, were wanting to complete the second Latin edition, he now bethought himself of another mode of procedure. Having taken from a copy of the first Latin edition the ten sheets containing the twenty pages wanting to complete the second edition, and having corrected with a pen a letter here and there misprinted, he delivered those sheets to a wood engraver, with directions to copy them exactly; and the engraver executed the commission, by first glueing these ten sheets with their face downwards upon ten prepared blocks of wood (according to the method then used), then, rendering the paper transparent by oil or otherwise, and lastly, by cutting away the wood around the letters.”

The whole of the last of these paragraphs, it is to be remembered, is purely conjectural; there is not the slightest foundation for it, beyond the necessity for thus accounting for a certain fact, and making that fact dove-tail in with the writer’s theory that the edition with twenty-pages of xylographic text was the second, and not the first; a theory which equally able writers, writers too on the Costerian side of the controversy, deny; maintaining, with a better show of reason on their side, that the xylographic edition was the first. But apart from this consideration, if the twenty pages engraved on blocks, are fac-simile imitations of the twenty corresponding pages in the other Latin edition, what are we to think of Mr. Ottley’s previous assertion, that in these identical pages, there is “throughout, a sensible difference of form as well as dimensions between the various repetitions of the same letter; and in the capital letters especially, this difference is material.”? Both statements cannot be correct; and how they are to be reconciled I know not.

After confessing that the changes of opinion he had previously described were those which had taken place in his own mind, Mr. Ottley proceeds:—

“At length the following mode occurred to me of accounting satisfactorily, as I still think it does, for the dissimilarities above noticed in the type of that work. The type of the Speculum was, I conceive, made by pouring melted lead, pewter, or other metal, into moulds of earth or plaster, formed, whilst the earth or plaster was in a moist state, upon letters cut by the hand in wood or metal; in the ordinary manner used, from time immemorial, in casting statues of bronze and other articles of metal, whether for use or ornament. The mould thus formed could not be of long duration like a matrix, cut or stamped in metal, since it was obviously subject to fracture; nor could it be equally true and perfect in other respects, as it was liable to warp in drying. From moulds thus constructed, but a small number of specimens of each letter could be taken, before they would require to be renewed. This it is reasonable to suppose, was effected by forming new moulds upon the various pieces which had been cast out of the old ones. Those characters however, before they could have been fit for use, it had been necessary to clear, by means of the graver, from certain small particles of extraneous metal left upon them by the process of casting; so that the small accidental dissimilarities in different specimens of the same letter, originally occasioned by this imperfect mode of casting them, were necessarily augmented by the after process of finishing or clearing them with a sharp instrument, (the marks of which are very clearly to be perceived in the type of the Speculum); and thus the renewed moulds, formed upon the letters thus prepared, would necessarily differ, and in some cases very materially, from the former moulds, and also (for these moulds could be multiplied at pleasure) from each other. That a book, printed with type thus manufactured, should present a never ending variety in the forms of the different specimens of the same letter, is therefore not surprising; it is rather a subject for our admiration that the dissimilarity in the characters in the work before us is not greater and more immediately apparent.”

The above mode of accounting for the discrepancies in the appearances of the different specimens of the same letter, is opposed to that put forward by Koning, who takes it for granted that the types were cast by the printer of the Speculum in the same way, and with the same kind of apparatus, as that now used by type-founders, only that the punches were made of hard wood, and the matrices of lead or pewter; and he accounts for certain peculiar fractures he had perceived in several instances on the top of the capital Ornate E as well as in a number of the capital Ornate M in which a part of the central upright stroke was broken in the middle, by supposing that some of the punches had been continued in use after they had received small injuries.

On the supposition that the types of the Speculum really were of cast metal, Koning’s idea is much more reasonable than that of Ottley; but he is wrong in his notion that matrices could be struck in lead or pewter, from punches of hard wood on which letters of the size and character of those used in the Speculum had been engraved. A few indifferent matrices might indeed be struck from some of the larger letters, say the letter Ornate m, but of the smaller ones, and those which had fine hair strokes, both capitals and minuscules, the fine strokes and faces of the letters would invariably be crushed. That, at any rate, is the result of a series of experiments made by the writer, with the view of ascertaining whether with letters so engraved on wood and with the softest procurable sheet lead, matrices could be struck from which types might be cast; and in which he was not successful in a single instance.

Admitting, however, for the moment, that the printer of the Speculum succeeded in striking a complete set of matrices; it has been proved by experiments, that from matrices of soft lead as many as from 120 to 150 letters can be cast,[120] before they are rendered useless; only after 50 or 60 had been made, the fine strokes would begin to thicken. Now it has already been shewn, that the oldest printers did not put to press more than a single page, or at most two pages, at a time, in their earliest attempts in the new art. This is a fact, acknowledged by every one who has made the Incunabula of the Fifteenth century a subject of special study. Admitting then that two pages of the Speculum were printed together, what amount of type, and how many of each letter would be required for those two pages?

An analysis of the fac-simile given in Mr. Humphreys’ work yields the following results. About 1430 separate types in the one page gives 2860 as the number required for two. The following figures (twice the number occurring in the specimen page) shew the numbers required of each of the letters most commonly used, a 44, e 122, i 182, o 146, u 74, d 44, h 28, m 60, n 100, s 84, t 82; there are, besides, the following duplicate and triplicate characters, of which no other printed work shews so large a number,—an, ca, ca, cc, ce, ch, ci, ci, co, co, ct, cti, cu, cu, cp, cy, da, da, de, de, do, du, du, ee, et, ect, fa, fa, fe, ff, fi, fl, fo, fr, fu, ga, ge, ge, gi, go, gu, gu, gp, gr, gy, ii, ib, in, la, le, le, li, ll, lle, llz, oe, ori, no, no, nu, pe, pp, ra, ra, re, re, ri, ro, ro, ru, ru, ria, sa, se, si, so, ss, st, ssi, ssz, ste, ta, ta, te, te, ti, to, tu, tu, tri,—varying in the frequency of their occurrence from twice to twenty-two times, leaving but 1082 other letters for the rest of the alphabet, including the capitals: and of these last from 6 to say 40 would be the utmost of each required. It is thus shewn, that out of the whole number of matrices, upwards of 300, which would be required for a complete fount, not more than eight would be used up to or beyond the point where the fine strokes (supposing the matrices to have been of soft lead) would begun to thicken; and of these it would be a most easy matter to provide duplicates or triplicates, in order to preserve the uniformity of character aimed at by the first printers, in imitation of the manuscripts they intended their works to supersede. All the letters thus cast, would moreover, be fac-similes of each other, and would not, nay could not, present those dissimilarities of appearance observable in specimens of the same letter occurring in every line of the Speculum. Koning’s idea is thus proved to be erroneous.

But Ottley’s is much more so. Types of the size of those used in the Speculum could no doubt be cast in the way he describes, either in plaster, or in the fine prepared sand or earth used by workers in metal. The original letter cut by hand would be the pattern type, from which every mould for that description of letter would be made; but the mould so made would suffice for but one specimen of that one letter; for after it had dried, and the fused metal had been poured in and cooled, the cast letter could only be extracted by breaking away the earth or plaster in which it had been moulded; and if the mould had been made with ordinary care by an expert workman, the letter would turn out an exact fac-simile of the pattern on which the mould had been made. There would not be the slightest necessity for clearing off particles of sand or plaster adhering to the face of the letter, so as to leave upon it marks of the graving tool, nor yet of continually re-casting new types in moulds made from others so disfigured. From the one pattern type first made of each letter, as many moulds as were wanted for the whole supply of every letter could be made, before the operation of casting a single type was commenced; and whatever defect was observed in any of the types after the casting, could be much more satisfactorily remedied by a fresh cast in a mould from the original pattern, than by graving the face of the letter and so altering its appearance. The main object of casting the types was to make every letter the exact counterpart of its fellow; and if the mode of casting was so imperfect, that each one had to be touched up and cleared out with a graver, before it could be used, that object was defeated. But for so complicated a process there was no need, for wooden types can be cut and completed in much less time than would be occupied by the moulding, drying, casting, clearing and touching up, necessitated by the Ottley-method of producing metal types. This has also been proved by actual experiment: and my previous conviction that the separable letters used in the Speculum were, and could only be, hand-cut wooden types, was thus still further confirmed. The marks of the graver, which, as Mr. Ottley points out, “are very clearly to be perceived in the type of the Speculum,” are just those that were produced by the “letter-snyder” in the course of cutting out his letters, which, as they were finished, were sent direct from his hands to those of the printers.[121]

The extraordinary number of duplicate and triplicate (logographs) as well as ligatured letters, that are made use of in the Speculum, has already been referred to. Mr. Ottley considers that they are a proof of the antiquity of that work; but in that direction they only exhibit a peculiarity which is not observable in other works: they furnish however a strong argument in proof of the types of the Speculum having been cut in wood. For, taking into account the limited number of letters required for that work (printed but two pages at a time), to cut ninety separate punches, and to strike the same number of matrices, when one-third of that number would suffice, was a gratuitous waste of labour; whereas, in cutting wooden types sufficient for the composition of two pages, a great saving of time would be effected by duplicating and triplicating as many characters as possible; and not only would time and labour be thus saved, but the types themselves, by being double or treble the thickness of single letters, would be so much the stronger and more durable.

But, say certain writers, amongst whom is Wetter: “It is impossible to print with such small wooden types” as those used in the Speculum.[122] Now Wetter’s object was to shew that the Speculum was of a much later date than is attributed to it by Dutch authorities,[123] and he argues that the types used must have been metal, although Meerman insists upon it that they were of wood. It is singular that Wetter should have committed himself to such a statement, when in Tab. II. of his work he has printed a whole column from wooden-types, some of which are of the same size as those in the Speculum. Possibly he considered that the numerous hair strokes, and particularly those which front the capital A and the minuscule t, (peculiarities found only in letters of the Speculum school) were too fragile to withstand the pressure of printing.

Baron Heinecken,[124] from whom Wetter in all probability borrowed some of his ideas, is of opinion that all the separable letters used in the four folio editions of the Speculum were of cast metal, and that they were printed by Germans who imitated the Gothic style of type first used by Gutenberg at Mentz. In one place he writes:—“It is almost certain that the Speculum Salvationis in Latin was first printed in Germany; and that it was afterwards translated and printed in the Low Countries.” Elsewhere he says, “I come at last to the new edition of the Speculum, which the printer Johan Veldener published in 1483, with his name, in the Flemish language. The vignettes which are placed at the head of each discourse, are the same as those we see in the ancient editions. He cut the engraved blocks, which represented always two sacred or historical subjects, sawing through the middle of the central pillar which divided them, so as to make them into two pieces, in order to insert them in this new edition, which is in small 4to.” “It was probably Theodore Martens,” he remarks further on, “that brought these vignettes with him from Germany, or from France.... We may also conjecture that Johan of Westphalia was the printer of the first Flemish editions, and that Veldener received the blocks from him.... Veldener, after having learned Typography at Cologne, went to live at Louvain, where he printed in 1476, among other books, the Fasciculus Temporum in Latin, with figures engraved in wood. This same printer afterward went to Utrecht, where in 1480, he published the same work in Flemish, introducing also the same cuts which he had brought with him from Louvain.... Nothing seems more natural than that he should have brought with him from Cologne the ancient moulds or matrices, from which the rude type of the two first Flemish editions of the Speculum already spoken of was cast; nothing more reasonable, than that he should afterward abandon that type at Louvain or at Utrecht, or rather at Culemborch, after having made better; for he was certainly a man of enterprise and genius.” Heinecken concludes this part of his argument by saying, “I trust that this extravagant notion of finding books, and sometimes even large volumes, printed with these moveable characters of wood, will by degrees cease, and that able printers may be found, who will shew the impossibility of it.”

There is not however, any impossibility in the matter. Box wood will bear printing from better than soft lead; and Mr. Blades has demonstrated that types of unhardened lead can be used at an ordinary printing press,—the half of plate IX. B, in the 2d volume of his Life and Typography of William Caxton being printed from such types. Argument however is needless in the presence of a fact, and in the word Ornate Art here given, each of the three letters is separately engraved on a piece of box-wood, the shanks of the letters being two sizes smaller than those of the Speculum, while a portion of the upper part of the capital overhangs its shank; each letter is also perforated and nicked, and is therefore altogether weaker than a letter of the same size as in the Speculum would be. As a proof that it was perfectly possible for such works as the Speculum to have been printed with wooden types, three such letters are as good as three thousand; and letters with the finest strokes most exposed to damage have been purposely selected, in order to demonstrate the fact.

The existence in the middle of the Fifteenth century of Guilds or confraternities of trades connected with book-making, in Antwerp, Bruges, and Brussels, amongst whom were included ‘Prenters,’ ‘Letter-,’ and ‘Form-snyders,’ and ‘Beelde-makers;’—Letter and Form and Figure engravers, and those who printed them;—is brought forward as a part of the “vast mass” of so-called “unanswerable evidence,” which sustains the claims of Coster and Haarlem to be the man and the place by whom and where the Art of Typography was invented. “The ‘figure engravers’ (writes Mr. Blades,) were doubtless the artists of the playing cards, the images of saints, and the block-books, then manufactured to a great extent in Holland and Flanders. The term ‘letter engraver’ may have been applied to the sculptor of the legends on the block-books, when not executed by the same artist as the figure itself, but of this there is no evidence, and it seems far from impossible that the term was used to denote artists employed to produce moveable types. The ‘printers’ were doubtless workmen who took the impressions, whether by friction or a press, from the engraved blocks delivered to them; but there is no reason to restrict the meaning of the word, and the same term was from the commencement always applied to printers from moveable types. There is therefore, prim facie, evidence to support the supposition that at a very early period there were workmen in Bruges who employed themselves, albeit in a very rudimentary way, in printing from moveable types.”

But if moveable types were at this date in use at Bruges or elsewhere in Holland, and if these were of cast fusile metal, how comes it that “Letter-zetters” and “Letter-geiters,”—compositors and type-founders,—are not included among the crafts incorporated by the Guilds? How comes it, too, that no mention is made of the “Drukker,” and the “Drukkers-maker”—the press and press-maker? “Printer” is a common enough term applied to pressmen now-a-days, but as late as 1454 it had an exclusive reference to the producer of prints—the printers of the figures sculptured by the “Beelde-makers” on the solid blocks; and it may safely be inferred that these prints were produced after the Chinese manner, by friction, seeing that the term “Drukker,” is that which is applied amongst the Dutch to letter-press printers,—the pressmen of modern days. If, moreover, from the mention of “letter engravers” and “printers” in the records of the Dutch Guilds referred to, we are to understand that there is “prim facie evidence to support the supposition that at a very early period there were workmen ... who employed themselves in working from moveable types,”—typographic printers in fact,—then, upon the same ground, it must be admitted that there is prim facie evidence for admitting the priority of the art in various parts of Germany, for as early as 1428 we find a record of a “letter-printer,” one Wilhelm Kegler, at NÖrdlingen, besides card-makers at Augsburg in 1418. And in 1440 there is found a record of Henne Cruse of Mayence, one of the fraternity, on the roll of the citizens of Frankfort.[125] But so far from there being any such prim facie evidence, the inference to be drawn lies, I think, in an opposite direction; and the absence of all mention of “Letter-zetters,” “Letter-geiters,” “Drukkers,” and “Drukker-makers,” is rather to be considered a proof that they were not then known; that moveable types and presses had not at that time been introduced; and that “Letter-snyders,” and “Prenters” were wholly and solely engaged upon block-books, just as much as the “Beelde-makers,” the figure-engravers were.

“The general opinion of late writers,”[126] Mr. Blades continues, “is, that the art was first perfected at Mentz ... but that nevertheless the earliest use of moveable types must be recognized in the rude specimens attributed to Laurence Coster of Haarlem. Coster died in 1440, and nothing is known to have issued from his press between that period and 1483; but what became of his assistants? Did they, after gaining some insight into the curious effects of Coster’s trials, resign all further attempts, or did they seek to imitate him, some in one town, some in another?” These are very pertinent questions, inasmuch as if they are asked in reference to the assistants of Gutenberg, Faust and Schoeffer, they can be answered in the affirmative, and their respective movements traced. But asked with reference to Coster, the disappointing answer is, “No one knows;” yet it seems more than probable that experiments in the direction of printing from moveable types were making about this period in every city where wood engraving and block-printing were practised.... The idea was simple enough, in the execution was the difficulty. Nor need the opinion that at Bruges there existed at a very early period rude printers, be based on the notice of ‘letter-snyders’ and ‘prenters’ only; there has fortunately been preserved in the Archives at Lille an original manuscript, containing a diary of Jean le Robert, AbbÉ de S. Aubert de Cambrai, among the entries in which the two following are especially worthy of notice:—

“Item pour .j. doctrinal gette en molle anuoiet querre a Brug. par Marquet .j. escripuain de Vallen. ou mois de jenuier xlv. pour Jaq. xx. s.t.”

“Item enuoiet Arras .j. doctrinal pour apprendre ledit d. Girard qui fu accatez a Vallen. et estoit jettez en molle et cousta xxiiij. gr. Se me renuoia led. doctrinal le jour de Touss. lan. .lj. disans quil ne falloit rien et estoit tout faulx. Sen anoit accate .j. x patt. en. papier.”[127]

“Item. For a printed Doctrinal (doctrinal gette en molle) that I have sent for to Bruges, by Marquet, a writer of Valenciennes, in the month of January, 1445 (i. e. 1446) for Jacquet, xx sous tournois.”

“Item. Sent to Arras a Doctrinal for the instruction of dom. Gerard, which was purchased at Valenciennes, and was printed (jettez en molle) and cost xxiiij. gros. The same Doctrinal he returned to me on Christmas Day 1451, saying ‘it was worthless, and full of errors;’ he had bought one on paper for xx patards.”

In these memoranda, says Mr. Humphreys, (pp. 66–67) “we have positive proof that printed Doctrinals were commonly sold in Flanders in 1445; and M. Bernard was the first to elucidate the full value and bearing of this passage, of which M. Van Praet,[128] who had already mentioned it, failed to see the drift, from not understanding the meaning of the term gette, or rather jette, en molle, which simply means cast in a mould, in reference to the metallic types, which were so cast. That M. Bernard is correct in his explanation of the term, is clearly proved by many passages having reference to the same subject, in which the term is used as one well understood. For instance, in the letters of naturalization accorded to the first printers with moveable types established in Paris, a document dated 1474 (old style) the terms ecriture en molle or writing by means of moulds, or moulded letters, is used. Also, in 1496, on the occasion of the purchase of two books of prayer by the Duke of Orleans, the Constable describes them as both escrites en moule. Also, in the list of furniture and books of Anne of Britanny about the same time, books are mentioned ‘tant en parchemin que en papier, À la main, et en molle;’ that is, both on vellum and on paper, both manuscript and printed.”

Commenting upon these memoranda, Mr. Blades exclaims, “Jettez en molle!—Cast in a mould! What can this expression mean, except that the ‘Doctrinals’ were printed from cast types? As applied to manuscripts, or to stencilling, or to block-printing, ‘jettez en molle’ has no meaning whatever.”

“Drowning men,” it has well been said, “will clutch at a straw,” and surely a consciousness of the peril in which their argument stood, must have made the above writers clutch at AbbÉ Jean le Robert’s memoranda in the way they have. It may be admitted, that the phrase “À la main, et en molle,” means “both manuscript and printed;” but upon what fair principle of philology M. Bernard and Mr. Humphreys make out that the words “jettez en molle,” “ecriture en molle,” and “escrites en moule,” mean “cast in a mould, in reference to the metallic types which were so cast,” and “writing by means of moulds, or moulded letters;” is more than I can make out. They may certainly be understood in such a sense now, but when originally used they could only have referred to the moulded appearance,—the indented impressions on the leaves of the book, totally irrespective of the types or blocks by which such appearance was produced.

Certainly, as applied to manuscripts, the phrase “jettez en molle” has no meaning. But with all deference to Mr. Blades, whose “Life and Typography of William Caxton,” is a work of the highest possible merit with reference to all that concerns the introduction of Printing into England,—the words in question are pregnant with meaning in regard to both block-printing and stencilling. Every one acquainted with the ordinary processes of printing must know, that freshly-printed paper has exactly the appearance of having been moulded; the damped paper, in fact, is actually moulded on the type or wood-engraving, by the forcible pressure brought to bear upon it, and on being released from that pressure, the paper cast that has been made brings away with it, on removal, the colouring matter with which the blocks or types have been inked. In the old solid blocks, when the hollows cut to leave in relief the characters used for the School-books—the Donatuses and Doctrinals—would be wider, deeper, and more irregular than in the more modern types, this indented and moulded appearance would be much more apparent, especially when impressions were taken by the Chinese method of rubbing the back of the paper, and the printer was careless about smoothing out and obliterating the evidences of indentation, in the manner adopted by typographers now-a-days. In stencilling too, the perforated plate, when laid upon the paper, became to all intents and purposes a mould. The bottom of the mould was the surface of the paper on which, through the perforations in the plate, the ink or pigment would be brushed, the paper being thus made to take a coloured cast of the hollows in the plate. With reference to either process therefore, the phrase “jettez en molle” might most naturally be used to express on the part of any one ignorant of the process of printing, the appearance of a book which he knew was not written, but which bore upon its face the evidence of having, in some way or other, been cast or moulded. As this evidence would appear the same, or nearly so, whether produced from engraved blocks, or from separable letters, the phrase would be just as applicable in the one case as in the other. When thus examined, the assertion that “jettez en molle” means, and can only mean, “printed from cast types,” is deprived of all its weight, and the phrase itself is valueless as an evidence that cast types were in use at Bruges, or elsewhere in Holland, at the time when AbbÉ Jean le Robert wrote his diary.

Xylographic and typographic productions, as well as that edition of the Mirror of Human Salvation which partook of the nature of both, may therefore be described alike, as books “jettez en molle.”

But in endeavouring to ascertain the time when this latter work was printed, there are still two important points to be considered; and these are, the age of the paper, and the date of the costume and armour of the figures represented in the vignettes. On both of these points Mr. Ottley’s writings are most instructive. As regards the first, the only guides are the paper-marks, and as the same marks continued to be used by manufacturers for many successive years, it follows, that although the Speculum might possibly have been printed when peculiar marks were first made use of, the printing may, just as likely, not have taken place till many years later: the only certainty, therefore, that an undated paper-mark affords, is, that the work in which it appears could not have been printed prior to the time when it has been ascertained that that particular mark was originally introduced.

The marks observed in the paper on which the earliest edition of the Speculum is printed, consist of a fleur-de-lis (or anchor) an unicorn, two keys side by side, a hand, a St. Catharine wheel, a circle enclosing the letters M A with a coat of arms beneath; and the letter P; and in the later Latin edition, the letter Y. These three last are considered the most important, and are dealt with as such by Mr. Koning.

As to the circle with the letters and coat of arms, he says, the initials signify without doubt, the initials of Margaret, widow of William, Count of Holland, and the mother of the Countess Jacqueline, the arms being those of Bavaria, whence he concludes, that the paper was manufactured during the reign of the Countess Jacqueline in Brabant and Hainault, after her marriage with the Dauphin, and before the treaty of transfer made to Philip of Burgundy in 1433, it being the custom of manufacturers of paper in the fifteenth century to put the arms of their sovereigns in their marks. Mr. Ottley, however, points out, that this usage was rare before the latter part of the century, although afterwards the practise became common.

The letter P, which Koning considers to have been the initial of Philip of Burgundy (who reigned in Brabant from 1430 to 1467,) was found by him, he says, in a memorandum of accounts of the date 1432; and he remarks further, that “a large proportion of the books printed in Holland in the latter part of the fifteenth century, have this paper-mark, which will never be found in any book, nor in any paper, coming from Germany or from Italy.”

This last assertion Mr. Ottley disproves, by citing several instances of its occurrence in various works of Zell, as well as the marks of the unicorn, the two keys, and the capital Y, &c., shewing, as he says, that Koning has “erred egregiously.” He also says (note, p. 160,) “The supposed initial of Philip the Bold is very doubtful. I have reason to believe that the paper on which it is found was made in Italy.” And he moreover shews, that he could not find it in any of Mr. Koning’s tracings, earlier than 1453. He himself saw it “in company with other papers which he thought not to be older than 1438; but in a dated book he did not find it earlier than 1445.”

“The letter Y,” says Mr. Koning, “is, without doubt, the initial of Ysabel of Portugal, who was married to Philip le Bon in 1430.”

Mr. Koning sums up the third chapter of his book by saying, “the paper-marks prove that the said works were published between the years 1420 and 1440; since it appears from what has been said above, that the paper of the first Dutch edition (of the Speculum) which is evidently the most ancient, bears alone the marks which are the most ancient; that is to say, the arms of Bavaria which were used by the paper-makers in the reign of the Countess Jacqueline, and consequently, before the year 1428; and that the paper of the second or third edition of the Speculum bears the letter P, the mark of the sovereign Philip of Burgundy, which certainly was not in usage until the year 1425.” Upon all this Mr. Ottley thus comments:— (pp. 163–164).

“Now, with respect to the Gothic letter P, which was so much used on paper, from the middle of the fifteenth to the early part of the sixteenth century, I shall not take upon me to deny Mr. Koning’s assertion, that it is to be considered as the initial of Philip of Burgundy; although, as it appears to have been used in other parts, as well as in his dominions, and continued so long after his death (as was the Y also, after that of Ysabel, the wife of Philip), the fact may be doubted. As to Mr. Koning’s hypothesis, concerning the two paper-marks with the arms of Bavaria, it is certainly ingenious: and, had he proved that the paper so marked, was manufactured in the dominions of Jacqueline, or of her mother Margaret, at the early period he speaks of, I should have thought it so strong a circumstance, in favour of that edition of the Speculum in which those paper-marks occur, that I should have felt disposed to carry back the three preceding editions of that work (for it certainly is the fourth) to a very remote period indeed, rather than have denied that it was printed at the early date he has assigned to it. But first, Mr. Koning has brought no evidence to shew that the paper was made in Brabant; (for the circumstance, supposing it true, that all the paper used in those times, at Haarlem, came from that great commercial depÔt, Antwerp, proves nothing, since paper coming from different parts, was doubtless sold there); and, secondly, we have no proof that it was made at that early period. Suffice it for me to add, that neither of these paper-marks was to be found among the tracings, made by Mr. Koning from the ancient registers of Haarlem, which, as I have said, he was so good as to lend to me; and that after a diligent search of several months in the extensive collections of original Books of Accounts, from 1352 to about 1470, in the archives at the Hague, I was unable to discover either of them; though at length I chanced to find them both, in a book in sq. fol. obligingly lent to me by Mr. De Jonge, now the principal archivist at the Hague; viz. the Fasciculus Temporum in Dutch, printed at Utrecht, by Joh. Veldener, in 1480; though perhaps the paper was not made from the same identical sieves or moulds, as the paper that is found in the Speculum.”

Thus then, Mr. Ottley, who “shews a determined inclination to favour the claims of Laurent Coster,”[129] also shews, that M. Koning, who obtained the prize from the Dutch Society of Arts and Sciences at Haarlem, for the best dissertation in support of the ancient tradition that the Art of Printing was invented in that city,—is wrong in his assertions in regard to the paper-marks; and that the earliest instances of the occurrence of those to which Koning chiefly refers, the Gothic P, and the arms of Bavaria, are in the years 1445, 1453, and 1480.

It follows therefore, from the evidence of the paper-marks, that the printing of the Speculum could not have taken place before 1445; that most probably it was not printed earlier than 1453; and that it may not have issued from the press before even 1480. Consequently, as the Speculum was the first Dutch work printed with separable types, it cannot claim priority over the invention of Gutenberg, which, as has been shewn in the preceding chapter, must have been previous to 1436.

As to the costume and armour of the figures in the vignettes of the Speculum,[130] the following extracts from Sir Samuel Meyrick’s letter to Mr. Ottley, and the observations of the latter thereon, are most pertinent. Sir Samuel says:—

“Next to actual dates, there is no criterion of age so sure as Costume, which, changing on an average within every ten years, fixes the real period, almost precisely; especially, as, all its parts not varying at the same moment, the one rectifies the vagueness of the other. After costume, ornament is a fair guide, as is architecture; and next to these, the style of writing, where the subject is a manuscript.

“You are, no doubt, well aware that the designers of the middle ages, until the latter part of the seventeenth century, always dressed their figures from the objects before their eyes; and those writers who would fabricate descriptions of what they wished should be supposed to have occurred before their times, always used the terms of costume applicable to their own period.”

Then follow numerous illustrations and references, in proof of the position laid down; amongst which are the different articles of armour used from the reigns of Edward I, to Henry VIII. With reference to some of these articles, Sir S. Meyrick continues:—

“On comparing these with what appears in the woodcuts to the Speculum, the identity will be evident. It is true that their use continued till the close of the fifteenth century; but this authority shews that they were also known at its commencement....

“On a careful review and consideration of the whole, I am inclined to think, that the wood-blocks of the Speculum cannot be of later date than 1435, and that they may be a little earlier; nor is this opinion in the least degree shaken on an examination of the rest, besides that of which you more particularly asked it.”

But Mr. Ottley will not venture to assign to the woodcuts so early a date. He says:—

“I believe all will agree with Dr. Meyrick, that the artists of the times we are speaking of, and of earlier as well as much later periods, were universally accustomed to dress their figures according to the fashion of their own day, whatever the age of the subject they had to represent; and that, therefore costume (and I might add, the style of art) affords, next to actual dates, the surest means of determining the age of an illuminated manuscript or other monument.

“But, I suspect, if Dr. Meyrick means to speak generally, that he goes too far, when he says that, by such means, the true date of a work of art is to be ascertained to within the short period of five or ten years.

“In the early times we are speaking of, the main articles of dress continued so nearly the same for great part of a century, that the same suit of armour, and the same gown, descended from father to son, and from mother to daughter, and when altered, perhaps, in certain small details, rendering them so far conformable to the particular fashion of the day, served even for a third generation. These small details, I admit, may in many cases greatly help us; and will sometimes point to a period of very small duration. But I suspect, that the exact date when one fashion had its commencement, and another went out, is known but in very few instances; and it can scarce be doubted but that in one country—nay in one part of the same country—certain fashions continued to prevail for some time after they had been discontinued in another.

“In addition to this, it seems probable, from the great costliness of armour, that when a suit, or part of a suit, had become too much out of fashion to be any longer worn by a man of rank, it would, instead of being thrown aside as useless lumber, be often handed over to one of his dependents: and in consequence, in designs and illuminations done in these times, it might happen that subordinate figures would here and there appear, dressed in costume of a more ancient character than the principal personages.

“Again, I think, that an artist advanced in years, when illuminating a manuscript, or making designs to engrave from, would often be likely, from habit, to represent his figures in costume more or less resembling that which had prevailed in his younger days, when he made his studies; and, hence, although he would scarcely fail to introduce also certain new changes of fashion, too remarkable to be overlooked, his work on the whole, would savour more of the costume of former days, than would be the case with the performance of a younger artist, executed at the same time.

“But our means of forming a correct judgment of the date of these cuts, are not in all respects so complete, as those which enable us to determine the country ... Holland has no monumental effigies of these times, to which we may refer as authorities ... still, did Holland herself furnish us with more numerous authorities, we should, I think, be enabled to determine the date of the work in question, with fuller confidence than we can do under the existing circumstances.

“To conclude—I have found nothing in the costume of the cuts of the Speculum, that appears to me to militate directly against the supposition that they may be of the early date Dr. Meyrick has assigned to them, and, although the argument produced by that gentleman to shew that they cannot be later, is not perhaps in all respects conclusive, still, considering all the circumstances, I could with difficulty persuade myself that the work was not commenced, at least, within a few years of the period he has supposed, and certainly, I should say, not later than 1450.”

These reasons, and the conclusion they lead to, on the part of a writer so decidedly Costerian as Mr. Ottley undoubtedly is, are very important in a controversy of the kind such as that with which we are dealing. The 58 cuts of two designs each, and their engraving on wood, together with the twenty pages of texts, similarly engraved, must have taken a very considerable time to complete, on the part of the artist “Beelde-maker,” and “Letter-snyder,” employed upon them. Supposing then the work of engraving the cuts was commenced in 1450, and the whole work was completed in three years, we are brought back to the same date for the earliest probable original printing of the Speculum, that we reached from a consideration of the paper-marks, a few pages previous; that is, at least thirteen years subsequent to the death of the man, whom Junius calls the first printer, and who, all those who have adopted his narrative, insist upon it, was, by the printing of that book, the original inventor and first practiser of Typography in Europe; but which, as we have seen, could not have appeared until more than seventeen years had passed away from the time when Gutenberg first made his separable metal types at Strasburg.

Enough, and more than enough, has already been stated, to prove that Laurent Janssoen Coster was not the inventor, nor Haarlem, the birthplace of the Typographic Art; and that the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, the first Dutch book printed with separable letters was not, and could not have been, printed at the place where, and by the man to whom, from 1588 to 1871, a host of writers, following the lead of Junius, have attributed it.

But it may fairly be asked,—If that work, as well as the others which have been imputed to Coster, were not the products of his press, by whom then were they printed? This question, although one of those seemingly more easily asked than answered, is yet one that need not be shrunk from, inasmuch as in the far-off vista of antiquity, and amid the dim mists of uncertainty which encompass it, certain ancient landmarks are perceivable, which may serve to guide the inquirer, and possibly help him to arrive at convictions capable of enduring the test of examinations as potent and searching as the touch of an Ithuriel’s spear. Reference has more than once been made to the impulse given to learning at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. This movement was helped forward by no one in Holland and Germany more than by Gerhard Groote, or Magnus, of Deventer, (b. 1326, d. 1370), who after studying theology at Paris, became a canon of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle, and founded the Order of the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life, generally known as the “Gemeineslebens,” or “FrÈres de la Vie Commune,” but sometimes confounded with the Beghards and Lollhards of an earlier time. The headquarters of the Brotherhood was at Deventer, where a College was built and inhabited by them in the year 1400. Receiving the approval of the Council of Constance, the Order was propagated throughout Holland, Lower Germany, and other provinces. “It was divided into the literary Brethren or Clerks, and the unlearned Brethren, who lived in different houses, but in bonds of the greatest friendship. The Clerks devoted themselves to transcribing books, the cultivation of polite learning, and the instruction of youth; and they erected schools wherever they went. The Brethren laboured with their hands, and pursued various mechanic trades. Neither were under the restraint of religious vows; but still they ate at a common table, and had a general community of goods. The Sisters lived in nearly the same manner, and the time which was not employed in prayer and reading, they devoted to education of female children, and to such labours as were suitable for their sex. The schools of these Clerks of the Common Life were very celebrated in this century, and in them were trained nearly all the restorers of polite learning in Germany and Holland; and among others the great Erasmus of Rotterdam, Alexander Hegius, John Murmelius and others.” Thus far Mosheim. Hallam, in his “Introduction to the Literature of Europe,” says, “they were distinguished by their strict lives, their community, at least a partial one, of goods, their industry in manual labour, their tendency to mysticism. But they were as strikingly distinguished by the cultivation of knowledge, which was encouraged in brethren of sufficient capacity, and promoted by schools, both for primary and for enlarged education. These schools were, says Eichhorn, ‘the first genuine nurseries of literature in Germany, so far as it depended on the knowledge of languages; and in them was first taught the Latin, and in the process of time the Greek, and Eastern tongues.’ Some of them, such as that of St. Edward’s at Groningen, and the one at Zwoll, presided over by Thomas À Kempis, were of considerable reputation. In the year 1430 they had established as many as forty-five houses in Germany and the Low Countries, and in 1460 they had more than thrice that number. Amongst other occupations, they busied themselves in copying and binding books.”

Bound to live by labour, and under a semi-ascetic discipline, self-abnegation was a distinguishing characteristic of the FrÈres de la Vie Commune; while the instruction of youth, and the promotion of piety, were the objects to which they devoted their lives and labours. The multiplication of books, which formed a portion of their occupations, could not but prove a powerful means for assisting them to the attainment of the objects which they had at heart. These books were naturally divided into educational and devotional, according to the classes of individuals for whose use they were designed. Among the former would be A B C Dariums, Catonis Disticha, Donatuses, Doctrinals, and such like. Among the latter, the Poor Man’s Bible, the Apocalypse of St. John, the Book of Canticles, the History of the Virgin, the Arts of Memory and Dying, and the Mirror of Human Salvation. As the operations of the Brotherhood extended, and their schools increased, the greater would be the demand for the above works, and the more laborious the efforts of the copyists to meet that demand. At their establishments, whether at Deventer, Bruges, Brussels, Zwolle, or elsewhere, artists and illuminators would be found among their ranks. And as Zwolle is known to have been a very early seat of the engraver’s art, such pictorial embellishments as these artists designed would speedily be transferred to wood. That such was the case, and that Zwolle was the place where Block-books were first produced, seems to be certain, from the fact that in 1489 the Brethren there used the original blocks of the Biblia Pauperum in printing the work “Passye ende dat Leven van onsers liefs hern.” The silver cross and arms of Zwolle are also to be found in the cuts of the Book of Canticles. As the labours of the copyists increased, and as scrolls and inscriptions were added to the engraved figures, and the art of the ‘letter-snyder’ was called in to assist that of the ‘beelde-maker,’ and the ‘formen-’ and ‘figure-snyder,’ there can be no question but that it not unfrequently occurred to the minds of thoughtful copyists, that whole texts of books could be so engraved. A representation to that effect to the chief of the brotherhood would lead to an order to carry the idea into execution. In the descriptive text of the Ars Moriendi and like works, and in the twenty xylographic pages of the first Latin edition of the “Mirror of Salvation,” we see the realization of the idea. But in the course of continually cutting the letters on the wood, an intelligent ‘letter-snyder’ would be struck by the constant recurrence of certain letters and combinations of letters,—a fact much more likely to attract his attention than a copyist’s,—and he would find, in counting over these letters, that his future labours could be greatly abridged, by merely cutting as many separate letters and combinations of each sort, as would suffice for printing a page or two at a time; the same letters answering again and again for the work in hand, or for any other that might be required. In the reduction of this idea to practice, the reason may be seen why the first edition of the Speculum is partly xylographic and partly typographic.

The success attending these first Dutch efforts at printing with separable types would at once lead to further applications of the art in the production of elementary educational books; and as the reputation of the Brethren as schoolmasters was great, and they were often invited and sent for by the magistrates of cities to open schools in Germany as well as in Holland, they would carry such books with them. The fact of fragments of early Donatuses and Doctrinals being found in Germany is thus accounted for, without any necessity for supposing, with Junius and his followers, that the types from which they were printed were stolen from Coster of Haarlem, and carried away to Mentz: while sets of types cut by different ‘letter-snyders’ would also account for the differences observed in the typography of the four folio editions of the Speculum.

Bearing in mind then, the objects to which the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life devoted themselves;—the classes of books, educational and devotional, of which the block-books consisted, and their special adaptability to promote the objects of the fraternity:—the fact, that Zwolle was one of the earliest seats of the engraver’s art, as well as a central station of the brotherhood;—that the original blocks of the Biblia Pauperum were reproduced at the Brethren’s printing press there in 1489;—that large editions of these works were never required,[131] and that therefore one printing establishment might suffice for the needs in this respect of the whole fraternity;—that the arms of the city were engraved on one of these books, the Song of Songs;—that all those with pictorial embellishments, claimed as Costerian productions, are, in the opinion of so competent a judge as Ottley, the work of the same artist, or at least of the same school, as regards design and execution, as the Biblia Pauperum;—and that from the paper-marks, as well as the character of the costume and armour of the figures in the Speculum, that work could not have been printed until about the year 1453, or later:—the conclusion seems reasonable, that all the works which from 1588 have been traditionally attributed to Coster and his alleged successors, came in reality from the establishment of the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life at Zwolle:—and if so, this satisfactorily accounts for there being neither name nor initial nor date, to indicate either author, designer or printer; the principles of the fraternity being such as to merge the individual in the brotherhood, and to make the work of one a portion of the common work of all.

Setting aside, therefore, the conclusions of Baron Heinecken and Wetter in regard to the party by whom, and the date when, the Speculum was originally printed, (which nevertheless are not without grounds for their support), this view of the question gives to some unknown brother or brethren the merit of having independently worked out the idea of separable letters on wood about the years 1450–53; thus adding one more to the number of known instances, when at certain historic periods the minds of individuals wholly unknown to each other, and in widely different parts of the world, have almost simultaneously worked out the same invention, or made the same discovery. Instances of such coincidences will no doubt at once occur to the minds of intelligent readers; I shall therefore only refer by way of illustration to the invention of Photography by M. Niepce and Mr. Fox Talbot, and the discovery of the planet Neptune by the English and French astronomers, Adams and Leverrier.

The rarity of copies of works in which the types used in the Speculum have been recognised, is accounted for by the fact of their speedy supercession by cast fusile metal types, when a knowledge of the Arts of Typography and Typefounding became spread throughout Europe by the dispersion of the workmen at Mentz, on the capture and sack of that city in 1462. Most, if not all of the early printers, were men of learning. Many of those who first practised the art in the Netherlands would consequently have been educated by the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life; and amongst these some were very probably members of that fraternity. It is certain that at Brussels (1476) and at Zwolle, as well as at Rheingau (1474) and Rostock (1476), the Brethren speedily practised the new art as first brought to perfection at Mentz. And at one or other of these places, it is much more likely that Veldener obtained the cuts of the Mirror of Salvation, which he reprinted at Culembourg in 1483, than that he purchased them from the descendants of Coster at Haarlem;—a statement which, however much insisted upon by Dutch, and reiterated of late by French and English writers, is purely suppositious, and utterly void of the slightest foundation in fact.

[83] Schrijver, P. Laurecrans voor Laurens Coster. Haarlem, 1628. 4to.